I don’t know about you, but I’m thankful for these long summer days, when you can be outside until 9:00 p.m. and it still feels like 6:00 p.m. On our farm, we are squeezing out every second of each day enjoying this beautiful summer weather.
Our summer checklist is quite long, which is another reason to be thankful for these nearly endless days. Going through my daily checklist, I realized that others must have similar lists and decided to share some tips and insights to help everybody spend less time on work and more time enjoying with family and friends.
Most everyone has at least a small patch of green to water and mow, so I thought I’d start there. The days are getting hot lately and we may not get much rain for a while, which means efficient irrigation is critical to ensure the health of your plants, particularly lawns, which can require a lot of water to keep from turning brown and dormant in mid-to-late summer.
Anytime you use sprinklers or other overhead watering, be sure to do so in the morning. Watering in the mid-day heat wastes water through increased evaporation, while watering at night can lead to diseases such as powdery mildew.
Also, it helps to water less frequently but for a longer duration. Rather than setting your sprinklers to run for 10 minutes daily, for instance, switch to 20 minutes every other day. This enables the water to soak further down into the soil, encouraging deeper grass roots. Shallow-rooted grass struggles to keep from going dormant in the summer heat.
If you’re unsure whether your water is soaking through the soil profile, use the screwdriver test. Take a screwdriver and push it down into your grass – maybe make a couple attempts to avoid hitting rocks. If you’re able to push it at least 4 inches into the ground, you’re watering sufficiently.
Next up is fertility. Remember, the more fertilizer you apply on your grass, the more water it will need, so try to find the right balance. Everybody wants a thick green lawn, but we’d like to avoid dumping a lake’s worth of water onto it every day. I’ve implemented a moderate lawn fertility program, which means I fertilize three times per year.
A look at Brent’s fertilizer — the 14 refers to nitrogen and the 2 to potassium (Brent Sarchet photo)
And now that I mention it, it’s about time for my second fertilizer application. What’s in my lawn fertilizer mix? I always look for a fertilizer that is mostly nitrogen (the first number on the bag) and avoid fertilizers with lots of phosphorus and potassium (the second and third numbers on the bag). Our soils need little, if any, phosphorus and potassium. But iron and sulfur are good nutrients to have in lawn fertilizer. Just be aware that you can over-fertilize, so be sure to follow the instructions on your fertilizer.
If you have small fruit (honeyberries, strawberries, cherries) and you haven’t put netting on them yet, now’s the time. For the past couple of weeks we’ve been busy netting all of our honeyberries. If we don’t, the birds won’t leave us much to harvest. As soon as the fruit starts to ripen, they find it. If you enjoy having birds around, you can always leave a few plants uncovered. We love seeing the cedar waxwings on our farm, among other birds. So we always leave a few bushes unnetted, sometimes on purpose and sometimes as a sacrificial crop.
I like to take a stroll through our vegetable gardens every few days scouting for the first signs of pests taking up residence. So far this year, we have been lucky with very few grasshoppers, so I haven’t had to put out any bait yet. It is about time to start applying Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) on my brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, brussel sprouts, etc.) for cabbage loopers.
As soon as you notice caterpillars feeding, you should apply your first application, and then another application every 5 – 7 days. When you spray your plants, make sure to cover all the foliage, because the caterpillars have to ingest the Bt for it to be effective.
If you’re seeing some damage to your garden or landscape plants and don’t know the cause – email pictures to bsarchet@gmail.com and I’ll be glad to help. It could be an insect, disease, or environmental stress. Your local nursery is probably a great resource as well, as are veteran gardeners in your area. Sometimes the biggest challenge is just figuring out the culprit, and sometimes it is a combination of things. Lots of abiotic damage (wind, heat, water, etc.) can look like insects or diseases, so experience really makes a difference.
In the orchard, I like to do some minor summer pruning, especially on my apple trees. I’ll prune out any basal suckers growing from the rootstock. It’s also about time to do some bud grafting, so I’ll propagate the varieties doing the best on our farm. I like to have a few “Frankenstein trees” – trees that have multiple varieties on one tree – so I’m always looking for new or old varieties to graft onto these trees.
I’m also scouting for insects and diseases in the orchard. It’s a good idea to occasionally check the drip irrigation system on your trees to make sure the emitters aren’t plugging up. Over time, especially with well water, they can build up deposits and stop working.
Checklists can be invaluable, but it’s easy to let them dictate our summer schedule. Suddenly, before you know it, summer’s gone. This year be sure to focus on what’s most important in your garden and embrace practices that free up more time. I suggest placing mulch around your garden and trees, adding automatic irrigation, and replacing overhead watering with drip irrigation when possible.
Last but not least, when your checklist is done, don’t forget to celebrate!
Brent Sarchet, a certified International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) arborist and crop advisor, runs Finn Creek Farm near Boulder with his wife Andrea. Contact him at bsarchet@gmail.com.