Sometimes it would be nice to have a plant tell you, quite clearly, what is troubling it. Unfortunately, plants don’t speak English but they frequently use a botanical sign language. Be careful though, their sign language is tricky! A wilted plant may be dry or it may have too much water. If the plants could speak for themselves, here’s some things they would like to tell you.

• • Annual plants in container gardens and hanging baskets are getting hungry. Now is a good time to start feeding them with fertilizer. If your irrigation system has a fertilizer unit, add 4 Tbsp. of water soluble fertilizer (such as Miracle Grow) to the canister. Otherwise, you can sprinkle in some fertilizer granules or use blood meal if you’d like to keep it organic.
  • Daylilies are starting to bloom all around town. It is true that each individual flower lasts for only one day (thus the name Daylily) yet the plant continues to send up new flowers for several weeks. Daylilies are embarrassed when there are more spent flowers than new ones; please remove the spent stalks to keep the plants looking nice.
  • Many other perennial flowers have bloomed already and would also like to have their spent flowers removed (particularly Iris). This keeps the garden looking tidy and helps prevent some plants from excessive re-seeding.
  • Lilacs and Mockorange shrubs are ready for their annual pruning. These shrubs, and other early blooming shrubs, should be pruned shortly after flowering.
  • Turf grass which is the typical Kentucky Blue Grass will need to nap when it’s hot. Yellow-brown turf grass in the middle of the growing season doesn’t mean it’s dead, just resting until the temperatures come back down.
  • Tomato plants are often over-achievers which produce fruit so heavy it will break their own stems. If you haven’t already, put a tomato cage or other support system around your tomato plants.

Are your plants trying to say something but you don’t understand them? Perhaps I can interpret!  Send me an email, call or text me at (970)988-3808 to chat about your plants.