Summer is the best time to enjoy your outdoor living spaces. A healthy yard and vibrant garden beds let you get maximum enjoyment out of your front and back yard landscaping. Beautiful outdoor landscaping lets you move your summer entertaining outdoors and will increase the value of your home.
While keeping your outdoor landscaping looking its best can be some work, it pays off with a comfortable and beautiful outdoor space. With some practical summer landscaping strategies, you will enjoy your outdoor spaces all summer long.
Americans spend almost $50 billion a year on lawn and garden retail purchases. This includes everything from grass seed to fertilizer to new trees to outdoor patio furniture to gardening apps. With that amount of spending, you’ll want to make sure that you get the most bang for your buck. Learning proper garden and lawn care will pay off in the long run.
Much of your landscaping work will be done in the early spring, but landscaping chores continue into the hot summer months. If you’ve done good preparation in the spring, then the summer months become more about maintenance.
By getting your lawn and garden in good shape from the get-go, you’ll be able to enjoy your landscaping all summer. “A thriving garden can be really satisfying and can provide flowers, fruits, and vegetables all summer long,” say Mallory Micetich, a home care expert.
The heat of summer can be hard on your grass and garden beds. High temperatures stress trees and shrubs. Other summer hazards include hot winds, heavy rains, lightning, and hail. Storm damage can range from broken tree limbs to major tree damage. Your best line of defense against this type of damage is to encourage healthy growth in your landscaping plants.
These tips will help your home’s landscaping look its best. With proper maintenance and good landscaping techniques, you can keep your grass green and healthy, promote beautiful flower growth, and help your trees and shrubs stay healthy all season long. With a lovely lawn and garden, you will be able to enjoy your outdoor living spaces all summer.
Before you begin your summer landscaping work, think about how you want your yard to look and feel. Sketch out a plan that includes your garden bed and landscape plants, as well as any lawn hazards. If you want to add garden plants and flowers this year, consider the colors you’d like in your garden. You can consult with an expert at your local garden center to get advice on the types of plants and flowers you should buy to achieve your vision.
When planting new vegetation, leave enough room for the plants to grow and thrive. Include some potted container plants to add color to your patio. Plan for a mix of perennials, which return every year, and annuals. Native plants and grasses are easier to maintain for the summer and in future years.
While much of your landscape tidying will be completed in spring, there are usually still some cleaning-up chores to do. Spring rains and storms can knock down leaves and blow twigs into your garden beds and gutters. In early summer, a good once-over of your landscaping can clean up any debris.
The best time to cut back your flowering shrubs is in early summer after the blooms have faded. These types of shrubs include rhododendrons, lilac, forsythia, azaleas, and viburnum. Trimming them in early summer ensures that these shrubs can push out new growth during the summer months to come without missing out on the spring blooms. Trimming your shrubs will give you more and healthier blooms next spring.
Most trees can be pruned in the summer. While you can attempt to prune your trees yourself, this task is most often better left to the professionals. Not only can this work be hazardous, but a professional arborist can trim your trees in a way that protects your trees from breakage, pests, and sickness.
Early summer is the best time to divide and transplant your perennials after new growth has emerged. Mounding and other perennials such as poppies, snow-in-summer, iris, coneflowers, daisies, Hosta, daylilies, and black-eyed Susans respond well to early summer dividing and transplanting.
Do this activity on an overcast day, as direct hot sun can stress the plants. Move the divided plants quickly to their new spot in your garden and water well as they get established. By doing this dividing in early summer, the plants will have the whole growing season to recover and grow before fall.
Watering your lawn in the early morning before 10:00 a.m. is best. The cooler temperatures let the water soak into the ground instead of evaporating in the heat. Watering in the late evening can cause disease to take hold. Always avoid watering your lawn during the hottest hours of the day to conserve water usage and help your grass absorb as much water as possible. If you get a good rain shower, you can skip watering to conserve water.
Most lawns need about 1 to 1.5 inches of water per week, either from sprinklers or rainfall, to be drought tolerant. Watering every day is unnecessary and can lead to too much water usage. If you water less often with enough water, your grass will grow stronger and healthier roots. Try watering twice a week for a longer time to encourage deep root growth.
If you didn’t get a chance to aerate your lawn in the spring, you can do this in early summer. Aeration is a process of mechanically punching short holes into your lawn. This allows more water and nutrients to reach down to the roots of your grass.
Aeration is the first step to drip irrigation, which will slowly water your lawn for you. Aeration machines can be rented if you want to tackle this chore yourself, or you can hire an aeration company to get it done.
Summer heat can be tough on your lawn. Applying a slow release fertilizer in summer will strengthen and protect your grass. Summer fertilizer should be applied once between June and August, at least six weeks from your spring lawn feeding.
Mulch placed on the surface of the soil in your garden beds helps retain moisture and keeps weeds at bay. They also make your beds look neat and attractive. The best kinds of mulch to use include wood chips, shredded tree bark, or shredded wood. You can also use grass clipping, which will provide nitrogen into the soil. Be sure that the grass clippings you use are free from weeds.
The summer months bring out a lot of lawn pests. Most won’t harm your landscaping or potted plants, but there are a few harmful insects that need to be controlled. Your best line of defense is to keep your grass well-hydrated and growing well. A dry, stressed lawn is more likely to be attacked by bugs than a healthy lawn. But even in the best maintained yards, pests can take hold.
June bugs, Japanese beetles, chinch bugs, ash borer beetles, spider mites, and European chafers can cause wilting and bare spots in your grass or can harm your trees, with much of the damage coming from the grubs or larvae. If these pests are damaging your lawn or trees, you can apply a commercial pesticide applied either on its own or as part of your fertilizer treatment. A severe case of pest infestation, especially in your trees, may need the help of a professional.
Weeds can sprout up just as soon as your grass begins to grow. Applying a pre-emergent herbicide in spring is your first step in weed control. But weeds aren’t just a problem in spring. They continue to germinate all summer long. You should plan on a second application of herbicide in mid-summer to combat new weeds.
In addition, a good technique for removing weeds is hand-pulling. If you can remove the roots along with the plant, the weed should not grow back. If the soil is loose enough, you can use a hoe or weed-pulling tool to get them out. Be sure to tackle any weed problems before the weeds go to seed, which could increase their growth and spreading.
It goes without saying that you should mow regularly. However, don’t set your lawn mower blades too low. When you cut your grass too short, it becomes susceptible to drying out and insect damage. Taller grass makes for a healthier lawn. If you have any bare patches, seed them early in the summer growing season. If the bare area is very large, consider purchasing sod to fill in the gaps.
Mosquitoes are not only annoying. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), they can also carry diseases such as West Nile virus, Zika, and Dengue fever. Your best strategy to eliminate mosquitoes is to remove any place they can breed. Mosquitoes need standing water to reproduce, so getting rid of any puddles will help reduce their numbers. In your yard, watch for water in old tires, buckets, toys, pots and pot saucers, tree holes, plastic covers, tarps, bird baths, and wading pools. Empty them of standing water as often as possible.
Cleaning up your landscaping is not a one-time activity. You will need to monitor your yard throughout the summer months. Watch for spotted, wilted, or brown leaves or grass. If you spot any fuzzy growth or plant die back, you will need to address it immediately.
If you aren’t sure what’s causing the problem, take a sample of your plant to your local garden center along with a picture of the larger plant. The experts there can help you diagnose the issue and suggest the best treatment.
If your outdoor furniture is ratty and uncomfortable, plan for an upgrade this summer. You can often find inexpensive second-hand furniture at garage sales or sites like Facebook Marketplace in early summer.
A coat of paint or new cushions can make these pieces good as new. Add some throw pillows made of sun-resistant fabric and a cozy quilt. Place an outdoor area rug under your patio furniture to tie it all together into a cozy and comfortable space.
You don’t have to spend a lot of money to add some colorful and interesting touches to your summer landscaping. Try out these upgrades that won’t break the bank:
· Paint your fence with some bright paint or stain for a pop of color
· Add a water feature like a bird bath or a garden fountain
· Install a stone path through your yard and garden beds
· Place solar lighting along your paths and garden borders
· Hang a fun birdfeeder in one of your trees
· Place colorful plant containers on your patio
· Hang a hammock from some trees in your yard or get a stand-alone hammock
· Put a firepit in your yards and surround it with comfortable outdoor chairs
As you clean up and trim your plants in early summer, you’ll generate quite a bit of trash and debris. You could bundle and bag it all up, but most residential trash hauling services put limits on the amount of landscaping debris and branches you can put out at a time. Instead of letting those branches and bags pile up, consider a dumpster rental. You can have a roll off container delivered onto your driveway. This gives you a convenient place to toss all that landscaping debris while you work.
After a healthy growing season for your lawn and garden, you should take some final steps to prepare your yard for the coming cold months:
· Do a final deep watering
· Cut back any dying vegetation on your flowering plants
· Mow your grass for a final time with a higher height setting
· Clean and service your lawnmower
· Overseed any bare patches
· Plan for fall bulb planting
· Cut back any dead branches on trees and shrubs
· Put a new layer of mulch on your flower beds
· Fertilize your lawn one last time
While this may seem like a lot of work, completing these landscaping chores as fall approaches will give you a head start next spring. Your lawn, trees, and shrubs will be in good shape. You will also be able to enjoy a colorful spring as the bulbs you plant will blossom as spring warms up.
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