Hi listeners, I'm Colleen Deger, landscape consultant and certified arborist at ATXGardens.com. Welcome to the ATX Gardens Podcast, where every other week I share simple, timely tips for what to do in your Central Texas garden right now. If you're watching on YouTube, tap like and subscribe for more gardening help. Hey there, gardening friends. Today we're talking about what to do in the first half of July, which is a surprisingly busy time for gardeners in Austin. As always, this episode is sponsored by my landscape consulting business, atxgardens.com. And if you haven't checked out my website yet, please do atxgardens.com. Okay, let's get to it. So, in general, in the first half of July, you'll need to continue monitoring your plants and your landscape for bugs and diseases. As this tends to be the worst time of year for bugs and diseases due to high heat and humidity. Usually when the air starts drying out a little bit after July 15th, we don't see quite as many bugs and diseases. I found some leafhoppers on my eggplants this week. And really, the first clue that there were any bugs on my eggplants was that I saw the sugar ants there. And the sugar ants tend the smaller insects to harvest their honeydew, which is the insect poop. They poop out sugar water. So the little insects, like leafhoppers, aphids, um, scale, they will suck the juice out of the plants and then they poop out sugar water, and then the sugar ants come and harvest that sugar water. And the sugar ants will actually herd and care for the insects, um, just like farmers would care for sheep. And I had a hard time actually seeing the leaf hoppers on my eggplants because they were the exact same color as the eggplant stems, and they were really hard to see. So when I saw the ants um traveling on the plants, I knew that there was something wrong. And I put on my garden gloves and I looked real closely, and I basically just started smashing the leafhoppers and the ants with my gloved fingers. And I did that two days in a row, just sort of monitoring the plants for those bugs and smashed them, and that eliminated the problem. So remember, even though it's so hot outside and you might not want to go outside, there's an old saying that the best fertilizer for the garden is the gardener's shadow, meaning the garden needs you to tend it. So it's really hot out there, so put an ice pack in your bra and get out there. If you don't wear a bra, put an ice pack in your pocket. I'll talk a little bit more about the summer later in the podcast. Now I'm gonna continue with my series about erosion control. A friend of mine asked me to cover erosion problems because she was having some problems in her yard because of all the lovely rain we've been enjoying this year. When the rain comes off of your roof or off of a driveway or any kind of pavement, it can wash away soil and create a muddy mess. And um, this episode, I want to talk to you about rain gardens, which are one of the most effective erosion control techniques. A rain garden is basically a bowl-shaped depression where rainwater can collect and sink in very slowly, preventing rushing runoff that creates gullies and can contribute to flash flooding. I often design small rain gardens to collect rainwater at the base of gutter downspouts or at the end of overflow pipes on rain barrels. Rain gardens are also a good solution if you have a roof valley that channels a large volume of water into one area. You can create a little dry creek bed lined with river rock to connect a downspout or an overflow pipe to a rain garden. Your rain garden could either be lined with rock and surrounded by plants, or it could be entirely planted and lined with mulch. Um I've even seen folks create rain gardens that are very wide and shallow that are just mowed, um, where they they're left with grass or ground cover, and the they're wide enough and shallow enough that you can just run the lawnmower over them. Um, so it's just a place to collect the rainwater and let it soak in slowly. There's many ways to build a rain garden, and the City of Austin offers guidelines through their Grow Green program, and there's links to that program and their guidelines in the show notes. Um, the City of Austin also offers rebates for rain gardens and other rainscaping techniques, and there's a link to information about those rebates in the show notes too. Uh, I also love the book Rainwater Harvesting for Dry Lands and Beyond by Brad Lancaster. And there's also a link to that book in the show notes and on my website. And I am an Amazon affiliate, so I get commissions for the sale of that book if you click through a link on the show notes or on my website at atxgardens.com. Now, if you build a rain garden, you should remember that once your rain garden fills with water and the weather continues to be rainy, the rain garden will overflow, but it will overflow more slowly and gently with a sheeting action over the edge of the rain garden rather than fast-moving water rushing out like it does through a downspout where it will slice through the soil. So the rain garden is really effective. So check that out. Okay, now getting on to our to-do list for the first half of July in Central Texas. I'm gonna start with the woody plants. Okay, so for trees and shrubs and woody vines, do not plant anything right now. It is not a good time for planting, it's too hot. You need to wait. After June 30th, it's okay to start pruning oaks again because the beetle that carries oak wilt goes dormant during high heat. So oak wilt season is ending, and now it's okay to start tree trimming. And also, most of our trees are done growing new leaves and shoots now, and the new shoots and leaves have been photosynthesizing enough to where they're starting to pay for themselves. They're starting to generate enough carbohydrates in their leaves, these new leaves and shoots from this year, that they're able to store carbohydrates in their roots and come out ahead. So the amount of carbohydrates that it required to make new shoots and leaves is has been reached, and now the trees are starting to put carbohydrates in their banks, in their roots. So it's okay to start pruning them now. It's a very good time for pruning to clear roofs, um, to clear the street, if you know, trucks keep hitting the trees over and over again, to clear walkways, clear driveways. It's a good time to lift the canopies on all the trees if you want to be able to see underneath them, or if you want to separate them from the plants around them. So this is a common problem at this time of year, especially in a rainy year like we've had this year, when trees and the lower shrubs and perennials around the trees start to touch each other too much, it can make the landscape feel very overgrown. So there's a lot of that going on this year. A lot of people feeling like their landscapes are overgrown. So it can really help in at this time of year, in the middle of summer, to put some space between the plants to make the landscape look better. But it also will allow more light and air penetration around the plants to help prevent pests and diseases because pests and diseases really thrive in places with that are dark and dank, dim and damp. So if you can put some separation between the plants by removing the lower branches on the trees, that's a good situation. Or um, that's a better situation for the health of the plants. Now, keep in mind don't trim up your trees and shrubs like that. Don't remove the bottom branches if you're using those trees and shrubs for screening. Okay, you don't have to trim your trees up like that. You don't have to remove the lower branches if you're using those trees and shrubs to block a view for privacy or to block something ugly in the landscape that you don't want to be able to see. Don't trim off those lower branches in that case, okay? So it's optional. That kind of pruning is optional. Another guideline to follow don't remove more than 25 to 30 percent of a tree's leaves in one year, okay, because that's that'll be too much. You'll be taking off too much leaf surface area, and then they're not able to make enough carbohydrates to feed themselves so that they'll be able to grow new leaves and shoots next year. Um, so for more tree pruning tips or advice about your trees, if you feel confused, go ahead and hire me for consultation. Make an appointment with me at atxgardens.com. Now, what about the fruit trees? What's happening with our fruit trees at this time of year? It's a fun time for fruit trees. There's still a lot of fruit coming into harvest. Uh, Anna and Dorset Gold apples should be harvested now. Um, they should be coming and getting ripe at this time. The figs, this is a big time for figs. You'll look for celeste figs that will turn brown or violet and be soft when they're ready. LSU gold figs and purple passion figs should be ripening now. For LSU gold, look for yellow skin with a tiny blush of pink on it, and the skin might still be hard, even though the fruit is ripe. Um, for purple passion, they'll be dark in color and have very large soft fruit. I have brown turkey figs at my house. It's also called Texas Everbearing, and they turn kind of a brown, uh brownish purple color when they're ready, and they're very soft when they're ready. And they usually come into ripeness around 4th of July. And so look for all those apples and figs coming in right now. A lot of grapes will be coming in at this time too. So make sure you're checking your grape vines if you've got grapes on them. Try to get out there before all the animals get them. Okay, it's summer pruning time for the fruit trees that you've already harvested from. So all the stone fruits, like peaches and plums, you can start pruning them now for their summer pruning. And so on older trees that are well established, I prefer summer pruning over winter pruning. If you prune them in the summertime, it slows them down and will keep the tree smaller and more manageable size. If your tree has a lot of water sprouts on it and a lot of little branches that are growing straight up off of the lateral branches and growing into the middle of the tree, pruning in the summer can help reduce uh the amount of water sprouts that you get. Summer pruning is really wise for larger, older trees. So you can get in there at this time of year and remove crossing, diseased and dead branches, uh, remove branches that are touching or shading other branches. And as always, remove any suckers, little branches that are growing up from below the graft point. So anything coming up from the ground or low down on the trunk or anything that's growing straight up into the middle of the tree, you can take off. And you can also prune the ends of the fruit tree branches at this time of year to shorten a tree that's too tall. Again, just like I said with the shade trees and the shrubs, try not to remove more than 25 to 30 percent of the leaves in one year. Okay. Keep in mind what I just said for pruning fruit trees applies only to fruit trees. The shade trees, you can't cut the ends of the branches off to keep them short the way that you can with fruit trees. That's really important. Okay, now something else to think about at this time of year is if you want to plant fruit trees, start making a list of the fruit trees that you want and start shopping for them now because there's a lot of fruit trees that you can only get through mail order, where you have to order them online or from a catalog. And you'll want to be ready to start ordering them because they often sell out really fast. And so you need to start planning now so that you'll be ready to order them as long as soon as they go for sale. And the different nurseries will have um different timing for their sales. So start taking a look and shopping for them, and then the nurseries will take your order, but they won't ship them until the winter. So, but it's important to start planning now to make sure that you're ahead of schedule so that you can get the ones that you want when the nurseries start taking orders for them. That's particularly true for the apples and pears and peaches and plums. Now, moving on to perennial gardening. At this time of year, in the first half of July for perennials, it's way too hot to plant almost anything. Um, so don't plant anything now. If you have plants in pots, just keep watering them. Um, try to get them through the summer. This is a very important time of year for trimming all of your perennials. Very much like I just was talking about with the trees and shrubs, it's a good time for trimming. And many of the perennials at this time of year are starting to reach their maximum size. And so you'll be able to tell if it's starting to feel too overgrown. You may want to trim some of them and put some space between them. Warm season perennials that are done blooming for the spring should be cut down by half to promote bushier growth and more flowers in the fall. So there's a lot of plants in our gardens in Central Texas that bloom once in May, June, sometimes into early July, and then they stop blooming in the middle of the summer, and then they will bloom again with even more flowers and bigger bloom in September, October, November. So it's a good idea at this time of year to cut the top half off of those plants once they're done blooming. So sometime in July, you'll cut the top half off. If you don't cut the top half off, these plants will flop open in the fall, unless you have some sort of support system for them, like cages or stakes. Um, but I would rather trim them than try to deal with cages and stakes. Sometimes, even when you trim them, they still flop open. But this trimming can really help prevent that. So go ahead and remove the top half of the plant. So that includes tall herbaceous salvias like Salvia Farinacea, um, also known as the Mealy Blue Sage, and its cousin, the Henry Duhlberg sage, Mexican bush sage, black and blue sage, uh, forsythia sage, and more. Fall Asters, goldenrod, and maximilian sunflowers are also good candidates for this sort of chopping off the top half of the plant to keep them bushier. Lantanas often need pruning at this time of year to clear them off of neighboring plants or to get them out of walkways. I like to lift up the branches on the tops of the plants and then completely cut off the lowest layer of branches as far back as I can reach. This is also a good technique that works with Zexmenia, too. So that's mostly for the lantanas that are the trailing types or the short kinds. And you can lift up the top couple of layers. The branches sort of grow in layers out horizontally, and you can lift up the top few layers of branches and then cut the bottom layer that's growing along the ground to shorten the entire length of the plant. And it looks a lot nicer than if you came in and you just chopped the entire plant. It looks more natural just to remove the longest branches that are lying on the ground. Some perennials are in full bloom now and they'll benefit from deadheading. So, deadheading is where you remove the dead flowers, and then that keeps the plants blooming and more productive. So plants like yellow bells, plumbagos, pride of Barbados, and hibiscus are all actively blooming now and can benefit from deadheading. All those sort of tropical or semi-tropical perennials are the ones that are still blooming now. All right, now this is a really good time of year for pruning the semi evergreen sub shrubs. Okay, semi-evergreen sub shrubs. So those are little plants. We have a lot of these in our landscape in central Texas. These are the little plants that stay green most of the year and stay small. They're kind of woody, they get sort of woody stems on them. And they're this weird category of plants where nobody knows what to do with them because they never really go dormant and some of them never really stop blooming. So Salvia Gragi is one example. That's the most one of the most common plants in our Central Texas gardens. They never really completely stop blooming, but usually in July they take a little break from blooming where they'll have just one or two little flowers, and it's a good time to prune them. Damianita, rock roses, powis castle artemisia, and Mexican oregano are more examples. So basically any plant that's green year-round and is really less than 24 inches tall and is taking a break from blooming in July. Like I said, they may have one or two flowers on them, and that's okay. You don't have to trim off all the flowers if you don't want to, but you can still do some trimming on the plants to keep them vigorous. This kind of trimming really helps extend their lives and keeps them vigorous and actively growing for a longer period of time and helps keep them looking really good. If they don't get trimmed, they tend to get really woody and brittle and ugly. So the trimming is really important. First, remove any dead or broken branches. Then remove branches that are touching the ground, anything that's lying on the ground. Then I like to remove any branches that are bigger around than a pencil because those are the branches that start to get too woody and they can't grow new leaves at the base. And that's what starts to make the plant look really ugly. So it's kind of counterintuitive to take off the biggest, the like the biggest, fattest branches, but that's exactly what you need to do. Then when you get done with those steps, you can shear the top two inches of the plant. So just remove the top, the ends of the branches, basically, just about two inches of the top of each branch, um, to remove the dead flowers. And that little shearing on the top of the plant will motivate the plant to grow new bushier growth down at the base. And like I said, if you don't want to remove all of the flowers, that's okay, but you can still do a little bit of shearing at the top. I love my short-handled loppers for these jobs. They can fit into tight spaces and they can chop through really brittle wood. And I also use my beloved Felco number seven hand pruners for all of those tasks. Of course, there's links in the show notes to the short-handled Corona Loppers and my Felco number seven hand pruners. And if you feel unsure about how to do this type of pruning on your perennials, I have a guide available on my website. It's called Let's Care for Texas Plants. It's a three-volume set of booklets. Um, it's available as hard copy or as a digital download. So go ahead and check that out too. Now it's time for our mid-episode sponsor break. Hi, y'all. This is Colleen Dieter here from ATXgardens.com. If you want personalized help with your landscape, book a consultation and we'll walk your yard together, answer your questions, and create a strategy that feels doable for you. I specialize in helping do-it-yourselfers by alleviating their anxieties about their yards. This week I helped Christopher in Rollingwood. He owns and cares for an office building and wants to freshen up the landscape around the buildings where Asian Jasmine died and the turf grass is not thriving. I gave him ideas and resources that are affordable and practical for him. I also connected him with folks who can implement the ideas that he may not want to implement himself. So if that sounds like you, if you've had Asian jasmine that's died, or you have turf grass that's not thriving in some areas and it's just muddy, make an appointment today at atxgardens.com. Now let's get back to the episode. So what's going on in the vegetable and herb garden at this time of year? There's a lot happening. July 15th is mid-summer in Austin. Many people elect to put the vegetable garden to bed mid-summer. So in the last episode, I said that I would be gardening in my vegetable garden all summer long, but I am having serious second thoughts. And I decided that I'm going to wait to plant anything new until I get back from a couple of vacations this summer because I just didn't feel like I wanted to ask somebody to come over and water and stuff like that while I'm gone. When you're deciding if you're going to continue vegetable gardening all summer, keep in mind that it's very unusual for us to get any rain between July 15th and August 15th. And we often don't get rain until September 1st or even beyond. So if you decide to take a break from vegetable gardening, you'll be joining the majority of gardeners in Central Texas. And here's how to do it if you decide that you're going to take a break. Remove any plants that you don't want to water for the next eight weeks. Remove any plants that have any sign of disease or insect infestations or any kind of distress. Don't be afraid to remove warm season crops that you're tired of eating. If you can't handle any more okra, it's okay to take out your okra plants. Put away all your cages, trellises, etc. And then after you clean out all of your unwanted plants and trellises and cages, add some fertilizer and compost to your soil per your soil test results. Then add a nice heavy layer of mulch on top, like tree leaves, straw, or pine needles. At least three inches of mulch on top. Some gardeners decide to plant cover crops to enrich their soil instead of adding compost and fertilizer. Black-eyed peas, sunflowers, millet, buckwheat, and sorghum are all good choices for summer cover crops here in Austin. If you decide to plant a cover crop instead of adding compost and mulch, you would plant the seeds and then water the seeds, let those plants grow until they start blooming, then you cut the crop down and leave the dead plants on the ground as mulch. That's a method that's called the chop and drop method. Now, if you decide that you're going to keep gardening in all or part of your vegetable garden for the rest of the summer, add some compost where your spring crops were removed, and you can plant okra, southern peas, melons, pumpkins, gourds, winter squashes, sunflowers, amaranth, uh malochia, and magenta spring, or lambs quarters, directly from seed, and they'll all grow all summer. I don't recommend planting small plants at this time of year, like transplants, uh, though some folks do, and it's okay, but I personally think the new little plants struggle in the heat too much for too long in July. If you're gonna do some transplants, I recommend waiting until August. And I'll mention that in future episodes. If you have indeterminate tomato plants, like cherry tomatoes or grape tomatoes, and they're starting to like get really overgrown and maybe have mites or other signs of diseases, you can cut those plants down and fertilize them, give them some compost, and continue watering them. And they often grow back, and you get a refreshed plant that will produce more fruit in the fall. I've done that a few times with a lot of success. So that's something you could think about. If your indeterminate tomato varieties are starting to get a little too hairy, you can just cut them down. I think I leave like maybe 12 inches of stems sticking out of the ground for them to grow back on. As I mentioned in the last episode, if you haven't already, this is a good time to side dress your summer crops that have been in the ground for a while. For example, if you planted peppers and eggplants in March or April, you should give them some fertilizer and compost per your soil test results just by sprinkling a handful of dry fertilizer or compost under the plants, around their root zone, and then gently scratch it in with a hand cultivator and add some mulch on top too. Make sure you're keeping your summer garden well mulched to help keep the soil cool and hold moisture in. And I have a link to a hand cultivator in the show notes. Now is time to do major pruning and removal in the herb garden ad now that a lot of the herbs have bloomed and they're done blooming. If you have basil that's been blooming and it tastes bad, go ahead and just remove it. If you really liked those basil plants, you can tag the best plant and keep it in the garden to collect seeds from it if you like, or you can propagate it indoors by taking cuttings and letting them root in water or in potting media, and then you can plant those plants back out again in a few weeks. Chives will likely be going dormant, and the tops of the plants are going to start wilting and falling over. So with the chives, you can leave them alone until those leaves dry out, and then later you can remove the dry and dead leaves if you want to. That's a good habit to have good culture to keep the garden clean and take out those kind of dead leaves. Mint and lemon balm will start looking kind of ratty after they bloom. And you can cut the whole top of the plant off, leaving just a few inches of stems sticking up out of the ground. Those plants will stay short and dormant during the hottest part of the summer, but then they'll grow back from the ground when things start cooling off in September and we start getting some rain. The evergreen herbs like oregano, lavender, thyme, sage, rosemary, and marjoram need to be trimmed after they're done blooming, too. Depending on the plant, I often just remove the whole top third to one half of those plants after they finish blooming. Rosemary and sage can be pruned using the method I described earlier in the podcast for the semi-evergreen sub shrubs in the perennial section of the podcast. So, for help, you can reference Selvia Gregi in my guide, Let's Care for Texas Plants, which is available on my website, and there's a link to that guide in the show notes. Okay, now tropical herbs like lemongrass, ginger, and turmeric, they'll continue to grow all summer through the heat. So keep them watered and make sure you have some mulch around them. They don't need any trimming or anything until late fall. And now for the activism portion of the podcast, I want to encourage all of you to bring seeds to the library. Okay, Central Texas Seed Savers supports all of the seed collections that are at public libraries all over Central Texas. If you haven't visited a seed collection, um go check it out. Most of the Austin Public Library branches have seed collections. Most of the suburban and exurban libraries have seed collections too. If your library doesn't have a seed collection, ask a librarian and see if you can start one. And Central Texas Seed Savers has resources available on our website, CentexSeedsavers.org, to help you start a seed collection at your library. So you can go to the library, you can take seeds out of the library, and then you can bring seeds back to the library to share, which is crucial. There are many plants that are not available in the seed industry and nursery trade that are very valuable to us as Central Texans. If you have something in your garden that did really well, learn how to save seeds from that plant. Just focus on one plant this year and learn how to save seeds from it. You can learn about seed saving from specific crops through seed saving books. There's a really good book called The Seed Garden that is published by Seed Savers Exchange, and I have a link to that book in the show notes. And of course, you can probably get that book out from your public library too. So start thinking about seed saving. If it's not something you've done before, it can be as simple as saving the seeds from a watermelon that you harvested and saving them for your garden for next year, or sharing some of those seeds by bringing them back to the library. Just start thinking about the whole life cycle of the plant and how you could share seeds with others and learn just about one plant this year so that you don't get overwhelmed. All right. So that wraps up today's episode. Check out the show notes for links to all the stuff I mentioned. And if you enjoyed my podcast, please share it with fellow Central Texas gardeners. It really helps me to grow the show. I'm Colleen with atxgardens.com and I will see you next time. Thanks. Thanks for listening to the ATX Gardens podcast. For show notes, tools, and to book a consultation with me, visit atxgardens.com. Happy gardening. See you next time.