This is the time of peak flowers and rapidly growing fresh veggies, weeds and pesty bugs.  It’s the best of gardening and time to enjoy all your work coming into fruition. There is also work to do. Mulching and fertilizing, regular weeding, watching for pests (bugs & critters) but also early harvests have begun, and succession plantings can start. In this article I’ll cover some ideas about converting weeds to fertilizer, mulching, planting, and hilling potatoes.

Weeds are simply taking advantage of our good soil and space.  They are not really “bad” plants but are just unwanted volunteers in the wrong place.  Weeds compete with our plants for soil nutrients, water, and space so need to be controlled.  They will never be completely removed; we just do the best we can.  Remove weeds as young and small as possible. Get them by the roots to avoid regrowth and add them (without seeds) to your compost or mulch. A newer idea is to turn your abundant weeds into rich liquid fertilizer for free.  The process is simple,  Fill a 5-gallon bucket with pulled and chopped weeds (roots, leaves, and flowers). They are high in nutrients that shouldn’t go to waste!  After you’ve packed them down so the bucket is ¾ full, fill it with clean water up to 2 inches from the top.  Mix a little, cover it and wait 2-4 weeks for the natural microbes to break everything down into a nutrient rich liquid that you return to your plants when watering. No mixing needed. Add a ¼ cup of molasses or a handful of mature compost in the beginning to make it even better. Dilute this rich, greenish liquid 10 to 1 with water to apply directly to the foliage and soil around your veggies, flowers, and shrubs.  The beneficial bacteria have extracted the nutrients from the weeds and given you a free solution of fertilizer and microbes that’s better than anything you can buy.  Here is a short video to help you get started.  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKoKC0vGkPo)

Mulching.  We never know if there will be enough or too much rain but we do know there will be weeds.  The solution is mulching to cover the soil, protect it from the hot sun, conserve soil moisture, suppress weed growth, and provide habitat for beneficial pollinators, pest controlling spiders and toads for the garden.. The mulch will also slowly decay and add vital organic matter to the soil so it’s all good!  If you delayed lawn mowing you should have plenty of collected grass clippings.  Straw, hay, and wood chips can also provide good mulch materials. Late mowed hay can have weeds seeds so may introduce more weeds.

Potatoes.  Once your potatoes are up about 6-8 inches tall it’s helpful to hill the soil up around them to cover the lower stems. This stimulates more potatoes to grow out from the stems!

Harvesting is the best part of gardening.  Garlic scapes were clipped off in late June to eat and promote larger bulbs and now we need to enjoy the salad greens, lettuces, radishes, kale, early broccoli, herbs, and flowers. As plants are harvested (or lost to pests and age) new space becomes available for replanting. We call that “succession gardening”.

Succession planting is simply re-planting to replace something that is finished so we can make full use of our space over time.  We have a very limited growing season, but you can still get multiple harvests of certain fast-growing plants if you time them right.  For example, if you plant leaf lettuce or mesclun seeds every week you should harvest fresh greens every week all summer and into the fall.  I’ve found that a short row (3-4 ft. long) of different salad greens every week produces a good supply for fresh salads into November.  If you lose a plant or two to pests, breakage, or harvest, it’s easy to put in a quick growing replacement like a few radishes, lettuce, beets, spinach, etc.

Late crops of carrots, turnips and beets can also follow (in the same place) the harvests of early salad greens.  After the garlic is harvested in late July there is time to plant fall broccoli and cauliflower plants started from seeds before 4^th of July in that emptied place. (see details below)

Bush beans planted every 2 weeks provide a good extension of harvests too. Too much zucchini is a common problem, but if you plant one hill of 3-4 plants early and another hill in mid-July that will spread the harvest out so it can be enjoyed over time. The same works for herbs such as dill and cilantro that tend to mature early before we can use them in pickles and salsas. There’s some very good information and specific planting recommendation online here. 

Pest Alerts.  The earlier wet weather of May and June promoted outbreaks of slugs & snails and plant diseases.  Preventative applications of an iron phosphate product (Sluggo, etc.) will reduce surprise damage to flowers and vegetables by slugs.  Keep a close eye on potatoes for potato bugs that can be hand removed before they get too far along.

Natural controls for many pests include lady beetles and wasps that we can protect and encourage with small blossom flowers.  Birds are constantly foraging for insects and are a major pest controller. Small numbers of beetles and snails can be finger squished, or sprayed with insecticidal soap or neem oil, if you prefer.

Broccoli & cauliflower.  Late June & very early July is the time to start fall seedlings of broccoli and cauliflower.  They will be ready to transplant out by mid-August and will give a late harvest great for freezing for winter enjoyment.

Lawn thoughts.  If your higher mowing is working, you might notice more white clover blossoms appearing. Good for bees, good for the soil (clover adds Nitrogen), and good for you!  Avoid mowing the clover blossoms once or twice and there will be free seeds to spread that clover even more.  Clover seeds can be purchased too, and the benefits are significant.  Excess grass clippings after delayed mowing in May (my practice!) and drying makes excellent garden mulch and a great compost ingredient.