BUTTERFLY GARDENING
Seeing a butterfly in a garden can make a gardener’s day. To attract butterflies, Butterflies like mud puddles or moist sand as sources of water and minerals.
• Add some rocks, mud and water to a shallow dish or container-plant tray, and place in the garden to get your “mud-puddle club” started.
• Avoid insecticides; butterflies prefer an insecticide-free garden.
• Plant the food they love. Nectar-bearing plants loved by adult butterflies include asters, bee balm, butterfly bush, cosmos, lilac, marigold, sunflowers, butterfly bush and zinnias. More: www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/insect/05504.html. Denver Post file photo
SUMMER GARDEN MAINTENANCE
• Many flowering perennials need deadheading, pinching or pruning throughout the growing season to keep them looking tidy and help them bloom repeatedly (if they are re-bloomers). Deadhead, or cut off the spent flowers or seed heads, of perennials such as daisies, candytuft, Jupiter’s beard, salvia, catmint, coreopsis, and daylilies. Many will re-bloom all summer if deadheaded, especially catmint, salvia, coreopsis, and Jupiter’s beard.
• Annuals such as petunias also benefit from a haircut midsummer, especially if they become leggy. Cut back half the plant if needed, and wear gloves or beware the sticky hands! When it’s really hot, petunias do not bloom as well.
• Prune out dead branches or canes on shrubs and roses.
• Once a week, apply fertilizer to annuals, hanging baskets, and flowering and vegetable container plants to compensate for nutrient leaching from frequent watering.
• Check hanging baskets.
You may need to water twice a day in extreme heat.
• Herbs need regular pinching above a set of leaves to Lightly bruise mint and lemon balm leaves to release flavor before adding to your favorite cool tea or beverage. Harvest basil leaves to allow one to two sets of leaves to remain on a stalk. Newer growth has the best flavor, so harvest often.
• Flowering herbs make lovely additions to fresh arrangements, but if you’re using herb leaves such as basil and mint in the kitchen, pinch the plants often to prevent blooms. Herbs that have flowered have less flavor.
• Continue building your compost pile by adding spent flowers, yard trimmings, coffee grounds, and vegetable and fruit scraps. Almost anything but meat, bones, fish, fat, dairy and animal waste can be added. Keep the bed moist, the consistency of a wrung-out sponge and turn it often for quicker results.
PEST WATCH
and are unlike other insects that seem more manageable. They just keep coming and coming. They’ll pretty much feed on anything in your garden, and especially love beans, carrots, squash, onions, and corn. Because Read more about bait and spray controls at www.ext .colostate.edu/pubs/insect/ 05536.pdf.
Betty Cahill: cahillbg@msn.com
