Tips by the Month

Tips for July

1. Before you know it, it's July!

   Keep your plants happy with regular watering and monthly feeding.
   
   
2. To get great tomatoes, keep evenly watered once fruit has set, and feed monthly with the organic fertilizer of your choice.
   
   
3. Pick wild blackberries and eat them by the handful.
   
4. Get rid of straggly looking annuals such as pansies and malcolmia, and replace with annuals better suited to the season, such as marigolds, verbena, or portulaca.
   
   
5. Make a compost bin.
   
6. Buy a wire hanging basket, fill with sphagnum moss, and make yourself a fancy hanging basket with petunias or other trailing annual.
7. Make yourself some herbal bug repellent, using 1/2 tsp. each of essential oils of citronella, eucalyptus, geranium, and 2 oz. of (yup) vodka. You may be repelled, but so will the bugs.
   
   
8. Buy an interesting shrub, and find a place for it in your yard. A butterfly bush is especially nice, and will attract monarchs later in the season.
   
   
9. Harvest fresh herbs, cultivated or wild, and use fresh or dry for winter teas. Some to harvest now: yarrow flowers, mints, lemon balm, mullein flowers, and St. John's Wort leaves and flowers.
   
10. Take time to watch a sunset or moonrise. Or sit out in your garden on a clear night and look at the stars. Wait a minute—is that a shooting star or a lightning bug?

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