Once your bleeding heart begins to turn yellow and brown, it’s fine to cut it back right to the ground.

You can fill in the empty spot in your garden with hot-season annuals, which should be on sale by now at your garden center.

Just remember where you’ve got bleeding heart, so you don’t accidentally dig into the roots this fall when you’re planting bulbs.

Perennials: Meticulous rose care includes deadheading repeat bloomers and fertilizing your roses with a complete rose food spread around the base of each plant according to label directions. When deadheading, clip dead blooms back to a healthy shoot or an outward-facing bud. Clean up pruned twigs and leaves immediately, especially if they show signs of disease. Pick up debris and toss in the trash, not the compost pile.

Flowers: Shear back overgrown plants to encourage new blossoms. Fertilize every other week. The excess rain will wash out the fertilizer.

Vegetables and fruits: Tomato blight is rampant as the wet weather continues. Remove diseased leaves unless the plants are too far gone, then the whole plant should be discarded in the trash, not the compost. Spores can survive the winter. Tomatoes should not be planted in the same area next year or where potatoes were grown. Dry fully grown herbs. Regular harvesting encourages bushy growth and helps prolong the plant’s life by keep it from flowering and going to seed.

Trees and shrubs: Prune vines such as wisteria and climbing hydrangea, taking off shoots that bear faded blossoms and cutting back nonblooming stems just above the start of new growth. Last call to prune birches, cherries, lindens and walnuts now that new growth is fully developed. Give the yew hedge its annual pruning. Create beds around trees and shrubs to protect them from lawn mower damage. Keep the beds mulched until fall, then plant them with flowering bulbs and perennial groundcovers.

Lawns: Watch for disease caused by excess moisture. Make sure the automatic sprinkler is off.

Houseplants: Pinch plants so that they will be well branched when brought indoors.

General: Try one or two of the new deer repellents. Keep a record of their effectiveness. Deer management is described well at the Web site of the Institute for Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook:www.ecostudies.org. Or concoct your own mix from recipes on the web. Homemade concoctions may have limited effectiveness but are certainly less expensive.
Susan Henry

From Pam Freeman at the Cary Institute:

I haven’t been very happy with what I’ve done in recent years for a couple of cement urns by the front door—too busy, too many colors.

This year, I decided to go with all foliage, no flowers. I knew I wanted some mix of pale green or gray and dark red, to play with the colors of the gray-green clapboard siding, bluestone chimney and walkway and the red front door.

I started with two licorice plants and two dichondra (Dichondra argentea ‘Silver Falls’),

and two red cordylines, one for each container. Dichondra is the one on the lower left. It’s a great cascading plant, perfect for hanging baskets, too.

Left to their own devices in the tropics, red cordylines will grow into full-fledged trees, topping out at 20 to 30 feet.

But for us in the Hudson Valley, cordylines are just fun annuals that dress up containers very nicely. Their spiky wine-red leaves add lots of drama and height to any garden pot. By the end of the summer, they will grow to about 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide.

Known botanically as Cordyline australis ‘Red Star,’ cordylines are also known as cabbage trees or cabbage palms. ‘Red Sensation’ is another good variety to try.

Here’s how one of the urns looked on May 23, the day I put the containers together. I was able to rip apart the dichondra with my hands and spread it around the edges.

Read more of this entry »

Email from Wave Hill about August activities:
“In This Issue

“August Events  |  Hudson River Qaudricentennial   |  Membership  |  Garden Programs  |  Art Programs  |
Hudson River Quadricentennial

“This summer and fall, Wave Hill presents a series of dynamic programs to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s exploration of the Hudson River. Join us for readings, walks, concerts and contemporary art exhibitions.

SAT, Aug 1  Exhibition Reception:
The Muhheakantuck in Focus, Audrey Hasen Russell and the Tree Museum FREE
Meet the artists and curators of this summer’s exhibitions. The Muhheakantuck in Focus explores the relationship between the First Nations and the Hudson River and their engagement with the Europeans.

SUN, Aug 9   Writing the Hudson: Novelists–Considering the River FREE
Novelist and Brown University professor Carole Maso leads a discussion with Mary Beth Hughes, Dave King and Paul Russell, who read work that celebrates contemporary life on the Hudson.

Art Workshops

THU, Aug 6, 13, 20 & 27   Artists’ Circle
Participate in open-air studio sessions. Wave Hill provides easels and magnificent surroundings, as well as a facilitated critique.  Open to all levels.  Read more of this entry »

Aug. 6
North Salem: Conversations with Expert Gardeners. Listen to and ask questions of local gardeners. Free. Noon. Ruth Keeler Memorial Library of North Salem, 276 Titicus Road.  914-669-5161.

Aug. 14
Cold Spring: Farm Tours. 90-minute tour of the farm and gardens. Reservations. Free. 3 p.m. Glynwood Center, Glynwood Road and Route 301.  845-265-3338.

Aug. 22
Yorktown Heights: Planning a Fall Garden. Topic: learn about varieties and techniques for extending the growing season. Registration. $5. 10 a.m.-noon, Hilltop Hanover Farm and Environmental Center, 1275 Hanover St.  914-962-2368.

An article by Lynden Miller in Fine Gardening: “The Only Shrubs You Need to Grow”

Lynden is one of the best gardeners around. She redesigned the Ladies Border at the NY Botanical Garden, the gardens in Bryant Park and the ones on campus at Columbia. And the Conservatory Garden in Central Park, with Pepe Maynard of Bedford. Lynden gardens in Conn.

I’ve heard her speak a couple of times. She’s a great advocate for public and urban gardens. Her son, Gifford, was president of the City Council, then ran for mayor.

I got a nice note from Alison Lazarus, a first-time gardener in Harrison, with an update on how her new garden is growing. I’ve got a nasty groundhog of my very own, so I’m totally sympathetic.

“Hi Bill,
I thought I would send you a mid-summer update. We’ve had an
eventful July. We had a tenacious and voracious groundhog get into
the garden and do some serious damage.

I’ve sent a few pictures of some of his activities. He decimated the
lettuce, broccoli, brussels sprouts, spinach, yellow beans, peas,
spinach, cucumbers and melon.

No more carrot tops.

Brussels sprouts decimated.

Lettuce to the core.

He did this all over the course of a few days. We kept adding more defenses but nothing worked until—-we bought a Hav-a-Heart trap. Put in a few apples and voila, 2 days later we caught our culprit red-footed. (Don’t worry, we released him in a nice woodsy area a little further up county).

Since then the lettuces and melons are coming back, Brussels sprouts
are trying and I’ve bought a few replacements for some of the other
plants.

On the plus side, I’ve attached a couple of photos of my Tuesday
night harvest.

The berries are delicious. We are eating them as fast as we pick them. I harvested my first roma tomato tonight. The little yellow tomatoes are my favorite so far.

I’ve got early blight on some of the tomato plants as well as
branches that are too heavy with fruit and splitting. As I told you,
I didn’t really do a great job of pruning and staking my tomatoes
this year and will have a better understanding next year.

I’ve also noticed some white flies near the tomatoes—got to deal
with those this weekend. And I think I’ve got powdery mildew on my
zucchini. Just when I thought things were getting easy as the
weeding has wound down, now the pests begin.

But we are enjoying the harvest in the meantime.

Cheers,

Alison”

That Tuesday night harvest looks fantastic! Nice work. Any other first-timers with updates? Email me at wcary@lohud.com or add a comment here.

I’ve been trying to shape up an old stand of lilacs for the last three or four years.

As you can see, they had gotten very leggy — and unproductive. Fewer and fewer blooms every year.

After they bloom each spring, I’ve been cutting back about one-third of the old woody stems every year. If you take out more than a third of the plant all at once, you may kill it.

Here’s how the whole stand looked after pruning a few weeks ago. You want to have new growth and foliage from the ground up, not just at the top. By cutting back the top of the plant, you encourage new shoots from ground level.

By doing this, you also let more air and light in, for better circulation and less powdery mildew.

Ideally, you want to prune lilacs (and most other spring-flowering shrubs) within six to eight weeks after they bloom. Otherwise, you’re cutting off next year’s flowers. The buds for next spring’s flowers begin to form this summer.

I had to take a saw to this guy.

Here’s my discard pile. Don’t be afraid to be pretty aggressive with lilacs.

A link to a fun piece by blogger Billy Goodnick, from Fine Gardening.

Adding structure to a cottage garden, from Fine Gardening.