June in the Garden – 2023 Edition

Greetings, Lakeway gardeners! June is a time of great abundance in Lakeway gardens. The summer heat is in full swing, and your garden is starting to bear the fruits of your dedicated labor. Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and zucchini are all in season, and you can start to harvest them. In addition to harvesting crops, there are three main things to keep in mind as you tend your garden this month. Water your plants regularly, especially during hot, dry weather. Fertilize your plants every few weeks to help them continue to produce. Finally, keep an eye out for pests and diseases. If you see any problems, take action immediately to prevent them from spreading.

Below we have many more helpful garden tips for your June gardening to-do list. You can also visit the Lakeway Garden Club for even more early summer garden tips and tricks. Our Events Calendar showcases many local and online classes and special events happening this summer. With a little care and attention, your garden will continue to thrive throughout the summer. So get out there and enjoy the fruits of your labor! And as always, happy gardening!

Member News

In May, LGC members received an email requesting their input on preferred day, time and location for our ongoing meetings. If you haven’t responded yet, please do so by June 3 at 5pm. Once we will compile that feedback, we will send a separate email with the details of our next LGG Members meeting. If you haven’t already done so and would like to attend our upcoming member meetings, join us and become a member of the Lakeway Garden Club. Our goal is to build a local community of fellow garden enthusiasts to share tips and help each other’s gardening endeavors. It is free and open to all.

June Garden Tips

Flowers to Plant

• Aster, Flowering Balsam, Begonia, Celosia, Cleome, Coleus, Coreopsis, Cosmos, Dusty Miller, Gomphrena, Hamelia, Impatiens, Jacobinia, Lantana, Marigold, Mexican Heather, Nicotiana, Pentas, Periwinkle, Petunias, Purslane, Saliva, Verbena, Zinnias

Seeds to Sow

• Cantaloupe
• Greens – warm season
• Okra
• Peas – southern
• Pumpkins
• Squash – winter
• Watermelon

Things to Transplant

• Sweet Potatoes
• Tomatoes (early June)

June Garden To-Dos

 

Apply seaweed after sundown

Once temperatures reach 90°F, you should avoid spraying anything on plant leaves, even water, during the daytime. Treat your plants with this anti-stressor by performing a soil drench.

Visit your garden daily

As you walk around your garden, it is a good idea to deadhead flowers and spent foliage. Removing fruiting canes from blackberries when the last berry is harvested is helpful to the plants. Doing a summer prune on shrubs and trees (except Oaks) to remove damaged or dead wood if found is good. Replenishing the mulch if needed. Keep training vines and climbing roses to grow up a trellis. It is always a good idea to visit your vegetable garden at least once per day to monitor for pests and pick crops before they become overgrown.

Keep plants healthy

A key aspect to a beautiful garden is composting and fertilizing with the right products at the right time. Add compost to annuals and vegetables but fertilize only if the plants look small or underdeveloped. For mulched areas, pull back mulch, apply compost, then replace mulch to retain soil moisture. A good way to get fertilizer to the plants quickly is to scratch it into the top layer of soil and water deeply to move the nutrients into solution. Alternatively, use a liquid fertilizer and a siphon mixer to deliver through your drip irrigation system. Provide supplemental iron (EDDHA water soluble chelated iron is best in alkaline soils) through foliar applications or drenches, if needed, before daytime temperatures exceed 80°F.

No new perennial plantings

It is time to take a well deserved vacation from adding new perennials, grasses, and trees to your yard. The summer is just too hot for them to get established properly. Wait until this fall.

Water deeply

Watering is the single most important activity in the garden, and one of the hardest to get right. In general, it’s best to water established plants deeply and less often, rather than shallowly and frequently. New transplants, seeds, and seedlings may need daily watering, but in the case of larger plants, shallow watering leads to shallow, weak roots. Get to know your yard’s specific conditions, and water only as needed. Keep an eye on container grown plants as they dry out faster than in ground plants. As the temperatures rise and rain diminishes, these plants may require daily watering.

Monitor your lawn

Keep an eye on the sunny areas of your lawn for chinch bugs. The damage usually shows up in full sun areas during hot, dry weather as yellowing, then browning, irregular patches. Chinch bugs are only about 1/6” long, mostly black, (young ones can be reddish-tan) with a white marking across their back. They do not fly or jump up when you walk across. Be sure to get a positive ID before treatment. Stop fertilizing your lawn in the summer to prevent brown patch and take-all root rot. Raise your mower settings higher to reduce turf stress. Water only in the morning. Avoid all weed killers once temperatures exceed 85°F.

Watch out for grasshoppers

Grasshoppers tend to be their most active this time of year. They’re controlled organically by spreading bait inoculated with the grasshopper disease, Nosema locustae. It doesn’t harm any other critters except for Mormon crickets, and when properly applied, the grasshoppers eat the bait and get sick. Future grasshoppers cannibalize current sick ones, spreading the disease through the population. Because of the grasshoppers’ sheer numbers and mobility, this method is most effective when used over larger areas, such as if you own a lot of acreage, or if you can get your neighborhood to coordinate their anti-grasshopper effort. Other control methods include spraying plants with kaolin clay, or using physical barriers like row cover.

Dealing with other plant pests

Spider mites tend to show up as the days get hotter and drier. To check for mites, hold a white paper plate underneath a leaf and tap a few times. Dislodged mites will fall onto the plate and look like tiny specks crawling around. Though these tiny pests are hard to see without the aid of magnification, once they are present, the top surface of the leaves will have a pale, stippled appearance. Organic controls for spider mites include horticultural oils, insecticidal soap and sulfur dust. Once you have them you will need to treat them regularly to keep them under control. They can also be controlled with a strong spray of water to the underside of the leaves, repeated every 3-5 days. Once their population explodes, you may see a fine webbing develop under the leaves. At that point it is too late to treat, and the affected plant should be removed from the garden. Use the same water blast technique on the undersides of leaves to control aphids, and whiteflies. Spot treat scale and mealybugs with horticultural oil, being careful not to spray oil on leaves. If you find yourself battling the dreaded squash vine borers in your vegetable garden, try using micromesh for protection against the moth.

Vegetable garden tips and tricks

As a general rule, it is good to always harvest ripe vegetables before spraying plants with any pesticide or fertilizer, whether organic or synthetic (read the label for instructions on mixing, dilution, how often to spray, or if there is a waiting period after spraying). As plants begin to decline, pull them out and replace them with heat-tolerant Southern peas, long beans, okra or sweet potatoes. It’s also time to plant cover crops in fallow beds with cowpeas or buckwheat to return nitrogen to the soil.

Tomatoes: Start tomato seeds in pots early in the month if you want to have transplants ready for the garden in mid-July. Because the fall growing season is shorter, it’s best to stick with early-maturing, determinate varieties of tomatoes.

Potatoes: Dig potatoes when the tops turn yellow and start to die back.

Beans: Bush varieties of green beans generally produce a concentrated set of pods over a 2-4 week period before petering out.

Onions: Harvest onions and garlic when tops fall over. Cure in a warm, dry location for a few days before storing.

Repel mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are a nuisance to be sure, but they can also spread disease to both us and our pets. Often a multi-layered approach is necessary for optimal control. Mosquitoes can breed in as little as 1/5 teaspoon of water, so be sure to patrol your yard on a regular basis and remove standing water. Treat bird baths and ponds with a natural mosquito larvicide, which won’t harm other insects or wildlife, and will prevent the mosquitoes from reaching adulthood. There are a number of granular and liquid repellents which can be applied to your yard to drive the mosquitoes away from hang-out spaces, and pheromone-based traps can be placed around the edges to further lure them away.

Garden Tips courtesy of The Natural Gardener and Texas AgriLife Extension.