I realize that we’ve started a series on how to use fresh herbs in cooking, but I can’t let June pass us by without a garden checklist. You are quite familiar with my love of lists!
June is very different this year than most past Junes in Central Texas. We have ten degrees or more cooler temperatures, an abundance of rain, and we’re about three weeks behind in spring-to-summer gardening days due to our late, over one week long deep freeze of 2021.
Here are the musts for me on my June list:
1. Do a daily brief walk-through of your garden with your phone in one pocket, your sharp clippers in the other, and a basket hooked on your arm. Be ready to snap pictures, an easy way to journal progress. Dead head spent flowers as you meander along. Note which spent blooms are going to seed and need pulling up to make room for burgeoning perennials. Save the seeds when you have time to dry for next year’s sowing.
2. Harvest any ready vegetables.
3. Pick flowers and herbs to promote new growth.
4. Pull up last season’s vegetables and plant your summer crop.
5. Direct sow summer flowers like zinnias, marigolds, cosmos, and sunflowers.
6. Sit back and enjoy your hard work from the Fall of amending your soil and heavy mulching. You will barely find a weed. But if you do, you can easily pull it up on your daily brief walk.
All done! Notice that compared to Fall, your list is a lot easier to fulfill and check off.
My flowers seem to be more vibrant this year with saturated bright colors. Are yours?
The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.