Summer Garden Maintenance

When the temperature heats up, keep an eye on your vegetable garden.

• When lettuce bolts, or shoots up trying to set seed, it's time to cut the lettuce down.
  
• Harvest peas before they get overripe. If you're growing peas to shell, harvest them when they are nice and plump. If, however, you're growing peas for their juicy sweet pods, pick them when they're nice and thin.
  
• Broccoli reacts to the heat by turning yellow and trying to flower. Harvest it before it starts flowering. Then continue to let it grow and you'll get little broccoli heads off the sides.
  
• Carrots and onions thrive in the heat. Because they're underground, it's important that you let the foliage grow because it actually feeds the vegetable below.
  
• Tomatoes also thrive in the heat, but if overnight lows get too warm, the flowers will fall off and the plant will not be able to set fruit. But don't worry; when the temperature cools once again, the plant will start blooming. And to ensure pollination, anytime you're out in the garden on a still day, just shake up your tomato plants a bit to help spread pollen.

Now, let's talk flowers. If you want gorgeous flowers all summer long, it's very important that you deadhead them. That means removing the spent blooms if they set seed, which slows down the flower production. So, simply give the plant a haircut, and the blooms will keep on coming. The technique for deadheading roses is a little different. You still want to cut off the spent bloom, but it's where you cut that's important. Go down the stem to the first cluster of five leaves and cut the stem at a 45-degree angle.

If you have a water garden, try to cover 60 percent of the water's surface with plant material. Also, by adding barley straw, you'll help prevent algae from growing.

This list of things to do will keep you busy, so on a hot summer day, take off your shoes and take a dip in your water garden.