Garden not looking its best? Yvonne Cunnington

Almost every flower border needs a mid-summer garden tune-up. By mid-season, chances are strong that the twin scourges of heat and drought have battered your plants.
If your annuals and perennials look exhausted with few flowers, lots of deadheads, and tattered and scorched leaves, don't just give up.

Treat your flower beds to a thorough weeding, cut back plants that don't look good, deadhead finished flowers, and fill gaps with fresh new plants, or pop a container into that bare spot. Also be sure to give thirsty plants a good thorough watering. With luck, your garden will look refreshed when relief appears with cooler fall temperatures and renewed rainfall.

More summer garden tune-up tips

Annuals: True annuals flower, produce seeds and die, so a mid-summer garden tune-up that includes deadheading helps prolong bloom. This, plus regular water and fertilizer, keeps cosmos, geraniums, marigolds, snapdragons and zinnias flowering longer.

Some annuals, impatiens and newer petunia varieties like the Wave and Fantasy series don't need deadheading and bloom until frost, but if they're leggy with fewer flowers, cut them back to half their height.

Perennials: For their mid-summer garden tune-up, shear back early perennials by half their height. Some, such as Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla spp), have fresh leaves under old ones.
Cutting back spent flower stems and browned leaves promotes also lush new foliage in rock cress (Arabis and Aubrieta), cushion spurge (Euphorbia polychroma) perennial candytuft (Iberis), creeping phlox (Phlox subulata), catmint (Nepeta), cranesbills (hardy geraniums).
A great resource for your mid-summer garden tune-up

The Well-Tended Perennial Garden: Planting and Pruning Techniques, by Tracy Disabato-Aust (Timber Press, 2006) is an indispensable guide to caring for perennial flower gardens.
Packed with maintenance tips and lists of perennials by growing conditions, need for regular division or not, re-blooming or not, and much more. Highly recommended!

For later perennials, deadhead when the seedpods outnumber the flowers or when the flower spike is about 70 percent finished with flowering. This encourages repeat flowering with some plants, but the second flush won't be as prolific.

Repeat bloomers include baby's breath (Gypsophila paniculata), campanula, coreopsis, delphinium, foxglove, purple coneflowers (Echinacea cultivars), perennial sage (Salvia cultivars), veronica, summer phlox (Phlox paniculata), and, of course, repeat flowering roses.
Diseased-looking or dead-looking plants: To cope with excess heat and drought, some perennials jettison their foliage; the leaves may be dried out but the roots are alive and ready for next season's growth.

The same applies to eaten by pests, such as hosta foliage decimated by slugs. To test if your plant is alive give it a gentle tug; if the roots hold fast, it should be fine.
The plants most likely to succumb to dryness are new plants that didn't have enough moisture to grow a wide ranging root system.

As for plants with diseases, for example, older varieties of phlox that get mildew on leaves, cut them back (don't compost, put in garbage); for next season, consider replacing them with disease-resistant varieties and slug-resistant hosta cultivars.

Check out Yvonne Cunnington's site for great gardening tips.

http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/index.html

Also Yvonne's book is a must have.. http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/index.html

http://www.flower-gardening-made-easy.com/Gardening-book.html

How To Care For Your Lawn: Debunking Lawn Care Myths

Three Lawn Care Myths
Myths are abundant when it comes to caring for the American lawn. In this article, I'll address just a few in hope of setting the record straight.
Myth One: Chemical fertilizers and insecticides are necessary in order to get golf green grass.
In truth, using chemicals is not only unhealthy for us, our children, our pets and the environment, but it does nothing to build up the health of the lawn. Because these fertilizers act quickly, they can make an unhealthy lawn look better faster. Meanwhile, these chemicals can chase away earthworms, kill off the soil microbes involved in decomposition and soil formation, and cause tremendous top growth of the grass blades without allowing the roots to grow at the same pace.
For expanded organic thought, take a look at Chemical-Free Lawn: The Newest Varieties and Techniques to Grow Lush, Hardy Grass by Warren Schultz. It can help you figure out easy ways to keep your lawn green and chemical free.
Myth Two: The foundation of a healthy lawn is the consistent use of fertilizers and weed controls.
Not true. The foundation of a healthy lawn is healthy soil! What makes a soil healthy is its texture, structure and what's called soil life. A healthy soil will allow water, air, nutrients and roots to move through it with ease. It's filled with good stuff like microorganisms, worms and other beneficial life forms. Without sponge-like soil (that can soak up water and drain with ease) as your foundation, you will find yourself treating the symptoms (with weed controls and over-fertilizing), rather than getting to the "root" of the problem.
A great book to read to gather tips on soil is The Soul of Soil: A Soil-Building Guide for Master Gardeners and Farmers by Joe Smillie and Grace Gershuny. What's great about this book is they give important information about how to get your soil in top shape without bogging you down with overly-scientific information.
Myth Three: Watering lawns every day is critical (especially in the sweltering heat of summer) to keep it looking green.
If you have a sandy soil (test it with a soil pH meter to find out), you may have to water twice as much. Not only is it a waste to water on a daily basis, but it's also unhealthy for the grass. If the grass stays wet for too long, it becomes more susceptible to diseases and insects! Also: Use common sense and conserve water.
Note: I'd like to pay special thanks to Stuart Franklin, the author of "Building A Healthy Lawn." This book has been helpful to me over the years in understanding good lawn-care practices.

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