5 ways to improve your garden this week, June 1-6

1. Compost with the most

If you are able, start a compost pile for mulch to use in your garden and flowerbeds – there’s nothing better than homemade compost to enrich the soil or grow container plants or mulch your plants – and keep down weeds. Use grass clippings, leaves, shredded paper and newspaper, fruit and vegetable debris, coffee grounds and just about anything organic except meats and feces from meat-eating animals. Chopped items compost faster than bulky ones, and in hot inland areas it all works better in a semi-shady spot. Add a handful of high-nitrogen plant food and some fresh steer manure as an “activator” to get it going well. Build it up to a height of three or four feet to generate enough heat to eliminate pathogens and non-beneficial insects. Occasional watering and weekly turning will result in a rich, crumbly, clean-earth-smelling product usable in two or three months.

2. Water ways

As the weather becomes warmer and drier, it is necessary to water most fruiting and flowering garden plants carefully and regularly. However, this is the time to taper off on the irrigation of California natives and other drought-tolerant plants. And stop watering succulents.

3. Go deep

Continue planting summer vegetables. Plant tomatoes deep – in fact, so deep that only two inches of the leafy tops show above the soil. Seriously. The buried stem will develop additional roots to support the plant – and make more and better tomatoes. Go ahead and put in some squashes and okra. They’ll come on strong during the heat of the summer.

4. Flower power

If your bougainvillea plant just grows without flowering, it is getting too much water. The remedy: let it dry out almost to the point of wilting. Then water it only enough to keep it alive. A thirsty bougainvillea blooms like crazy. You can also trim back the long, non-flowering branches part way, and they will grow flowering stems sooner.

5. Sweet solutions

You can still grow your own sweet potatoes this year. Shallowly plant small-to-medium sized tubers about 12 inches apart in sandy, well-drained soil – in an area where they get full sunlight from morning through mid-afternoon. Water them in well with a half-strength solution of a balanced fertilizer. They’ll soon sprout and grow and produce new tubers in the soil for harvesting in November or December.

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