Garden and Flowers

Get your lawn and garden ready now for a beautiful summer color. The following are some of the things that will help bring color to your garden this summer.

• Plant summer- blooming bulbs like caladium and gladiolas. set bulbs in a sunny, well-drained area.
• Attract butterflies to your garden by planting dill and parsley because butterfly larvae love them.
• If you have an outdoor place where you like to sit and relax at the end of the day. Consider developing a white or pink color theme for containers or flowerbeds in that area. Light colors illuminate in the moonlight.
• Grow your own salad. Sprinkle seeds of leaf lettuce such as Buttercrunch, Red Sails and Deer Tongue in containers. Be sure to keep them consistently moist. Harvest leaves by cutting them with scissors.
• Fertilize spring bulbs such as tulips and daffodils after they bloom. Don’t remove the leaves because they recharge the bulbs for next year’s flowers. Plant flowering annuals such as petunias, wax begonias or marigolds around them if you want to hide the foliage.
• Stake tall plants like gladiola so that they won’t fall over. Use strips of old pantyhose to tie them up.
• Add fragrance to a garden with annuals like nicotiana (flowering tobacco), nemesia, ageratum, dianthus (pinks), four O’clocks and sweet pea.