Plant These Annuals for Beautiful Cut Flowers from Summer through Fall
Here are five easy-to-grow annuals to try in your garden and enjoy in bouquets.
June Gardening Checklist
- Keep your gardens watered—especially those plants you added in April and May! We’re heading into the hottest, driest time for most regions. Consider installing soaker hoses or drip-irrigation lines if hand-watering is getting to be too much.
- Houseplants will need more water and fertilizer during the summer growing period. Pay special attention to houseplants moved outdoors, making sure they do not dry out or get sunburned.
- Trim evergreen hedges (boxwood, yew, arborvitae, juniper, privet, hemlock, etc.). Spruce, fir, and pines also can be pruned back, if needed, now that most of the new growth has occurred. Remove only the new growth of these… not older wood or you’ll risk killing branches.
- Apply fungicide to prevent and control black spot on roses, if needed.
- Pull or spot-spray those weeds. Early in the month, make a second application of weed preventer to the shrub and flower beds to stop later-germinating annual weeds, especially if it’s been cool and rainy. The second application of Preen Garden Weed Preventer should be timed 9 to 12 weeks after the first one.
- Scout for pest problems and treat as needed. Among the trouble you might run into this time of year are bagworms on evergreens and shade trees, borers on birch and dogwood, woolly adelgids on hemlock, lacebugs on azalea and pieris, spider mites on spruce, hemlocks, and juniper, and scale on euonymus. Avoid spraying when temperatures are more than 85 degrees.
- Harvest spring-planted vegetables. Don’t leave any space bare from pulled plants, though. Replant immediately with summer crops of beans, carrots, corn, peppers, beets, pumpkins, potatoes, or cucumbers.
- Tie cauliflower leaves up over the developing heads to blanch (i.e., exclude from light) when heads are 2 inches in diameter.
- Discontinue harvest of asparagus and rhubarb in mid-June to allow foliage to develop and store food reserves for next year. Apply an all-purpose fertilizer according to label directions. Water when dry.
- Plant your Halloween pumpkin. The seed packet will tell you the number of days to harvest. Count backward to find the proper planting date.
- Remove faded blooms from peonies, irises, delphiniums, and other perennials.
- Apply Preen Mulch with Extended Control Weed Preventer Russet Red, Midnight Black, or Chestnut Brown to prevent weeds for up to six months, providing better, more effective controls for a longer period than any other mulch on the market. Preen Mulch with Extended Control Weed Preventer is made of premium hardwoods enhanced with two herbicides to prevent broadleaf and grassy weeds from germinating for up to six months.
- Keep grass mowed regularly, maintaining height about 1/2-inch higher than usual to protect the crown of the plant from heat stress.
- Don't remove clippings from the lawn unless grass is excessively tall. Clippings return nutrients to the soil and do not contribute to thatch buildup.
