Tend your containers and pick flowers to keep them blooming longer
The last week of July is time to inspect your hanging baskets and container gardens. Give them some attention this week to keep them blooming until frost.
As the weather starts to heat up, cool season crops like peas and lettuce will decline so don’t feel bad about uprooting these edibles to make more room for your expanding heat-loving plants such as squash, tomato and peppers.
Q. I love sweet peas and try to grow them every year. My plants are starting to turn yellow and even though I keep picking most of the blooms, I am getting less and less new flowers. Do you have any suggestions? P., email
A. Yes – pick more flowers. The clue here is you mentioned you are picking most of the blooms. Sweet peas stop flowering if even a few blooms go to seed. Make harvesting sweet peas a morning ritual bringing a vase of water out to the garden with a pair of scissors so the cut stems can go from snip to cool water in a matter of seconds.
To keep the roots cool and the lower leaves from yellowing, soak the plants well but try not to wet the foliage. Once the soil is damp you can cover the roots with a mulch that is 2 to 3 inches deep. An organic mulch will shade and cool the soil and fool the sweet peas into thinking it is still early summer.
Now take a jar of sweet peas into your local post office or library to thank the hard workers that serve your community.
Q. My apple tree has many apples but I notice small green apples are falling to the ground. My question is should I be thinning the apples on my tree to get bigger apples and to stop the apple drop? J.K., Olympia
A. Yes, if you want larger fruit, you can snip off all but one apple in each cluster. Collecting the fallen apples from the ground is also good sanitation that will help stop the spread of apple disease spores and insects.
Q. At one time you said to water the lawn just once a week to keep it green. I don’t remember how long you said to water. We have sand soil and our lawn never wants to stay green. How long should we let the sprinkler run? P.O., Renton
A. How long to water a lawn is a really tough question to answer. It depends on the weather, the soil, the slope, how often you mow and the type of grass planted.
The general rule of green thumb in Western Washington is that your lawn needs 1 inch of water a week to stay green all summer. This means you can set out a bowl with 1 inch marked on the side and when that bowl has one inch of water inside, turn off the sprinkler and note how long it took. If it took 30 minutes to collect 1 inch of water then you can water twice a week for 15 minutes each.
The problem with this rule is that sandy soils hold less moisture so will need more water to stay green. You can add 1 inch of organic matter such as “Super Doo” (composted dairy manure) or compost on top of your existing lawn to improve the water holding ability of your soil. This works best if the lawn is aerated first so that the organic matter can fall into the aeration holes. Over time, as you continue to improve your sandy soil with a top dressing of organic matter, it will need less water to stay green.
One more tip – leave the clippings on the lawn after you mow. They also add organic matter to improve the soil.
This story was originally published July 25, 2020 at 5:45 AM.