Add color to your garden for summer and fall as part of July to-do list

Summer is here, but much remains to be done in our landscapes and gardens.

Prepare beds for replanting with high-quality compost or worm cast, lava sand, green sand, azomite, dry molasses and whole-ground cornmeal. Work supplements into the local soil. If possible, prepare beds under trees with a reversible fork or air spade to avoid injuring the tree roots.

Keep planting summer colors like lantana and pentas, but add autumnal plants like asters, celosia, cosmos, marigolds, bindweed, Joseph’s fur, ornamental grasses, Mexican bush sage and zinnias. Shrubs and trees can be planted from containers, but be careful when planting and watering. Bermuda grass and buffalo grass can be planted from seeds. All solid turf can be planted, as can herbs such as basil, oregano, thyme, lemongrass, comfrey and lemon verbena.

Tomatoes, peppers, and melons can all be planted for your fall garden. Also plant beans, black-eyed peas, melon, Swiss chard, cucumber, eggplant, and New Zealand and Malabar spinach, as well as summer and winter squash. Wildflower seeds are better planted now than waiting until autumn.

Avoid synthetic, nitrogen-rich salt fertilizers. But all planting areas can be fed with organic fertilizer, if that has not been done in June. Use greensand for iron and other trace element deficiencies. Foliar fertilization of all plantings with Garrett Juice or aerated compost tea.

Lantana is now ready to be planted for additional summer color.(Howard Garrett / special article)

Cut off dead or damaged branches from shrubs and trees – no flush cuts. Remove used flowers to encourage new flower production. Treat sick trees with the Sick Tree Treatment.

Water all planting areas deeply, but rarely in dry periods. When replanting, more careful and regular watering is required.

For chinch bugs in lawn, spray orange oil with 2 ounces per gallon of water or per gallon of Garrett Juice. For spider mites, spray garlic-pepper tea or a spray that contains liquid seaweed. Apply beneficial nematodes to fire ants and soak them in one of the orange oil mound soaking products or spinosad products.

Treat fleas, ticks, chiggers, and Bermuda mites with orange oil and apply beneficial nematodes at all times, but especially in wet weather. Dust with very low levels of sulfur. Treat webworms, bagworms, leaf rollers, and other moth worms with Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) or spinosad with an ounce of molasses per gallon. Release Trichogramma wasps next year when the leaves appear in spring.

For adequate mosquito control, spray a rotation of garlic oil, cedar oil, liquid bti, and lemon eucalyptus oil. Treat plant diseases with garlic oil spray or hydrogen peroxide products.

Remove by hand or use mechanical equipment to control weeds. If necessary, spray vinegar-based herbicides and use the AgraLawn Crabgrass Killer as a selective control in lawns. Mow weekly or as needed and leave the clippings on the lawn.

Mulch any bare soil with compost or crushed native tree cuttings, but avoid pine bark, cypress, stained wood products, and ground gum.

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