This Week at the Demonstration Garden at Ida Lee

Again, thanks to Irene Mandracchia, the Garden to Table group and the Demonstration Garden leads for providing this information!

This week in the Master Gardeners’ garden at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg the Master Gardeners have been dealing with this excessive heat wave by watering very generously. This watering, done deeply (thoroughly saturating the soil, but avoiding run-off, which is wasteful), helps plants cope with the very high temperatures we have experienced recently.

The Master Gardeners are also harvesting watermelons (which they are growing on a trellis) and tomatoes. The cucumbers and squash have slowed down in production, probably due to the excessive heat.

The bean beetles have destroyed a bed of bush beans and they have been removed and a new bed of bush beans has been planted (it is still not too late to plant bean seeds for a late summer/early fall harvest).

Be sure and keep your vegetable beds as weed free as possible during this time of year as weeds can steal moisture from your vegetable plants.

In the ornamental beds, now is the time to cut back your lavender plants. If you have not grown lavender before it is a very easy and delightful plant. If you prune it back after flowering right from the start you can keep it from getting woody and unsightly. Cut the plant back to about 4 inches from the stem and harvest the flowers and rubber band them together and hang them to dry.You can use them for in sachets or as dried flowers.

Cannas are getting ready to bloom.

Be sure to “dead head” (remove spent flowers) from your ornamentals if you want to keep them flowering.

Happy Gardening and if you have any questions about this information, or have any questions about gardening, please contact the Master Gardener “Help desk” at 703-771-5150 or email us at ex107mg@vt.edu .