Welcome to Garden Zone, a monthly newsletter for anyone interested in gardening. ​​It's produced by Extension Master Gardener volunteers in Mecklenburg County. View in your browser June Garden Tasks Summer officially arrives on June 21st! Get ready for hotter temperatures! ✳️ It's time to remove leaves that have turned brown on most spring bulbs. ✳️ For perennials such as phlox, shasta daisy, purple coneflower, and rubeckia, remove old flowers to encourage re-bloom. ✳️ Fertilize roses after the first blooms with a rose fertilizer or slow release tree/shrub fertilizer. Continue to remove dying leaves and stems. ✳️ It's also time to plant warm season crops -- like sweet potatoes and okra. Wait until after June 20 to plant peas and fall tomatoes to avoid certain pests that attack these plants. ✳️ Lightly side-dress vegetables that are beginning to yield produce with a complete fertilizer. ✳️ Treat now if you see scale, spider mites, lace bug, leaf miner, spittlebug, or leaf hoppers on euonymus, azalea, camellia, pyracantha, gardenia and photinia. ✳️ Monitor your plants for Japanese beetles. You can either ignore some damage or apply a pesticide (follow label directions). ✳️ Prune non-blooming evergreens by July if they need to be reshaped. ✳️ Watch for powdery mildew on crepe myrtles and roses, and apply an appropriate fungicide when needed (follow directions). ✳️ Trees and shrubs planted within the past couple of years may need additional watering during our hot summer months. The Great June Divide! After three or four years of sleeping, creeping, and finally leaping, plants are in their robust glory and can be divided. Spring flowering plants and bulbs like azaleas, viburnum, iris, and daffodils are ready to split in early June. Here are a few easy steps to do this. Plan and prepare. Have sharp and clean tools to make cuts. Water the plants deeply the day before dividing. Have pots or new locations ready so plants don’t dry out. Take cuttings of azaleas, spirea, and viburnum. Choose the soft stem of new growth and make a sharp angled cut about 4-6 inches from the mother plant. Remove leaves from the bottom half of the cutting, moisten the cut, and dip in root hormone. Push the cutting into a small pot filled with loose planting media. Mist the cutting daily to keep it constantly moist. After four weeks, small roots will grow and, in another month, they are ready to transplant. When spring bulbs have blossomed and green leaves are brown, mature bulbs can be divided. Gently lift the bulb and break off small side bulbs. Replant immediately (discard any diseased bulbs). Irises are divided similarly. Lift the clump and remove dead flowers. Break the rhizomes at their joint either by hand or cut with a sterile knife. Discard rhizomes with worm bores or dead sections. Dig a shallow hole or trench and replant so the top of the rhizome is visible. Keep moist but avoid over watering or mulching which can cause rot. Division rejuvenates a plant and encourages new growth and blooms and makes friends and neighbors happy as you share the bounty of your garden. Photo courtesy of UNCC Botanical Garden Beauty or Beast? Most of the time, we gardeners focus on what is beautiful in our gardens and landscapes. But, every once in awhile, something odd, curious, strange, scary, and downright ugly catches our attention. And right now is one of those times. Meet 'Rotney the Magnifiscent' who resides in the UNCC Botanical Gardens greenhouse. Rotney is a titan arum (Amorphophallus titanium) commonly known as the corpse flower. Native to the rainforests of Sumatra, it has a jaw-dropping size (up to 10' tall) which makes it the largest inflorescence in the world. While there is no annual blooming cycle, every few years Rotney decides that it is time to put on a show ... and what a show it is! People rush from far and wide to watch as the bloom emerges, opens, wilts, and eventually collapses all within 24 to 36 hours. The last bloom at UNCC Botanical Gardens was in June 2020 but our fingers are crossed that this will be the year to bloom again. The hideous 'dead body' scent also makes it one of the world's smelliest flowers. Wondering why this plant has such a terrible smell, we discovered that the odor of decomposition attracts carrion beetles and flesh flies which are Rotney's native pollinators. There are only about 1,000 of these plants growing in the wild, but botanical gardens worldwide have planted specimens to ensure its survival. This is truly one of the most unusual plants you will ever see and, if you hear that Rotney is ready to bloom, it just may be worthwhile making the trip to witness it. Foodscaping “I BELIEVE THAT HOME GARDENING CAN TRANSFORM OUR COMMUNITIES, IMPROVE AND PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICES, AND SERVE AS AN IMPORTANT LOCAL FOOD RESOURCE.“ Brie Arthur Foodscaping is a way of integrating vegetables, fruits, herbs and other edibles into our landscape gardens. Rosalind Creasy started this edible landscaping movement back in the 70s and, more recently, Brie Arthur has made it her career goal of keeping the momentum and information surrounding this topic going. Brie has become synonymous with the term Foodscaping. She has written a book called The Foodscape Revolution, has taught numerous courses through NC State and given an abundance of talks around the country on this topic. She is hoping to spread the message that those underutilized areas of our garden space can be filled with edibles year round. Gone are the days for most of us of expansive backyards with room for large vegetable gardens so why not use the space you have and intersperse edibles? Envision strawberries, cucumbers, melons or nasturtiums as ground covers; blueberries with azaleas, camellias and hydrangeas (acid lovers); lettuces along borders; grape arbors; tomatoes, colorful peppers and eggplant mingled in sunny spaces; and vegetables and herbs in flower gardens. If you are replacing a tree in your yard, why not consider a dwarf fruit or nut tree (benefits you and wildlife). Embrace the ability to interact more with the space you have been given and reap the rewards of growing your own food. Interplanting also brings a diversity of plants to your garden and should eliminate the need for pesticides, inviting a variety of insects including the predatory insects (the good guys) that take out the pests (the bad guys). Why not make the ordinary extraordinary? This may be just the year to try this new approach. Photo: Edible Landscape of Will Hooker, retired Professor of Landscape Design at NC State University Need More Information: https://stanly.ces.ncsu.edu/2019/06/grow-an-edible-landscape/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvqG6-LhEzQ Determinate Tomato photo courtesy of NCSU Determinate vs Indeterminate Tomatoes Did you know that there are two different types of tomato plants? That’s right, determinate and indeterminate. Determinate tomatoes or bush tomatoes are limited, biologically, to a certain height and are better suited for pots or container growing. The determinate tomato plant will usually stop growing once it reaches about 4 feet tall and has set its terminal buds. These tomato plants have a short and defined production season which means all fruit produced will come within a four to five-week time period. This makes determinate tomatoes perfect for canning and making fresh sauces. The smaller, round tomato cages work well with the determinate tomato plants. Indeterminate tomatoes, also known as vine tomatoes, can grow up to 12 feet high or more. This type of tomato plant will produce fruit right up to the first frost making them ideal for the fresh tomato lover. One may find that one needs a tall and sturdy tomato cage when growing indeterminate tomatoes. Examples of Determinate Tomatoes: San Marzano, Roma, and Celebrity Examples of Indeterminate Tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Brandy Wine, and Sungold Second photo Indeterminate tomato plant courtesy of EMG Gina Tadle Praying Mantis Didn’t we all learn that Praying mantises were good to have and ate bad bugs? People even buy them to help their gardens, right? It turns out that this is not true. Furthermore, there is a native one and two invasive ones, one from China and a less common one from Europe, and the invasive ones are problems. The Chinese mantis is most common now as it is larger and can outcompete the smaller locals. It is also the one that is sold commercially. Surprisingly, NCSU says that neither one is a beneficial predator. Many people are now recommending that if you come upon the egg cases of the invasive Chinese ones, they should be destroyed by cutting them open and putting them in water, or feeding them to your chickens! “Chinese mantids have no demonstrated value in pest management. This is because they are ambush predators and will attack anything within reach that they can subdue, but do not actively seek out insect pests. They are non-selective and have been documented attacking beneficial insects, hummingbirds, snakes, and even small mammals. In this regard, they can be considered pests.” (NCSU) The egg cases are quite different, with the native one being longer and narrower. The Chinese ones are foamier, wider and seem cut off at the bottom. The Carolina mantis is smaller than the Chinese ones and the wings don’t go to the end of the abdomen and the face is wider across the eyes. Some people point out that the Chinese ones appear to have vertical lines between their eyes which the Carolina ones do not. Photos 1 & 2 Courtesy of NCSU Photo 3 Courtesy of Alonzo Abugattas Photo 4 Courtesy of EMG Jean Wilson Like our content? Share it with friends and neighbors! They can subscribe here . Follow us on Social media The Mecklenburg Extension Master Gardener Volunteer (EMGV) program operates under the Mecklenburg Center of the NC Cooperative Extension Service (NCCES), a part of NC State University