Ready, Set, Go! 5 Garden Tips to Jump Into Summer

Let’s jump into summer gardening and refreshing the interior of your home for summer! We will talk weeds, fertilizing replanting, window washing, and lightening up indoors ✨ #cottagegarden #gardendecor #gardendesign #gardentour #backyard #cottagestyle #beforeandafter

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well all of a sudden before you know it and just like that spring turns into summer it is hot it’s already in the 90s the mornings and evenings are still cool but during the day it is really really well let’s just say it’s steamy it’s humid and it’s hot um my boys when they flew in from Denver the person the pilot on uh on I think it was Southwest Airline said well welcome to Oklahoma City where it’s a th000 de and the humidity is 100% and that pretty much describes summer in Oklahoma so no matter where you are ringing in the summer you definitely want to do some things to prep for it and here are five things that I think we all should have on our list to get ready for summer so what do you say steuart let’s do it let’s do it now this is my motivation for the next tip I’ve been working in my office a lot working on a um oh a deadline that I have and I wanted to do a couple of things I wanted to kind of summarize the room which I did by adding some of these linen curtains you’ll notice that they don’t go all the way down to the floor because I wanted them to have to give the room almost kind of a porch feel so that when I was looking outside at the kiddos or whatever I would feel almost as if I were outside and between the bamboo shades and these light linen curtains which I can clothes if I so choose it really does give it a porch Vibe now what it doesn’t block is my dirty windows so that reminds me that it is summer and it’s time for me to get uh the BB poop all of the splatters from all the thunderstorms that we’ve we have had recently I think it’s finally those are going to start to dissipate a little bit and now’s the perfect time and so I’ll show you what I used to get my windows clean at least from the outside it was a horror the the other day when I looked out the window and you can see the you can kind of see the the mess where I removed it there was the the biggest blotch of bird poop I ever seen yeah and I just wondered how it could get there and hit that trajectory yeah yeah you can see down there so anyhow I digress I really need to clean these windows I love the way these dried aliam seed heads look in front of these liny curtains I think it gives it a real summer Vibe the reason I don’t leave them standing in my in my garden outside for the birds or even for any of any of my garden visitors or myself to enjoy is because they will they just will begin to kind of get destroyed in short order by the heat by the high winds by a lot of the thunderstorms that we’ve been having and I really want them to maintain their form and kind of their interesting integrity and so I cut them before they are completely deheader that they make and this gives this room kind of a summery Vibe now speaking of filthy Windows the windows in my bedroom are also just well they’re really really spotted and it’s kind of driving me a little bit crazy so that’s definitely on my weekend list to do and while I was pointing those out steart said oh wow you changed your bedding and yes I did I changed my Bing to the summer version this is a little bit lighter it looks just a little bit airier I think for summer and as I was talking to my friend Sammy whose home you saw yesterday we talked about the fact that when you live in a smaller home in a smaller template to really keep yourself interested to kind of keep things seemingly uh more vibrant and more energetic in your home I think it’s important to change out some of your accessories a little bit more frequently now that’s just me but I did this is from William Sonoma I I have been watching it forever and as soon as it went on sale I decided oh this shall be mine I will try to put a link below I’m not sure it’s even if it’s even still available so it just kind of helps me switch it up and kind of get the right attitude going into summer now believe me I am loving all of this rainfall we’ve been getting and these morning and afternoon thunderstorms this is May in Oklahoma after all but one thing it does actually two things are are things that I want to address as I get ready for summer and number one as I pointed out to you inside and that is all of that splashing all of that wind all of that rain really dirties up my windows very very quickly especially here on this East Side so to make the work easy on myself I use and this is not a sponsored post by you guys you guys but I’ve used this for years at the other house and here and this is just you hose attach um this spray it’s Windex it will not hurt your plants and it just makes it a little bit easier to get your windows clean I just ordered some in fact I ordered two bottles for streak free shine so it makes it very very easy especially on the upper Windows to get off the bird poop the streaks any kind of Dusty residue that has blown and attached itself to my windows so I’m going to be doing this now secondly the other thing that it does is because you we’ve gotten a lot of rainfall what that does is really leech all of the nutrients out of the soil very very quickly especially my container gardens and because of that I want to make sure that at this point in time I can back off later when it gets hotter and when the rains quit but right now I want to make sure that while these plants are in their active growth state in their active Bloom State that I give them the food that they need to continue generating their blooms so let’s go over and I’ll show you some of the fertilizer that I like to use in my landscape in my container plantings and just in my garden [Music] overall well now let’s head to the front porch where I have some of my supplies at the ready to describe to you and show you what is one of probably the most frequently asked questions that you guys have addressed to me that I have not answered and that is how do I fertilize now if you have seen me watering you often see that I do have the mirle grow hose attachment sprayer um at the end of my hose now now why because I’ve told you that I’m not an absolutist about being an organic Gardener and fertilizing organically I do the best I can and what I have found is I am fine and I am content with using for my potted plants which eat voraciously and need to be fertilized with great frequency in the summer I’m okay with my pots and my container plantings my or at least my ornament container plantings my window boxes my ears I’m okay using Miracle Grow for them um and it would be helpful if I would put my Farmer sleeves on not upside down that might make them work a little bit better and by the way you guys these are great I am really trying to protect my arms and my hands from Sund damage and so these are wonderful I actually keep them in my mailbox my mailman does not seem to mind I asked him and that way I can put them on when I when I come out the door I’m getting a pair also from my friend Jen up at bricks because she really needs to protect her arms as well works better if you’ve got on a long sleeve shirt so that you hopefully I won’t get some kind of weird Farmers tan um but I have changed this subject so in my ears in my window box I do use just regular Miracle Grow in the hosen sprayer now when I am watering and fertilizing simultaneously with a liquid concentrate the flowers the blooming flowers and the shrubs in my garden beds then I do use something organic and I use it in one of these hoseen sprayers and basically it has a dialing feature and you just dial whatever ingredients you uh the measurements for whatever ingredients you are putting inside so if I am using for example espoma Bloom to get more blooms out of my flowering shrubs my annals and my perennials then I just look at the package directions and I dial accordingly at the top of my sprayer likewise if I am just wanting to spray my turf spray a just general balanced fertilizer I also use this hose end sprayer and this is plant and turf booster I have used it before someone sent it to me to try dry it’s organic I use it I also use aoma grow now that is if I am wanting to really get a fast acting response from a liquid concentrate at the beginning of the season and when I first installed my flower beds and the and the perennial garden in the front I used a granular so I use probably an asoma granular on the turf you have heard me talk about Morganite and it is also organic and I use Morganite on the turf but when you are just spraying your flower beds my raised bed vegetable gardens then I’ll use something like a spoma grow that’s organic and again it makes it easy if you use one of these hosen sprayers and I will definitely put a link to these below I will also put a link to the farmer sleeves and just to my sunglasses too because I know you guys will ask so let’s take a break here and then we’ll move on to the next thing now that we’ve eaten I’ve actually been cooking a little bit more and since my son Johnny came home yesterday I actually got up and cooked breakfast one of my favorite goto recipes out of the stirups catalog from the Enid I believe it was Chamber of Commerce and it is called the Panhandle casserole we’ve eaten it a thousand times it’s a family favorite around here and Stuart let’s just show a few stills of what we had we ate out here on the social patio and it was delish so so now that we have been fortified with breakfast something else that we’re going to want to pay attention to is being ever watchful for any kinds of insects pests and fungal diseases in the garden so one thing I have noticed the roly poliy are everywhere and while as I’ve said before they’re the cleanup crew of The Garden nevertheless they can get a little bit overly aggressive and they not only clean up that is decaying and dying back but they will go straight for a tender root system too in that case anything that is munching things like grasshoppers um not slugs and snails but let’s let’s say other things where you’re not really sure what is munching on them my go-to for that I’ve showed you this before is Captain Jack’s dead bug so that is I guess one of the things I think you really need to be watching for one of the five things make sure that you are ever attentive to pests in your garden if you don’t want to have some kind of dust some kind of you know something that will kind of detract from the beauty of your garden then you can use an insecticidal soap and an insecticidal spray you can use neem oil just make sure you do it in the cool of the morning not In the Heat of the day I wouldn’t be doing it right now you want to do it when there is not direct sun on the foliage and you may need to do it repeatedly recently I’ve heard people say well I tried neem oil on this or that but it just didn’t work and I said well were you really persistent about it did you do at the Do It um spray at the recommended intervals because sometimes it takes more than one spray to make sure that you get it at just the right life stage so that that the earlier stages don’t go ahead and mature and then you’ve still got a problem so keep an eye on that and to the extent possible my garden not withstanding if you give your plants pretty good air circulation and room to grow then definitely that will help mitigate some of those problems let’s move on to something else well another thing that we really want to be on the watch 4 to make our summer more pleasant and easier and that is looking for weeds early on before they get to be big before they begin to spread most importantly before they set seed so to do that we need to do some weed identification and our weed in the spotlight today is this spotted spurge you guys are probably familiar with it it grows prostrate it kind of grows like this in kind of a wagon wheel fashion from the center it sometimes will have red stems sometimes a red spot in the center of the of the leaf itself and it does produce kind of a sap so if you find that you are allergic to it or whatever best use garden gloves now one thing that I try to do is get this early on because it’s not easy to pick with your hands even after a rain because it does tend to grow in such a flat profile so I try to address these as soon as I see them and I find it helpful to have a little tool for this because I want to eradicate it as best I can sometimes it can put out a Tap Root now the other thing about it is that it likes to really grow in compact soil IE clay soil which is definitely what I have the other thing it likes to do is grow in cracks and crevices so it’s a candidate to grow in between my bricks in between the cracks in concrete you can see right here I’ve got some of it growing going in between these bricks and I want to get it out loosen it up a little bit and then you can see that even at a young age it has a pretty deep root system sorry I didn’t see it yeah can you see that now okay so I want to eradicate this as much and as early as I can while I’m down here I will remove any other small weeds and anything that’s growing where you don’t want it even if it’s a perennial that has gone to seed is still a weed so I’m going to removing those so be on the lookout for spotted spotted spurge in your garden and address it as soon as possible if you have a hard time getting it out from in between the cracks and crevices of your sidewalk of your patio whatever like right here I’ve got some more right here I could also come out here just with a kettle of boiling water and pour that boiling water on here I like that M yes and and it would take care of it in short order now most of us across the country maybe not all but most of us and definitely here in zone 7B we have already crossed the threshold of our last frost date so it is safe beyond safe for us to put out our annual color right now and in fact you want to do it pretty soon because as it gets hotter it’ll have the the seasonal color that you put out in the way of annuals will have a harder time getting established so you want to get on that as soon as possible so I am really really pleased with the composition of my window box I continue to dead head constantly one of the things you want to have on your list I do this every morning I find it really really a pleasant thing to do because I know that these blooms are going to keep pumping out not only because I’m deadheading it but because why I fertilized it now in addition to the bubble gum patunas that are in here and the Salvia and some Lantana and some of this um dusty miller what else do I have in here a plant that is new to me not necessarily overall because I’m very familiar with verbina but this variety verbina rigida or or vervan as it was as it was titled and I that might be a European expression or maybe what it’s called in other locals but I found this at bricks I absolutely love it and it might be able to Perennial eyesee a little bit because it is cold hearty down to Zone 8 so I’m going to guess that pockets of this will probably perennial eyesee in my garden this is one plant that I definitely keep pinching back because the more I pinch it back the Fuller it becomes I’ve also found that this variety is a lot less temperamental than the other purple verbina that has more of a ferny Leaf this is tough It’s got kind of hairy rough leaves and it just performs better in our torid torid heat and if I keep it deadheaded it too will continue to pump out these flowers now it can grow in kind of a bushy state but if I let some of the tendrils get long it will Cascade over the side so here is really a wonderful let’s call it a tender perennial that’s in my plant Spotlight for today you can see I have planted it really robustly not only in the window box but also here in this urn and notice that I’ve got it facing straight South it gets direct South Sun so it can really handle the heat so I’ve got it cascading over this urn along with a pentas and and the calibra COA I’ve got some on this side I also have quite a bit of it in my basket in front where it looks Grand I think not only with the chartreuse foliage of this this golden fever view it would also look great if you wanted to use like a sweet potato vine or if you wanted to use uh oh kind of a a golden Joseph’s coat it looks great with that but it also looks great I think with these pink colors that I’ve got that are repeated throughout all of my pots and throughout the garden and that is I’ve got some new guinean patients in here or sun patients and I’ve also got some pentas now pentas are my annual in the spotlight why because they can really handle the heat they bloom great with deadheading all summer long they’re a great pollinator comes in a wide variety of different colors I’ve got pink and white up front kind of a lavender rose pink I’ve also got it in red in the back so it really really is very very um it’s a great multitasker it can grow in a number of different ways and I really like to plant it in combination with other things that give it a color Echo so there you go here I’ve got some of this pink Penta and I’ve got some of this I believe this was called was this lemonade Lantana looks like lemonade like lemonade maybe pink lemonade but you’ll notice that I’ve planted it in drifts which with the heat now will only get larger and larger with the companion plants of scabiosa and this wonderful Lantana this drift continues up the sidewalk on both sides let me show you this side as well it’s it’s over here it also is in front of the grid of the Upper Terrace so this will be framed in not only this pink Penta but also I am hoping in butterflies that extend all the way up the walkway and then end up in these wonderful magical Planters and in the window box that’s a great design tip for having cohesion and Harmony and continuity in your in your uh plantings so there you go there are three plants in my Spotlight one a weed one a tender perennial and one an annual let’s move on to something else well I am so happy with the way my seeding trough troughs have worked out case in point and I don’t know steuart I think the camera will be able to capture them but see all of those tiny little seedlings in there they can see them yeah okay those are Fox Glove seedlings from Fox Glove seed that I sprinkled three or four days ago and they just germinate very very quickly in this receptive soil you can see some there I will let them continue to grow larger bigger at which point obviously I’m going to have to separate them and I’ll plant them in the garden beds because obviously their scale will be too big for this pot with its topiary I did the same thing over here but in here I did boxwood basil and purple Dome basil and the purple Dome basil and some of this boxwood basil I am already starting to prick out the larger specimens and planting them where that I want them to grow now I talked about how to care for Fox Glove how to get it established um how to maintain it with the exception of telling you what I do with the plants after the seed has dried on the stems and let me show you that now so I’ve got a tray here this makes the work so much easier I’ve discovered especially a tray with a lip and what I do is I allow some of these dried seed heads from the Fox Glove I allow them to dry and just drop in place and you may say Oh Linda that’s going to be so densely planted that seed is so fine it’s going to go everywhere well I have found that it’s really hard to get Fox Glove established in my garden probably because of its heavy uh clay content I don’t know why so here’s what I do I take the stem it’s not going to rebloom and look at the foliage the foliage is already looking tattered and I have found that to be the case not only in my own garden but anecdotally when I read other gardening books they express the same thing so then I just just take those seat heads put them in my tray where they will dry the seed will fall into the bevel of the tray tray itself and then I can package it up the other thing is if some of those little buds have not dried completely like here what I have found like right there there okay what I have found if I clip those off and I put them in the D in the tray to mature further then those two will dry that’s the longest one yeah this is really the longest one now I’ve got these plants here but they look like heck and I don’t want them to really distract from the beauty of the other things particularly the hydrangeas and such that are growing in um in position nearby so so what do I do I just pull up the entire plant easy to do after we’ve had a lot of rain that will then give the salvet nearby the sunlight it needs the lack of competition and the space to grow up in its dead likewise I’m going to go ahead and pull these out these aren’t quite so buggy but but nevertheless they’re not going to bloom again it will give room for me then because I try to plant seed on a number of different levels as I told you let the seed drop save some seed to plant at other times of year and also in the fall and I can kind of sprinkle some seed in here do any weeding I need to do in this area and it will give all of the things in this vicinity the room to grow and better air circulation so I’m going to be doing that with all of the Fox Glove that I’ve got growing in this drift along Lemon Lane and towards the sidewalk in front of that large boxwood and by the bird bath so I’m going to be continuing to do that I will save the seed I will use my little seed packets we will put put a link below to those seed packets and um and it will just make the entire Garden look more presentable and there are other things that will be coming up in their stad so if the camera got wonky there it’s because Ste got attacked by a bunch of ants that were just having a party on the red bed tree so we had to stop there so he could blow them off shush them off there’s probably still more but yeah there’s probably still more but you know that’s just what it is to to be a man of nature isn’t it so I’m going to be continuing this from the rest of the garden and all of those aforementioned things that I have planted including the gorgeous white wedding hydrangeas and all of the other things there’s some more okay okay so that is that that is something else that you want to be attentive to do cut down your perennials that are past their Prime to leave room for the other things that are going to be coming up in their SP dead now I’ve got one last thing in the back and then I think we can call it a day now another plant that’s getting ready to come into its own to replace some things that are past Bloom and that’s this whole border of Moondance hydrangeas that are blooming in front of these fabulous Arbor VA now another plant that has already bloomed and is actually already starting to turn brown in the bloom and that is the are these Mammoth aren’t they incredible incredible volc conical shaped Tera hydrangeas now I’ve got a number of them and you may ask okay well why are they already starting to Brown well we’ve gotten so much rain so much wind and so much rain that they’ve kind of been beaten down a bit but that doesn’t disturb me too much because even though I love how gorgeous they are and striking they are in this white State I know that I have these Moondance hydrangeas and my white wedding hydrangeas coming up in their stad but the other reason it doesn’t bother me too much is they will continue to Brown and turn this AB absolutely wonderful kind of bronzy Amber on the stem and I will cut them and I will bring them inside and right here steuart we need to insert a picture of the huge bouquet of these that I’ve got on the dresser in my bedroom because they are a absolutely spectacular they’re long lasting and they’re wonderful not only while they are fresh and In Bloom but also so in their dried state so now let’s go to the back and I’m going to show you my next project and the next thing we need to have on our list and boy this needs a little workover steuart’s nice in the sh yes steuart steuart is giving a sigh of relief that we’re in the shade one I really need to address back here and that is there is just so much debris that has come down off of these red cedar trees I actually like the way the needles look as kind of a mulch in the flower beds but they’re also all over the brick patio so I’ll get out my Works blower and I’ll clean that up because here’s another tip this is what I try to do in the mornings and that is treat my garden spaces and my living areas kind of like they do at Resorts now what do I mean like that well at Resorts they have Crews that come out they dust off all of the cushions they fluff the pillows they blow off any debris they straighten things up they make sure if anything is toppled over that it’s tidied they will use their little handy blower to clean up anything they will they will um I don’t know what else do they do at Resorts they’ll yeah they’ll just make sure that they’re freshened up that the surfaces are wiped clean and that they look ready for guests and that is what I try to do each morning obviously I have not yet done it here in the back but that’s uh a good tip I think to try to think of your spaces doesn’t take any time at all and it’s Pleasant work in the morning when you love to be outside like I do especially in the cool of the day but I digress my last thing that really we need to do to get Summer ready and that is to switch out all of our cool seasoned veggies and things and in my garden True Confessions these never really took off and I think it was because at that time of year these boxes just didn’t get enough light and I think that the planting mix that I put in there was a little bit too heavy so I’m going to lighten it up a little bit with some vermiculite and some other things before I plant my summer veggies now here is an indication of our weather recently I got all sorts of seed from different sources um select seeds from soite seeds and because I don’t have kind of a seeding mechanism a seating setup here my friend Jen at brics was going to seed all of these for me and they were just big enough for me to be able to plant out and guess what Stuart a huge storm came through toric winds um she had hail damage she had other kind of catastrophic things that kind of wiped them out so I went to bricks and I just got some of these Peppers that they had there I just like the traditional jalapeno peppers I got some more basil I got some Thai Basil I got some red ruffle basil um I’m going to do one of the beds nothing but herbs I got um a spicy Globe I got some time to crawl down the edges I got some more Rosemary I got some sage and I’ll be planting those out along with some of the boxwood basil in front and some other veggies some tomatoes and things that I will plant when I change out my raised beds my raised vegetable beds including that one by the garage window which leads me to a very very smug moment where I can say yes I have a completely cleaned out garage that was my project earlier this week I had somebody help me lift the heavy things put in the screws into the wall put in the hanging mechanism for my tools and stuff and I’m thrilled to have that accomplished another summer thing that you might want to cross off of your list so there you go I’m just surveying the backyard I’m going to spend a pleasant rest of the morning here cleaning up back here I too got some damage on some of my plants we had hail here at the cottage and some of the more exposed things like these new guinean Pati they got a little bit beaten up they’ve got some holes in their foliage a lot of the derium blooms are tired they need to be deadheaded they need to be fed again as do uh you Stuart because you have eaten any of that delicious casserole that we made at the beginning of the program so there you go there’s five things that I definitely think you want to have on your list to get ready ready set it’s summer and some of the products that you might need that I that I definitely recommend to get your best show and live your best life in the garden this summer you guys take care enjoy your Sunday be safe this Memorial Day weekend [Music]