Don't Kill Your Garden This Summer! Keep It Alive and Well

Depending upon your location, the intense heat and arid conditions this summer could cause a massive failure in your gardening efforts. Learn how to maintain a healthy vibrant home garden during the summer months.

Nothing is worse than spending time, money and energy on your home's yards and gardens only to discover that the harsh summer months are negatively impacting your efforts. If you enjoy spending time cultivating plants, trees and shrubberies around your home, there may be some questions and concerns about how to best maintain your gardens during the summer months. Even if you are not an ardent participant in planting and developing perfect landscaping, but simply enjoy clean, healthy plants in your yards, taking the time follow some best practices could mean the difference between keeping your garden alive and well and killing it off this summer.

Summer gardening tips are important because you want your plants to look good and live healthy lives. If this is not the case, then consider hiring the services of a gardener or professional landscaping company. The challenge of providing the best environment for the landscaping around you home is one that many home owners embrace. In addition to being able to feel great about a well tended home garden, ones property values are also likely to to reflect the lovely surroundings of the yards and gardens.

As important as why to pay extra attention to the garden this summer is when the following tips should be implemented. In order for ones gardens to be at their peak, consider instituting the following year round:

• Watering: plants hanging or in pots tend to dry quickly and may require more than one watering per day. If possible, consider setting up a drip system to ensure adequate hydration to all of your plants. Trees and shrubs that are less than four to five years old can suffer stress during the dry summer months. Again, the drip system would work well with these plants.
• Feeding: Proper preparation of soils, either in the pots or the grounds around your garden or yards, can help ensure a long successful growing season over the course of the summer. Some gardeners are tempted to over feed the gardens, but this can result in lush, fast growth that tapers off sooner than nature may intend.
• Weeding: This was one of those tasks that should have been done in the spring time and if done properly with a layer of weed suppressing mulch, much of the summer weeding efforts will be minimized. Even if everything was done correctly and on time, be sure to remove any new weed sprouts as they are discovered. Anything growing in your yard or garden that is not intended to be there robs your desired plants of water and nutrients.

During early summer, the following gardening tips should help most amateur gardeners get the most form their efforts to keep their plantings alive and well:

• Plant out summer bedding: The frost danger is now passed, so start planting your tender bedding.
• Support your plants before it's too late: Waiting until a plant droops in order to stake it is usually too late. For those plants shooting up, get them staked with materials easily found at your favorite home and garden supplier.
• Prune your tomatoes: Pinching off those outside shoots on your tomato plants will ensure bigger and tastier fruit in a month or so.

And finally, don't forget to perform the following acts during the late summer time:

• House Plants: Giving your indoor plants a week or two of summer holiday will provide them with the rejuvenation they need for another beautiful year of indoor living.
• Dead Head: Early evening hours are a perfect time to stroll around the grounds snipping off the dead blooms from the flowering plants. This action provides the plants with the impetus to bloom for longer periods of time during the summer months.
• Harvest Your Veggies: As soon as the fruits and vegetables are ready, pick them and get them eaten. If you have more than you can eat before they go to waste, freeze, can or put them up for consumption later in the year and over the winter months.

Post by,

Kara Taylor

Kara Taylor is a freelance writer for Gemplers.  She absolutely loves to write for them about gardening, and is a big fan of their sun hats.