Monthly Garden "To Dos"

• Mimosa, Trumpet Creeper, Phlox, Butterfly Weed, Daylily, Red Hot Poker, Rose-of Sharon, Sourwood, Crape Myrtle, Stewartia, St. John's Wort, Abelia, Peegee Hydrangea, Chaste Tree, Canna, Dahlia, Shasta Daisy and summer annuals.

• Continue sidedressing your garden vegetables.
• Give landscape plants a second feeding of fertilizer.
• Take soil samples from your lawn area for testing. Soil sample boxes are available at the County Extension Center.

Planting

• Plants of brussel sprouts and collards can be set out in mid-July.
• you can begin your fall vegetable garden this month. Plant beans, carrots and tomatoes in July.
• Start broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower plants in peat pots to transplant into the vegetable garden in mid-August.
• Begin repotting overgrown houseplants.

Pruning

• Prune bleeder trees like maple, dogwood, birch and elm this month.
• Prune the fruiting canes of raspberry and blackberry plants after harvest is over. Cut canes at ground level.
• Prune off dieback limbs on hybrid rhododendron.
• Trim hedges as needed.
• Continue pruning white pines and narrowleaf evergreens like juniper early in the month.
• Remove faded flowers on crapemyrtle and flowering perennials to encourage a second flowering.
• Shear red-tip photinia in the last week of July or the first week of August for red foliage through the winter.
• Pinch your chrysanthemums the first week only!
• Do not prune spring flowering shrubs now.

Spraying

• Spray the following landscape shrubs for the following insect pests: arborvitae-bagworm, azalea and pyracantha-lace bug, crape myrtle-aphid.
• Spray for Japanese beetles as needed.
• Spray crape myrtle for powdery mildew.
• Continue with rose spray program.
• Spray your fruit trees and bunch grapes on a regular basis.
• Spray the following vegetables if insects are observed: cucumber (cucumber beetle), squash (aphids) , tomato and eggplant (flea beetle).
• Spray red-tip photinia weekly for leaf spot, if observed.
• Spray herbicides on the following woody weeds: poison ivy, honeysuckle and kudzu.

Lawn Care

• Remember to change direction when mowing your lawn. Travel north to south on one mowing and east to west on the next cutting.
• Continue feeding your warm season lawn with fertilizer. Do not give tall fescue lawns any fertilizer this month.

Propagation

• This month is still a great time to take semi-hardwood cuttings of azaleas, camellia, holly, rhododendron and many other shrubs.
• July is an ideal time to divide and transplant your iris.

Specific Chores