Producing the very best garden calls for a plan. To get you on your way, here is one of our now-famous to-do lists. Read it, save it, and follow up with some action as time and favourable weather permits.
How to save a TON of work this summer.
1 | Dormant spray
Apply dormant spray to your fruit trees, roses, most flowering trees and shrubs as soon as evening temperatures remain reliably above freezing. This may not be any time soon where you live, but we’re giving you fair warning, so there are no excuses.
Dormant spray is a two-bottle treatment that you buy in a box. One bottle contains a refined mineral oil called ‘dormant oil’. Its job is to smother overwintering insect egg casings and prevent the first generation of tent caterpillars from taking over your crab apple tree. Same with aphids on your roses.
The second bottle is filled with lime sulphur, which is a natural disease suppressant. The active bacteria and spores that promote powdery mildew and sooty mould are discouraged by the smell of this stuff, (as are house guests who happen to drop by the same day that you apply it). For this reason, we recommend that you spray it and go run some errands for a few hours. Lime sulphur smells like rotten eggs, but it works.
2 | Prune
This is a great time of year to prune most fruiting trees, especially apples, peaches, apricots and nectarines. The idea is to open up their structure by removing a portion of the branches that grow in the interior of the tree. This gets the sun to shine on the fruit as it ripens and removes some of the top growth, allowing wind to whistle through. Sunshine and breezes encourage evenly ripened fruit, and discourages the diseases and insects that the dormant spray didn’t reach.
It’s best not to prune your pear trees, unless they are unruly or getting in your way. They generally don’t like to be pruned.
However, this is a good time of year to prune your cedar hedge and junipers, too. Shaping them now produces a soft, finished look a month or two later as new growth appears.