• Compost – Composting container size depends on the space you have available. It can be as small as a sweater plastic box to a series of bins similar to those at the Arboretum. For more information request UK Extension Service pamphlet HO-75 or google Home Composting: A Guide to Managing Yard Waste to download it.  Cornell University: cwmi.css.cornell.edu, go to Composting(bottom of the page), Home Composting.
• Garden – Continue to spray roses for black spot and powdery mildew. Bag black spot foliage on the plant and soil and destroy. Powdery mildew on lilacs not harm but looks bad. Control it with rose fungicide. Cut Liatris, to enjoy now and later as dried material for fall wreaths. Remove most of the foliage and place in a container without water. Order lilies and plant as soon as they arrive.
• Pour left-over coffee(without cream, milk, or sugar, and unflavored) around acidic plants to add nitrogen to the plants. Dilute it if using it to water acid-loving houseplants to prevent build-up of acid. Do not water more than once a week.
• Lawn – Dig dried patches for grubs. If more than ten per square foot are found, treat with a fast- acting insecticide. If your leaf blower needs replacing, purchase one that also vacuums and mulches the leaves.
• Trees and shrubs – Prune out or hand pick bagworms. By now insecticides are not effective.
• Plant evergreens. Before planting trees and shrubs, fill the hole with water, and saturate the plant’s root ball. Once the hole has drained, plant so that the root ball is level with the ground. If your automatic irrigation system or the soil is slow to drain, plant slightly higher than the ground level. Mulch, but no more than three inches and three inches from the trunk.
• Vegetables – Compost or till under spent vegetable plants. For larger gourds, but no more, pinch the growing tips when fruit is set. Continue planting seed directly in the ground for a fall harvest. Dry onions for two weeks before storing.

Garden – Continue to deadhead flowers. Snap daylily spent blooms late afternoon or evening so that you will wake up to a neat garden. Recycle spent bloom into the compost. Herbicide sprays drift even on calm days. Apply weed killer by using a painter’s trim roller. Porous plant containers dry faster than plastic and may need watering more than once a day.

Hummingbirds – Change feeder sugar water every three days during the summer, using white cane sugar (Domino or C&H), only. Hummers do not like beet sugar. The Hummingbird Society states, “Do not use any other sugar – not turinado(golden-colored raw sugar), raw, powdered(it contains starch) brown, or organic – and never use honey or artificial sweeteners. Spring water is preferred, but most tap water is acceptable.” Honey produces a fungus that clogs their throats resulting in death.

Monarchs – Whether you raise Monarchs in container to release, or observe them in your garden inspect their caterpillars for the tachinid fly eggs. The yellowish mass on their backs will eventually kill them. To destroy the eggs, Monarch Butterfly Garden recommends rinsing the caterpillars and then gently rubbing off the eggs. It will not harm the caterpillars.

Trees – Inspect trees for breakage, splitting and cracks from high winds and rains. Cut damaged into the healthy, solid wood, or back to the tree collar. The collar is a series of rings found where limbs grow from the trunk. The collar cells will scab over the cut. Do not cut into it or flush with the trunk. Painting or other artificial treatment will seal in insects and disease.

Trees that have lost half of their limbs should be removed.

Check for tree borers that appear in spring and summer. Insecticide treatment timing is critical as larvae enter the tree, 10-14 days after hatching treatment is ineffectual. Indications are frass(sawdust), round holes in the bark, and tree limbs dying from the base upwards.

Visit the Wallis Arboretum’s Butterfly, Entrance, Children’s and other gardens throughout. Come enjoy. Share the adventure with children.

Birds – Filling bird feeders can be messy. Measure how much each feeder will hold fill several self-sealing bags, or gallon milk jugs and mark for which feeder. As a feeder needs filling use one of the pre-measured containers.

Garden

• Remove rose blackspot foliage from the plant and surrounding soil. Spray foliage top and underneath, and replace the soil of container grown roses. Destroy foliage and soil. Start a blackspot program.
• Divide hosta and plant in afternoon shade location. Varieties that are deep green and have a blue cast need dappled or full shade.
• Plant marigolds, lavender and other highly scented plants to deter deer and rabbits.
• Hummingbirds love pineapple sage’s red flowers and sweet fragrance.