Home Gardening Guide - Green Thumbs Busy in Midsummer

July is normally the best time to divide your iris clumps. As you dig the clumps, check for signs of the iris borer. The leaves are apt to show yellow or browning prematurely. Upon digging up the plant, you may find the borer has so damaged the rhizome as to open it up and allow rot to enter. When an iris borer is found, cut away the injured area. Replant only the healthy part.

You may wish to avoid planting near the original place. Chewing damage to leaves and plants in the garden this time of year may be due to the feeding of slugs and snails. The slug is a soft slimy animal which looks like a snail without its shell. Both hide under boards arid stones by day. Here you may also find their eggs and young. However, they actively feed out in. the garden at night.

The best control in the home garden is 15 per cent metaldehyde dust. This acts as an attractant or bait, good for two to three weeks. You should sprinkle it around the base of the plant rather than on it. Though many weeds will have been shaded out of your home vegetable garden, this is a good time to get the remaining ones out. If you do any cultivating, be sure to make it shallow, since the roots of the vegetables are themselves shallow. It is all too easy to damage them when cultivating for weed control.

The garden weeds should all be eliminated before they go to seed. This means weeds around the vegetable garden as well as those in it. Gardeners who grow cucumbers should be sure to pick the mature cucumber off the vine as soon as they are mature. As the cucumbers mature, the seeds inside develop and inhibit the setting of other fruits on that plant. So if you want more cucumbers from the vines, keep them picked clean.

Harvesting summer squash depends more on individual preference. Many people like them when they are extremely young. So you may start to harvest from the time they are three to four inches long. Don't get overly excited if your lawn turns slightly brown this time of year. The grasses are going into a semi-dormancy stage and the brown color is normal. Bluegrass and red fescue, the common lawn grasses, are cool season plants which grow best in spring and fall. This factor, combined with the lack of water, has brought on the semi-dormant condition.

You can practice good management skills to help the lawn through this stress period. Mow the lawn high, at about two inches. Water heavily once a week. Apply approximately one inch of water per watering. This will be enough to soak into the soil six to eight inches.

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