Alan: Well once you’re into June, people wonder what next? The gardens looking good. But sometimes things just don’t make it. Sometimes you find a spot over here that you really want to add something and it’s not too late in June.

June is a great time to continue to plant. We even grow plants in larger containers so that you’ve already planted something and you don’t want to start off with a little plant that doesn’t match. So we have things in larger containers that you can just pop right in and fill in that space and match everything else.

We plant our crops that we grow at the greenhouse, we don’t grow everything at the same time. We don’t just plant tomatoes once and here’s our whole crop of tomatoes for the year. Because some people are planting those tomatoes middle of May and they don’t want some plants it’s overgrown and just scraggly and it doesn’t look good.

So we plant several times throughout the season so that when you come in June, there’s still going to be some plants that are at their peak at that time. So we planned it that way, because people do plant later on.

A thing that would be good in June is to look at your vegetable garden. At this time you probably harvested quite a bit of your cabbage and broccoli and cauliflower, things like that.

So now the is a good time in June to go back in and now you can plant a tomato there. It’s not too late. It’s a good time. So you’re making double use of that space. Things that you harvest early. It’s now time to go ahead and plant the things that will go later, like the peppers and tomatoes, things like that.

Alan: Some things that you fertilize, and this would be true for regardless of when you’re doing it, more is not necessarily better. I know people, myself sometimes, if it calls for one teaspoon, two must be better. So that’s not necessarily the case especially depending what fertilizer you’re using.

A water soluble type something that is taken very readily through the plant, very instant kind of effect. Versus something that’s slow release or time release fertilizer, which tend to be a lot safer. You can still burn but not to the severity that you can with some of those water soluble ones. Especially in some of those hotter months. So just be careful with that. If it says a teaspoon or two teaspoons, whatever product you’re using, especially on those water soluble ones, you can do some burning in those hotter months.

And it would be something that you’d want to try to do in the early morning. Just so the plant is not under stress in the early morning, and it gives the the entire course of the day for the foliage to dry out.

If evening is your only option, you don’t hear about evening because the water stays on the foliage. The plant stays wet through the course of the night. And again, going back to some of the fungal problems. That would be something that would just, not necessarily cause it, but could encourage it. And we’re not trying to do that. So just remember stay away from those midday fertilizing applications.

Alan: Another popular topic in June is insects. That you really want to keep an eye on. You don’t want to just ignore it and then just wake up one day and look at your garden. It’s covered in aphids or it’s covered in something.

A lot of people want to use organic insecticides and organic fungicides, and that’s great. But you have to do those as preventatives. Once you have a big problem and you have aphids covering something or you have whatever the insect might be, once you have a problem with it, organic products just don’t work as well. I mean, they will help.

But if you use those as a preventative to prevent the problem in the first place, they’re much more effective

Don’t come in with a branch, that’s with fungus all over it and say, you know, what do you have that’s organic to take care of this. Because organic fungicides are good for preventative, but they’re not really that effective for taking care of problem that you already have.

So keep in mind, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and it’s especially true with organics.

Kevin: We’ll use plants in our greenhouse and encourage customers to ask this, if they don’t know. But we use plants as scout plants. We can pick on any plants. A portalachka is going to get these aphids first. Aphids are a chewing insect, so they like the freshest softest tissue. Once that tissue hardens off, they can’t bite into it. It’s not as tasty for them.

Aphids on burning bush, the perfect scout plant. You see a little bit of curl on your burning bush leaf. It’s almost 100% going to be aphids. Aphids are hungry right now. I need to look at this plan, or this plan, because they also like aphids, so I need to get my treatment down.

Alan: That’s the same with Japanese beetles. That’s another big problem that people run into. They come in and want to buy these bags. The Japanese beetle traps. And those are great. They do catch the Japanese beetles.

But if you put those right in your garden, you’re attracting all these Japanese beetles and everyone to munch on your garden on the way to the bag. So the best thing is to buy your neighbor one. You say I got you a gift and you buy them the Japanese beetle bag, so they go to their yard to fall into the bag. Just sort of kidding.

But if you have a spot or somewhere away from your garden, that you can put the bag, that would be the best thing because you don’t want those things having lunch on the way to the bag.

Alan: Are there plants that should be pruned June?

Kevin: Anything that was a spring flowering plant. I mean by that time depending in June your lilacs are done flowering. Your forsythias and things like that, some of the azaleas, all that type of stuff. All that stuff’s done flowering. That would definitely be a time to either deadhead those plants depending on the plant or just give that thing a nice haircut.

It’s probably getting through its first flush of growth. And so maybe you got kind of some irregular branches where it just kind of threw out a stray branch that’s not where you want it to be. It doesn’t look like that perfect plant you envision. June would be a fine time to kind of clean that up and neaten and tidy those plants up.

Things that you wouldn’t want to prune would be things that are flowering. Things like some of the hydrangeas, some of the butterfly bushes, roses.

A lot of the roses that we’re selling are free flowering. People think about roses and they think about maintenance and where you would have to prune them to encourage new flowers from growing by not let the hips form from the old flowers. And cut the cane back so far.

The roses today, most popular are these free flowering shrub roses. Where they’re also self cleaning. They make enough flowers where, not that you couldn’t clean them up, but it’s not necessary. They just flower right past some of those old flowers.