Mid-Summer Gardening Guide for Orlando, FL

July is the peak time for vegetable harvesting and ornamental flowers blooming, and it’s important to keep things going, despite the heat.  You’ve invested not only money but plenty of time in your garden and landscaping, and care is just as important this Summer as it is when it’s planting time. 

 

Flower Gardens 

• - A general rule of thumb for flowering shrubs is to prune in Summer what blooms before July 4.  For instance, if your hydrangea is fading, and has gotten too large for the space it’s in, cut it back now to keep from cutting off next Spring’s buds. 
• - Deadheading your annual flowers--removing spent blooms--will encourage them to continue to blossom and provide full color until Fall. 

• - Get up early before the temps get too hot and pull the weeds.  If you let them get large enough to flower, you may just be spreading more weed seeds, creating more work for yourself. 
• - Crepe myrtles can rebloom if you can get to the spent blossoms and deadhead them.  Read this guide from Today’s Homeowner before you get the pruning shears to make sure your window of opportunity hasn’t passed. 
• - Many people are going on trips or vacations this time of year.  Don’t leave the garden to just anyone; make sure you get someone with experience to water and pull a few weeds while you’re away.  You don’t want to come home to plants that are dying because they were over- or under-watered.
   

Vegetable Gardens 

• - Dress your veggie rows with a generous layer of compost to fertilize through the rest of the Summer. When you water, the nutrients your plants need will soak into the soil. 
• - The basil and other herbs may have given generously, but don’t let them flower.  Pinch them back to continue to get yummy leaves for your recipes. After sharing with family and friends, you still have plenty of herbs, try freezing them!  Serious Eats has a tried-and-true method for preserving herbs right in your freezer. 
• - Have you already cleaned out a few rows?  Try planting a Summer cover crop which helps discourage weeds, and will be beneficial to the soil when you till it in. 
• - Fruit trees should be checked often for windfalls--don’t let the fruits rot on the ground, as that is an invitation for disease and pests to invade your trees. 

• - Keep an eye on your tomato and other plants from the nightshade family for the voracious tomato horn worm. Just one of these sphynx moth larvae can eat a whole plant in a night.  The Veggie Gardener website offers some tips on how to avoid getting these heavy eaters on your plants.   

 

Be proactive, and your food plantings and flowers will repay you with food and beauty until Fall.  Try to get outside first thing in the morning, or in the last few hours of daylight to avoid getting too hot.  Hydrate yourself, wear a Summer hat, and take cooling-off breaks if you get heated.  Take care of yourself so you can enjoy the fruits--and veggies--of your labor! 

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