Gardening Checklist for May and June

The weather is turning warmer, so I’ll give you a shorter list this month. Hopefully your vegetable garden is in. If not you could still plant okra, lima beans and black-eyed peas. If you haven’t planted any caladiums in your flowerbed yet, now is a great time to do it. However, if you live in deer country, devise a plan to protect them. Deer seem to love the taste of newly opened caladium leaves.

Here are a few odds and ends that shouldn’t keep you too busy:

Inspect St. Augustine lawns regularly, especially along cement walks and driveways. This is where chinch bugs usually show up first. Check with your local nursery professional to find out about acceptable treatment.

Loosen rain-compacted soil around plants and flowerbeds to provide aeration. Use shallow cultivation to prevent root damage.

Now that the soil has warmed up it is a good time to mulch your flower and vegetable gardens. Mulch helps minimize soil compacting, eliminates the need for cultivation, greatly reduces weed growth, and cuts down on watering.

When you do water, be sure to follow recently enacted watering rules if you live in the city of Austin. From May 1 to September 30 no outdoor watering is allowed between 10:00 am and 7:00 pm, except with a hand-held hose or bucket. Single-family homes using an automatic irrigation system or unattended sprinklers are permitted to water Wednesday and/or Saturday for homes with an odd number address and Thursday and/or Sunday for homes with an even number address.

By the way, when you do water, try to do it in the early morning (before 10:00 am). The humidity is usually highest then and the wind is usually fairly calm. Thus, you will lose less of your water to evaporation and wind drift.

Don’t forget to provide supplemental water for plants such as hydrangeas, coleus, caladium, geranium, dahlia, azalea, and camellia. Hot, dry, windy summer weather can be extremely stressful for these plants, especially if they are in pots.

Early spring annuals such as pansies, calendulas and snapdragons will soon fade with summer’s heat. Clean out the beds and plant summer flowering annuals.

Finally, if you haven’t yet given your lawn its spring feeding, do so before the real heat of summer sets in. Late April and early May are really the best times to do this. 

-Norman