10 Summer Garden Maintenance Tips
With the right tools and expertise, you can have the garden that everyone in your neighbourhood will envy. From the blooming flowers even in the dead summer heat to that pristine, green lawn, you make caring for your yard seem simple.
Your secret? You received insider trade secrets before summer temperatures kicked into high gear!
10 Essential Garden Checklist Items to Complete Now
Summer heat and disease can take down a healthy lawn or budding flower garden quickly. To avoid spending hundreds restoring your garden next year, you can maintain it through the season. To keep your garden and lawn looking beautiful despite the heat, follow the steps outlined in this checklist:
- Mulch: Mulch is your garden’s best friend. Spread about a 2-inch-deep layer of fresh mulch over exposed soil to shield the ground from heat and sun, but also keep weeds from overtaking your garden bed.
- Deadhead Your Flowers: Deadheading is pruning, but instead of trimming back dormant branches, you are only removing the spent flowers. Once these spent buds are no longer soaking up energy, the plant can start blooming once again. Annuals and flowering shrubs need year-round deadheading, which you can do with a small pair of garden sheers.
- Tackle Pests: You are outside enjoying the warmer temperatures and ample sunlight, but so are the insects. While deadheading, look for signs of disease and insect problems. Early detection is best if you want to eradicate the problem and save plants.
- Pick Clean: For your vegetable garden, you must pick it clean. That means removing all fruiting plants as soon as they are ready for harvest. Leaving them to over-mature slows your plant’s production. No tools necessary, unless you want gardening gloves to keep your hands from getting dirty.
- Plant Summer Bulbs: Calla, dahlia, and canna add colour to your landscape and stay in bloom despite the heat.
- Water: Water is essential, but how you deliver that water is equally crucial. Do not oversoak your lawn, but give it a hearty dose of water a few times per week. Garden plants need an average of 1-inch of water but do so from the ground rather than wetting the plant from above.
- Mow Right: Any lawns with cool-season grass, such as ryegrass or Kentucky bluegrass, need higher cutting lengths in the summer. Keeping cool seasoned grass short causes it to dry out and brown quickly.
- Fertilize: Mid-summer is the perfect time of year to fertilize your garden and lawn.
- Pick Up the Right Tools: If your garden shed consists of only a lawnmower, now is the time to get a few more instruments. Essentials like garden spades, shovels, gardening gloves, rakes, trowels, and garden forks are must-have items for any lawn. Starting with these basics, you can then add more accessories, like watering cans, special hoses, and hand tools.
- Prepare for Fall Gardening: When summer has already come to an end, it is too late to start your fall garden. In fact, fall gardens are planted in August as summer temperatures start to fade out and your summer vegetables no longer produce a bountiful.
Keep Up Your Lawn with a Garden Maintenance Service
Summer poses its own unique set of maintenance challenges. Not only is the weather hot and dry, but your grass and garden respond differently in summer compared to spring. If you do not have the time, consider using professional garden care services.
Greenbloom offers garden maintenance in Toronto to keep your garden lush and vibrant. We do everything from installing sod to fertilizing, lawn seeding, removing trees, and cleaning up your garden.
If you need summer garden services, do not hesitate to contact us here at Greenbloom. You can also call us at 647-500-5263.