Garden -- June 2016

NOW prune your azaleas.
OK, well, as soon as the blooms drop.
Finish by mid-July or you'll cut wood that would produce blooms next year.

NOT hydrangea.
They are getting ready to bloom -- if they survived the late frosts.

NOT sweet privet.
Mine is starting to bloom, the heavy sweet scent was everywhere yesterday.
That's going to be some good food for the bees over the next few weeks.
And we all want to feed our bees.
If you prune now, the bees already going after those blooms might sting you.
We don't want that.
So leave the privet alone.

You should be eating green peas and snow peas.
Your dark leafy greens are about to bolt.
So is your cilantro; ask me how I know.
Let them.
If you used open-pollinated seeds, you will get more greens next year from these.
Hybrids not so much.
Hybrids do not breed true.
The seeds for them have to be produced every year from the root stock.
If you are serious about sustainable gardening, you have to go back to open-pollinated seeds.
Luckily there are at least a couple of dozen sites that sell them.

Your warm veggies could have gone in the ground a week or two ago.
If you planted them before that in the DC region, you probably lost them to some of those late frosty nights.

Cut that grass -- three inches.
I still have ground ivy, in  shady areas. 
I am taking revenge by pulling it out and composting  it.
Next year or so, that will go right back on the garden.
Along with your shredded composted leaves from your trees.
I'm planning to ask a neighbor with oaks to let me have his leaves this autumn.
I'll do the raking.
Maybe he'll buy a clue and then I'll have to rake somewhere else.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved