JoAnne Skelly: Gardeners are busy as bees

This is a gardener’s most active time of year. Here are the tasks I was doing this past week. After getting our sprinkler system fixed, I finally fertilized the lawn with a 21-0-0 fertilizer. I watered the lawn deeply before putting down the nitrogen and then watered it thoroughly afterward to keep the salts in the fertilizer from burning the grass.

I fertilized my flowers too, hoping to encourage more prolific and longer lasting blooms. Any good flower food, or a 16-16-16 will work. There are great organic or traditional products available. My preference is a water-soluble product I add to my watering can.

I pruned the dead flowers off the forsythia right after they finished blooming to allow the wood for next year’s flower buds to develop. I always seal each of the pruning cuts with white glue, like school glue, to keep the beneficial wasps from boring down into the canes to lay eggs.

Otherwise, their boring tunnels kill off the stem. I’m pruning the finished lilac blooms too. The rule of thumb is to prune spring flowering shrubs back right after blooming to get those all-important flower buds coming on this year’s growth for next year’s blooms.

I pruned the dead branches in my old-fashioned wandering roses. I always seal every rose stem I cut with the glue for the same reason as I do the forsythia. I also sterilize my shears between cuts with a spray bottle of isopropyl alcohol to prevent disease transmission.

My irises are in bloom. To make the flowers furthest down the stem open and make the blooming time last longer, I pick off the dead flowers every morning. I always stop to smell the irises because their gentle fragrance is wonderful. Many people don’t realize irises are fragrant.

I spend a lot of time hand-watering. It’s not an efficient way to get water to plants, but it is my Zen time. Some of our trees grow outside the automatic irrigation system, so I visit them once a week with hose-end sprinklers.

I have what I call a cone-head spruce, a dwarf Alberta spruce, that I hose off every day to prevent spider mites. That’s usually the problem with these plants when there is dead or dying bits.

The mites, who thrive in a dusty, dry environment, suck the juice out of the needles. Of course I’m taking care of the birds, washing and filling the hummingbird feeder every few days. Our enjoyable work is never done!

JoAnne Skelly is Associate Professor & Extension Educator Emerita at University of Nevada Cooperative Extension. Email skellyj@unr.edu.