Garden Gate

Summer is Here! GardenGateMagazine.com/articles/how-to/ Summer Garden Checklist Whatever you grow, this handy to-do list will help keep your plants healthy all summer. Your Guide to Japanese Beetles You can save your garden from these pests! We’ll show you how. Best Tools for Deadheading Keep your garden tidy and new blooms coming with these useful tools! How to Water Perennial Plants We’ll show you how and when to keep your garden hydrated, plus the best tools for the job. SUBSCRIBE TO OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER Get seasonal garden information, smart tips and design ideas delivered to your inbox every week in our free newsletter, Garden Gate Notes. Subscribe Online: GARDENGATENOTES.COM Pro Secrets to Taking Better Garden Photos Learn our photographer Jack Coyier’s secrets for choosing just the right light and composing professional-looking shots of your garden, even with your phone! Youtube.com/gardengatemagazine 12 Best Container Plants When it comes…

Perfectly poised florals Joanne Meyer, IA Level up your home-grown floral arrangements with this simple hack: Re-use plastic drinking straws to support cut flowers with floppy heads. Just rinse the straw and slide it on or slit the straw down the side and wrap it around the stem. It’ll provide extra support for weak spots along the stem and drooping flower heads. Professional florists use a similar product to keep blooms upright, but you can achieve the same look—for free! Tomato shade Eva Woodring, TN When the weather turned from cool spring to hot summer in a matter of days last year, Eva looked for a way to get her tomato seedlings into the garden as soon as possible without letting the tender plants burn in the hot sun. Some plastic 5-gallon bucket lids saved…

Elderberry rust Puccinia sambuci Appearance This fungal disease affects elderberry plants (Sambucus spp. and hybrids) in mostly aesthetic ways, although severe infections can decrease fruit production. You might first notice bright orange lesions, called pustules, followed by unusual galls, typically the pale yellow color in the photo above. Damage The pustules appear in spring and can cause leaves to defoliate and stems to deform. In severe infections, rust-colored dust covers flower stems and disrupts fruit production. The strange galls appear in summer. If you grow both elderberry shrubs and sedge grasses (Carex spp. and hybrids), there’s a higher risk of infection. In late summer, the spores travel from the galls to the sedge leaves to overwinter, creating rusty spots with yellow halos. Control Eliminating sedge grasses in your yard is the most effective, though…

here are two ways to keep the color going in your garden through the summer: First, choose a variety of annuals that bloom from the moment you set the seedlings in the ground until frost (the combo at right is a great example of this technique). Second, plant combinations of perennials that bloom at different times. Meet some good candidates for early and late summer on the next pages. Choose one or two of these combos or grow them all in different spots in your garden to guarantee that you (and visiting pollinators) will have plenty of blooms to enjoy from the time the weather warms up until the cold shuts everything down in fall. Show-Stopping Annuals It’s never too late to grab a few annuals at the garden center and pop…

Botanical Names Bearded iris Iris hybrids Cup plant Silphium perfoliatum Fennel Foeniculum vulgare Lavender Lavandula spp. and hybrids Little bluestem Schizachyrium scoparium Maple Acer spp. and hybrids Purple coneflower Echinacea purpurea Rosemary Rosmarinus officinalus If you’re tired of watering to keep your garden going through a hot, dry summer, take a few tips from Denver Botanic Gardens’ Panayoti Kelaidis. He’s had to learn how to create a good-looking garden that thrives through heat and drought and has some advice that can help all of us. RIGHT PLANT, RIGHT PLACE For starters, Panayoti suggests doing an inventory of your yard with an eye out for microclimates. Make sure you’re growing drought-tolerant plants in the driest spots and not trying to baby something along that isn’t happy there. You might find dry microclimates at the top…

Drying flowers doesn’t have to be complicated. To get beautiful colors and sturdy blooms, sometimes it’s just a matter of choosing the right ones and using simple techniques. Erin Howell-Conner, manager of Howell’s Greenhouse & Pumpkin Patch in Cumming, Iowa, knows a lot about this process. She’s been designing with flowers she has grown and dried herself all her life. SIMPLE DRYING When you want to make a dried-flower wreath, a posy or even a larger arrangement in a container, air drying is the simplest and easiest method. All you have to do is hang a small bunch of stems upside down in a warm, dry spot—at least 60 to 70 degrees F—out of direct sunlight, such as an attic or closet. This will give you the quickest results with colors…