Gardeners Checklist: Here Is What to Do on the Week of July 10

By Ron Kujawski

• Keep weeding. This is very important because vegetable crops and flowers compete with weeds for soil nutrients. The pulled weeds can be a source of organic matter for your gardens. Bury the weeds in the garden if they are not diseased nor have seedheads or rhizomes (underground runners).

• Leave the plants intact after harvesting the central head on broccoli and cabbage. These plants will develop additional but smaller heads. Broccoli will almost immediately begin developing side shoots with small heads for harvest. On cabbage, small heads will develop at the base of the old leaves but will not be ready for harvest until late summer.

• Continue to bank soil up and around leeks to keep the stems white.

• Cut shoots from thyme and oregano for drying. The flavor of these herbs is intensified when the stems are dried. Store the dried herbs in air-tight containers.

• Keep an eye out for Japanese beetles. Their numbers are few as yet; so, it should be easy to hand pick them off bean plants and ripening raspberries. Keep the other eye out for tomato hornworm. Make sure it is your best eye since hornworms are hard to find.

• Shear low-growing annuals such as alyssum and lobelia when flowers become sparse. Clipping back lightly several times through the growing season will keep these plants in constant bloom. I love these plants in the rock garden, along walkways or at the front of flower borders. These may still be purchased at some garden centers. Don’t worry if the plants look worn. Just shear them after planting and give them a boost of fertilizer.

• Take a daily and early morning tour of flower gardens. Check plants for spent flowers and deadhead (remove) these. Daylilies especially need daily deadheading to look their finest. Also, cut back by half the stems of perennial geraniums, salvias, catmints, veronicas, and lady’s mantle after they have completed their bloom. Give them a deep watering (if the weather should become dry), a little garden fertilizer, and apply organic mulch if they are not now mulched. This treatment will invigorate the plants and may lead to a second bloom.

• Recycle newspaper by using it in gardens as mulch. Place a few layers of paper on the ground and cover with straw or grass clippings. Don’t try this on a windy day or you’ll spend a lot of time racing around the neighborhood retrieving the wind-blown paper; yet another lesson learned from personal experience. Actually, it’s pretty good exercise.

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.