Here are tips for keeping the blooms coming in your summer garden

Everything is coming up roses this time of year. Clematis are showing off as are all early flowering perennials, annuals and ornamental grasses. The garden is in bloom and this is the time to celebrate color.

This is not the week to fertilize budded or blooming clematis. To make the summer clematis blooms last longer on the vine, provide no food until the blooming is done. Then prune your clematis back by one third, fertilize and wait for an encore of blooms.

Here are more tips for keeping your beautiful bloomers blooming.

Roses

Climbing roses, shrub roses, hybrid tea roses and English roses will all bloom more if you remember this tip: Roses are ravenous. Feed them. Fertilize at least twice a year, first in April and again in June. Manures, alfalfa pellets, seaweed, Osmocote slow release or Miracle Grow mixed with water — roses love all types of fertilizer, so give them extra food this time of year to keep them in bloom.

If you have a climbing rose, or even a very tall rose you want to grow like a climber, remember that bending the branches of a rose so that the tip growth is not facing upward will induce more blooming side shoots to break from the cane. This is why you see traditional rose trellis forms arranged in a fan shape. If you slightly bend the tips by fastening them to a fan or curving arch support, you force more blooms from the middle of the rose plant.

Delphiniums

Delphiniums are just plain divas. They are demanding and want full sun, rich soil and protection from slimy critters. They also need a super support system so that the magnificent spikes of blue or purple blooms don’t blow over in a summer rain. But just like Barbara Streisand or Adele, those diva delphinium demands are worth the bother for the big show the delphiniums put on.

Here’s a shortcut: This is one perennial I buy in a gallon or 5 gallon container from the nursery. Let the professionals raise the baby delphiniums with all their issues, and splurge on a well-branched plant you can bring home and plant in the ground.

To extend blooming, take off the leader. Once you see the flowers fading on your delphinium blooms, snip off the tallest spike and the smaller side shoots will take over. Once the side shoots fade, cut the plant down by at least one half, fertilize and water. In three or four weeks, your demanding diva of a delphinium will make an encore performance and bloom again.

Petunias

Petunias love sun, warmth and fertilizer. There are some new and improved varieties that make petunias the annual for both the largest and the smallest gardens.

For large displays of summer-long color, choose the Wave or Storm petunias that will spread through a large garden bed or in the front of a border. These improved and fast growers can handle stormy summer weather and still produce waves of blooms.

The new Supertunias are medium-sized varieties also bred to be more weather resistant than the petunias of the past. For small gardens or small containers, get impactful color combinations from the Calibrochoa, which look like mini petunias.

The tidy calibrachoas or mini petunias grow best in pots, not planted in the ground. Calibrochoas hate wet soil and in Western Washington June rain can drown them.

Tip: Give them all the petunia pinch. Around the Fourth of July, start pinching your petunias by snipping off stems of blooms from some of the branches of the plants. Petunias make long-lasting cut flowers, are often fragrant and pinching back the tip growth every three to four weeks makes for bushier plants with more blooms.

Marianne Binetti has a degree in horticulture from Washington State University and is the author of several books. Reach her at binettigarden.com.

See Marianne Binetti in person

Marianne Binetti will give a talk about “Color, Color, Color – What to plant for continuous color, including dirt-cheap tips and easy care plants” at 10 a.m. Saturday, June 18, at Zenith Holland Nursery, 23260 Marine View Drive S., Des Moines. The in-person seminar is free, but register to reserve a seat at www.zenithholland.com.