Keith Hansen

It’s summer and fireworks, watermelons and swimming pools are in!

There are plenty of gardening activities that can or should be done in July, despite the heat. You just need to take advantage of the relatively cooler mornings and evenings to do your gardening chores.

Watch out for heat exhaustion and heatstroke. Overdoing it, even mowing the lawn in the middle of the day, can cause heavy sweating which removes fluids from the body.

Take frequent breaks, wear a broad-rim hat and drink plenty of water.

Heat exhaustion and heatstroke are serious conditions which require medical treatment. Those most susceptible to extreme heat include infants, the elderly, those with chronic illness, overweight and those on certain drugs.

Symptoms of heat exhaustion include dizziness, headache, fatigue, and nausea. The body temperature stays around normal, the skin feels moist and the face is pale. Breathing can be fast and shallow.

Heatstroke occurs suddenly with the body temperature rising to 104 degrees or higher with a rapid, strong pulse. The skin will feel hot and may be dry.

Dizziness, headache, nausea, or confusion and irritability can accompany heatstroke. In the worse case, victims can become unconscious. So, take care of yourself this summer.

Remember to protect your skin when in the sun. Wear sunscreen, a wide-brim hat, and a loose-fitting, long sleeve shirt, and sunglasses with UV protection.

Like to add some color to your yard? It’s not too late. Marigolds, celosia, cosmos, vinca (periwinkle), gomphrena, cleome (spider flower), zinnias, salvia, copper plants, purslane and portulaca all do well in the summer heat.

Lantana grows quickly in hot weather to give you wave after wave of bright color. Select from single colors or blends of yellow, pink and red. Summer blooming perennials and annuals can be coaxed to bloom even more if you will remove faded flowers. The plant’s energy needed to ripen seed will be redirected to produce more flowers.

Lawns at this time of year grow rapidly and need frequent mowing. The best quality lawns are mowed regularly. Try to not remove more than one-third of the length of the blades per mowing. This may mean mowing every 5 or 6 days instead of once a week (or less).

Removing more than one-third stresses the turf, and tends to leave visible clippings on top of the grass.

Gray leaf spot, a common fungal disease of St. Augustine, may be showing up now. Watering late in the day, frequent rainfall, high humidity, heavy dew (all things that prolong leaf wetness), coupled with rapid, lush growth are ideal conditions for this fungus. Allowing the grass to grow tall between mowing increases the chance for disease development.

Lawns with severe gray leaf spot have areas that seem to just fade or melt away.

The decline often starts in shaded locations and low spots with poor drainage. Individual leaf spots on grass blades are typically elongated with dark margins.

Management practices are very important for gray leaf spot control.

They include:

Do not over-fertilize;

Do not water late in the day or night;

As grass growth slows in late July and August, and rain frequency decreases, gray leaf spot usually subsides. Fungicides can be used to control gray leaf spot, but control may be difficult if the disease has already done significant damage

Chinch bugs can become a problem at any time during the summer in St. Augustine lawns. No treatment is needed until symptoms first appear. Look for wilting grass which does not respond to water. The grass will continue to dry, giving it a burned look. Look for tiny bugs scurrying quickly up and down grass blades and in the thatch. Flooding the area with water will drive them up the grass blades where they are more easily seen. Damage usually occurs first in the hottest and driest parts of the lawn.

With July usually comes drier weather, and we need to concentrate on conserving soil moisture in our gardens while watering properly, adequately and conservatively.

A loose, well-aerated layer of weed-free mulch, such as chopped straw, pine needles, leaves or bark will make gardening life much easier. A three inch layer of mulch applied on the surface of the soil around your plants will not only conserve soil moisture, but also help keep the soil cooler and suppress ugly and competitive weeds.

Plants with shallow roots are especially vulnerable to drying out in the summer. Azaleas, camellias, dogwoods and blueberries are some common plants that need more frequent watering and a protective mulch.

One of the more damaging, and wasteful, practices of summer is watering the lawn for a few minutes every other day. Light irrigation promotes a shallow root system which can easily be injured by summer drought.

Apply water over a longer period of time to allow the soil to be wetted to a depth of 4 to 6 inches. This will promote a deeper, more extensive, healthy root system.

Learn the signs when grass needs water. The grass will turn dull in color, and then begin to wilt by folding or rolling its leaves. Learn how long you can wait between waterings before wilting occurs and time your irrigation schedule accordingly.

Prune hydrangeas right after bloom if you need to cut them back. Flower buds are formed in late summer and early fall, and late fall and winter pruning removes these buds and eliminates next year’s flowers.

Blackberries need to be pruned now that harvest is ending. Remove the dying fruiting canes, and tip back the vigorous, new growth a couple of times this summer to form a dense hedge for increased fruit production next year.

Keep your vegetable garden harvested daily to keep your vegetables productive. Letting okra get a foot long and tough as a boot, and squash turn as big as baseball bats causes production, and quality, to go down. Harvest vegetables at their peak of maturity for maximum nutrition, quality and to keep plants productive. Many crops benefit from a light side-dressing of nitrogen fertilizer.

Keith Hansen is Smith County Horticulturist with Texas AgriLife Extension Service. His web page is http://EastTexasGarde-ning.tamu.edu. His blog is http://tce-blogs.tamu.edu/mt/etg Texas AgriLife Extension Service educational programs are open to all individuals without regard to race, color, sex, disability, religion, age or national origin.

Keith Hansen
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