By Kim Riedel
NP Gardening Columnist

June has been a great month in the garden with the flowers blooming, early vegetables coming on and the harvesting of berries. It is nice to have a bouquet of flowers that have come from your own garden to take to a friend or a neighbor to brighten their day. I have been watching the fruit in the trees grow larger and the clusters of grapes enlarging while I am planning the garden that I would like next year. I am planning to add more grass, widen the walkways through the raised beds and open up the area a bit more…even though that means that I need to thin out some of my plants.

With gardens that have not been weeded for a while, make sure you get the weeds before they flower; once they set seed, you can be pulling the plants coming from that seed for years. Always check for insect damage to keep ahead of the pests. To reduce garden pests, try ladybugs and lacewings. An adult ladybug can eat almost 400 aphids a week, and their larvae eat more. I really like keeping praying mantis around my garden to keep the pests down.

It has been great to have the rain that we have had the first of the month. It has really helped with the gardens and the lawns. If rainfall is less than one inch per week, make sure that you water your garden. When your garden is wet, it is best to stay out of it until it dries off a bit since certain diseases are easily spread if the plants are disturbed when they are wet.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.