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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Late June is Time to Clean Up the Garden in Zone 7

Some things to do now in the garden, if you haven't done them. I let spots on my cucumbers go to long and had to remove one plant. I got lazy. Late June is a good time to clean-up and remove spent plants and give the warm season vegetables a boost.

Epsom salts. I give my tomatoes a dose of epsom salts for magnesium. A handful sprinkled around the base of the plant. You can water it or let the rain disolve it.

Removal
  • Lettuces will be bitter and bolting, time to remove them
  • Radishes will be woody, no point in letting them grow
  • Kohlrabi should fully bulb up soon, if it isn't, it is going the woody route
  • Peas can be looked at for removal
  • Remove weeds as always

Feed
  • Cucumbers, zukes, and squash could use some liquid fertilizer.
  • Tomatoes could use a little boost of the above

Disease Prevention/Insect Prevention
  • Check your tomato leaves, I found 2 with spots
  • Check you cucumbers for mildew and spots
  • Remove any infected leaves from all plants and spray
  • Sevin Dust or similar the bases of cukes, zukes, and squashes (beetles are coming)
  • Sevin Dust or similar your eggplants (flea beetles are around)
  • Look for holes in plant leaves and treat
  • Remove bottom growth of tomatoes to prevent soil splashing
  • Remove center growth of tomatoes (a bit) to allow for air circulation
  • Mulch Mulch Mulch and create a barrier over your soil

Planting
  • Put in your beans or second rotation
  • Plants some zukes, cukes, and squashes in cups for back-ups
  • Sunflower can go in the ground
  • Cilantro and basil can be dropped in the ground again
  • All fast growing herbs should go in the ground

Make a general assessment of your plants. I removed 1 tomato from a container because it wasn't growing well and looked pale in comparison to the other 32. Now I do have the luxury of having many plants. Sometimes it is better to remove and replant, if a plant isn't doing well.

I have one tomato with a nasty leaf distortion and curl. Worse the the leaf curl/mosiac pictures look on-line. That is probably what it has but I wonder if my aspirin baths did it. It is only one plant. I'll get some picture up for any passer by plant detectives.

2 comments:

  1. Thanks for the great advice. I'm in zone 7 in Virginia and this post was my inspiration for garden work this afternoon. I just finished removing the extra center & bottom growth from my tomato plants and seven-dusting my cucumber bases.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Certainly, I only got as far as outlining what needs to be done, and I ate cucumber. A good start...

    ReplyDelete

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