June

VEGETABLE GARDEN

To extend your garden season with fall crops of cabbage, brussel sprouts, broccoli and cauliflower, direct seed or start transplants for mid-July planting, the beginning of June. It’s been proven that direct seeded broccoli produces quicker than transplants.
Remove weeds and thin vegetable seedlings.
If some of your crops failed to come up, you can still plant short seasoned varieties.
To eliminate cabbage worms from cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, cover plants with a shade cloth type material like old sheer curtains. If the butterflies can’t get to them to lay eggs, you won’t get worms.
If you do get cabbage worms, you can use Sevin, Malathion or Diazinon insecticides. For a safer, biological insecticide, use Bt kurstaki(Bacillus thuringiensis).
If Colorado Potato Beetles show up, use Sevin or Methoxychlor for control, sprinkle plants with corn meal (the larvae will kill themselves gorging on it), use a biological insecticide called Bt san diego, or you can hand pick them.
Keep an eye out for flea beetles. They can make plants look like a shot gun shoot out in no time. Spray with Sevin or Malathion.
To eliminate morning glory or thistle by clipping, allow weeds to grow two weeks before cutting back. This forces the plants to use up its food reserve.
When watering flower/vegetable gardens, try to water deeply (1-2 inches a time), once a week. Avoid light daily sprinklings which cause shallow roots.
If you have limited irrigation water try:

Providing wind protection such as snow fence or corn planted on south and west sides.

Be sure to properly thin vegetables to decrease competition.

Remove all moisture robbing weeds as they sprout.

Cultivate soil shallowly with rake, hoe, or tiller to provide a dust mulch. Hard, cracked soil allows moisture to escape.

Mulch around plants and between rows with straw, hay, grass clippings, plastic or compost.

For fall broccoli, direct seed into the garden the beginning of June. Direct seeding of broccoli has been proven to produce quicker than transplant plants.

Pick up and bury dropped apples. This helps kill codling moth and other larvae, preventing them from reinfesting trees later.
If after a natural drop, the apple crop is still thick, thin apples to one per cluster, 4-6 in. apart.
Continue insect control every 7-10 days, renewing after washing rains.

If lilacs have set seed, clip them off to concentrate energy to foliage and roots.
Trim shrubs and hedges so that they are wider at the base than at the top. This encourages a nice dense growth habit at the base.
If you’ve planted young trees recently, try to eliminate grass growth at least 3 ft around trunks for best effect. Maintain at least five years for optimum effect.
Water trees and shrubs when needed, an extra inch, after the lawn’s been watered its inch.
If tent caterpillars start chomping away at trees, use Diazinon, Sevin, Malathion, systemic insecticides, or Bt kurstaki.

The best mosquito repellents contain as much DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide), as possible. The stronger the DEET the longer it lasts.
Water lawns at least one inch at a time. Then check soil moisture to see when irrigation is needed again.
Don’t use grass clippings in the garden that have been treated with herbicide for two full mowings.
If quackgrass is a problem, use spot spray applications of Roundup.
If crab grass, or other annual grass weeds are a problem, use lawn wide applications of products like Ortho’s Crabgrass Killer, or Crabgrass and Nutgrass Killer.
If broadleaf weeds are a problem, use products containing 2,4-D such as Weed-B-Gone.
Apply herbicides to lawns after irrigation and 24-48 hours before mowing to give weeds time to absorb the chemical with as much foliage as possible.

When removing bloomed out roses or when cutting roses for bouquets, cut back to a five-leaflet leaf to encourage blossom