Hello Friends, Neighbors, Fellow Gardeners,
Happy July 4th! We wish you a happy and safe Independence Day! In June, Mill Creek Towne Garden Club members had a farewell luncheon for one of our longtime members, Lynn Hughes. Some photos from our luncheon are included here. Here are some garden tips, educational opportunities, and videos for July. A lot of gardening events are announced on Facebook as well as on our website. Some upcoming events/resources include a Gardening Tech at A Glance at the Benjamin Gaither Center in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County Tastemakers Trail, Annual Farm Tour & Harvest Sale, Volunteer Gardener Opportunities with Montgomery Parks for SSL Hours, Montgomery Park’s – Flora & Fauna Program, Montgomery College’s Home and Garden Lifelong Learning classes, American Horticultural Society’s Great American Gardeners Webinar Series, and more! These events will be hosted as online or live events.
Planning Tips
- Mark and photograph your bulb plantings now, while they are still visible.
- Plan where fall bulbs will go.
- Order spring-flowering bulbs to arrive for planting this fall.
- The heat of summer is here. Time to start doing chores during early morning or evening. Take a break during the hottest parts of the day. Leave the big projects for this fall. For now, concentrate on maintaining the beds you’ve already established and nurturing your new plantings.
- Check out gardening books from your local library to read on vacation.
- Start or update your garden journals.
- Read a good gardening book or magazine.
- Plan who is going to water plants during your vacation.
- Volunteer at a local public or historic garden.
- Plan for 2024 with these Free resources: Landscaping with Native Plants by the Maryland Native Plant Society, Plant Invaders of Mid-Atlantic Natural Areas by the National Park Service, Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia Reading Room. Visit our Online Gardening Resources page for more helpful online resources.
- Buy a good gardening book or magazine subscription for a gift for your favorite gardener.
- Have a question about gardening? Check the University of Maryland Extension’s New Maryland Grows blog for garden tips.
MCT Garden Club Farewell Luncheon for Lynn Hughes
In June, the MCT Garden Club had our annual summer luncheon at Fontina Grill. The luncheon included lunch, a gift swap, and a farewell to one of our members, Lynn Hughes, a Mill Creek Towne resident for 27 years, who is moving to Gettysburg, PA to be closer to family. Lynn has been in the club 25+ years serving as social chairperson, vice president, and 8 years as president!
Join Mill Creek Towne Garden Club!
- Are you interested in gardening? Perhaps you’re a beginner, looking to learn more, or an experienced gardener interested in sharing your experiences and learning from others?
- Are you interested in making your home and community a more beautiful place to live?
- Are you interested in getting more involved in your community and getting to know your neighbors better?
Maryland Grows Blog
In weekly posts on MD HGIC’s blog, learn about pollinator conservation, growing native plants and food, and how to solve plant pest and disease problems.
MD HGIC Video Tips
Our Extension experts are sharing one-minute video tips to help you in the garden this summer. We’re talking about pest management in the vegetable garden, tree and lawn diseases, native plants, mowing lawns, and more!
For more information, please visit:
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What can Master Gardeners do for you?
- Help you select and care for annual and perennial plants, shrubs and trees.
- Determine if you need to test your soil.
- Provide you with information on lawn care.
- Identify weeds, beneficial and noxious insects, and plant diseases and remedies.
- Teach you how to use pesticides, mulch and compost.
- Guide you in pruning trees and shrubs.
- Provide you with options for managing wildlife.
- Provide you with gardening resources.
- Help you submit a plant sample for diagnosis
Plant Clinics are held at several sites in the county on a weekly basis and at special events such as garden festivals and the county fair. Regularly scheduled Plant Clinics are located at public libraries and farmers’ markets throughout the county as well as at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase. There are also clinics three days per week at Brookside Gardens. The busiest season is April through September, but some clinics are open year-round. Bring your plant samples and questions to one of these locations in Montgomery County, MD (see link below to find a location near you):
https://extension.umd.edu/mg/locations/plant-clinics
UMD Home and Garden Information Center: Ask a Master Gardener
Do you have a gardening question? Our Certified Professional Horticulturists, faculty, and Master Gardener Volunteers are ready to answer – year-round!
See below to ask a master gardener a question on the UMD Extension website:
New Gardening Books
See our list with recently published books. This cumulative list for 2023-2024 serves as a great resource for holiday gift ideas. Visit our Gardening Books Resources page for gardening ideas.
Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi’s new book “Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands” (photo above) is one of the books in our July 2024 garden books list.
Online Gardening Resources
Local Farms
#LocalIsTheNewNormal #BuyLocal
- Support Our Local Farmers – Join a CSA and have fresh local produce delivered to you!
- Visit a local farmers’ market.
How to Support Farmers and Safely Shop at Farmers’ Markets
Montgomery County MD Food and Beverage Guide
The 2024 MoCo Food & Beverage Guide is here! The Guide from the Montgomery County Food Council is available online – delicious baked goods, prepared foods, condiments and more. The craft beverage list grows each year and find two dozen local and amazing farms:
Download Montgomery County’s Office of Agriculture 2024 Farmers Market Flyer to find a farmer’s market near you.
Support Our Local Farmers – Join a CSA and have fresh local produce delivered to you!
CSAs are seeing record numbers of subscribers http://ow.ly/eiQT50zD5lW – find your farmer here: http://ow.ly/jbO250zD56M
CSAs can take many forms, but essentially they are community supported farms in which members contribute to farming projects, usually by way of membership fees, in exchange for fresh, local produce. The concept came to the United States from Europe in the 1980s. They are a great way to take advantage of fresh, locally grown fruit, vegetables, herbs, and more while supporting nearby farms. Each one is different, some offer pickup locations in urban areas, some offer only farm-based pickups.
There are multiple CSAs located around the County offering a wide variety of products. CSAs begin taking sign-ups for spring and summer seasons in the early part of the year, and they tend to fill up FAST! Know of another CSA not on our list? Let us know! Montgomery Countryside Alliance also maintains a list:
http://www.mocoalliance.org/community-supported-agriculture.html
Check out the revised list of Mid-Atlantic native plants for pollinators and beneficial insects, from the Xerces Society.
Flowers and Groundcovers
- Don’t fertilize plants that slow down in the heat, but keep them watered. Fertilize lightly plants that are blooming heavily.
- Cut back spent stalks on common daylilies.
- Check your container plants daily and keep them well-watered.
- Gently clean up the garden.
- Divide and cut back bearded irises.
- Water thoroughly, especially if you receive no rain for more than seven days.
- Stake and tie-up any tail-growing perennials such as phlox or delphiniums.
- Take cuttings from azaleas, boxwoods, and camellias to start new plants.
- Feed your roses and new plantings with slow-release fertilizer sparingly.
- Check for black spot on your roses – remove and discard any affected leaves in the trash, never back into your garden or in your compost – apply fungicide with Neem oil every two weeks during the growing season.
- Inspect your garden from powdery mildew. If seen, prune back perennials to create needed circulation.
- Hand-pick Japanese beetles or shake them off over a bucket of dishwater. Early morning is a good time to catch them, while they are still drowsy.
- Annuals are now hitting their peak. Keep them well-watered and add a little liquid fertilizer every few weeks to keep them going until September.
- Pinch back asters, mums, salvias, Joe-Pye weed, and other late-season bloomers to encourage bushy, not leggy growth.
- Deadhead spent blooms on your annuals and perennials to encourage re-flowering.
- Weed. Especially look for fast-growing vines such as honeysuckle, autumn clematis, bittersweet, wild grape, Virginia creeper, and poison ivy.
- Pests to watch for: Aphids, spider mites, whiteflies, deer
- Diseases to watch for: Powdery mildew, Rust
- See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.
- For a list of native plant resources, visit: https://extension.umd.edu/hgic/topics/native-plant-resources
5 Million Trees Initiative
Maryland’s goal is to plant and maintain 5 million native trees by 2031. There are various ways you can get involved – plant trees and register them — or volunteer! A number of tree-planting assistance programs are available at the municipal, county, and state levels.
THIS is the SUPERPOWER of YOUR KEYSTONE NATIVE PLANTS.
- No exotic plant could ever achieve this.
- Want butterflies? Feed the caterpillars with keystone plants!
- Exotic plants will never support as many different species of caterpillars as the Keystone Natives can.
- Find your keystone native plants here by zip code.
If your zip code doesn’t give you enough information try zip codes of the nearest larger town or city. LINK: https://www.nwf.org/NativePlantFinder/
Trees and Shrubs
- Prune foundation shrubs and trees to be no closer than 1 foot from the house.
- Prune and thin shrubs that have already flowered.
- Water slowly and deeply if summer is very dry.
- Thin out small trees and cut off any suckering branches growing from the bottom root ball.
- Hold off on planting any new trees and shrubs until the summer heat has passed.
- Prune Wisteria.
- Contact an certified arborist to have your trees’ health inspected.
- Directly after blooming, prune flowering shrubs and vines.
- Check often and water newly planted trees if they don’t pass the finger test (stick your finger deep into soil – dry? Water!)
- If you MUST mulch, remove old mulch then add 2″ – 3″ shredded pine or pine needles, keeping 3″ away from trunk.
- Fertilize plants not getting ready to bloom, if needed.
- Prune broken, dead, or diseased branches.
- Keep an eye out for bark damage from rabbits and deer.
- Spray broadleaf evergreens with anti-desiccant to prevent dehydration.
- Use fallen leaves for mulch or compost.
- Look out for any Poison Ivy vines, which will turn crimson in the late fall and be easy to distinguish from other vines.
- Remove Ivy, Pachysandra, and other vine-like groundcover from under shrubs.
- Mulch or compost healthy leaves.
- Soil test established trees that have not been performing well.
- Put diseased leaves, pesticide-laden grass clippings and weed seeds out for recycling rather than the compost pile.
- Spray with dormant oil to decrease pest infestations.
- Remove dead and dying trees.
- Pests to watch for: Eastern tent caterpillar, voles, and deer.
- Diseases to watch for: Gypsy moths, sawfly, azalea lacebug, webworm, spidermites, leafminers, caterpillars, adelgids, scale, aphids, borers, bagworms, and Japanese beetles.
- For more tips, see UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.
Vegetable Planting Calendar
Download vegetable planting calendars from University of Maryland Extension, in English and Spanish. This page also has a link to a frost/freeze date calculator.
Herbs, Veggies, and Fruit
- Water deeply when needed.
- Remove finished plants.
- Cut off bottom, yellow foliage on tomato plants.
- Harvest regularly from your vegetable garden to prevent rot and waste.
- Harvest onions when tops die back.
- Harvest strawberry beds daily.
- Pinch back any straying strawberry runners.
- Pick blueberries at a local pick-your-own farm or visit a local farmer’s market.
- Direct-sow vegetable seeds.
- Harvest herbs to use in salads and summer dishes.
- Start planting heat-tolerant fall crops (Malabar spinach, Swiss chard).
- Sow seeds of fall crops such as broccoli, turnips, cauliflower, etc. in late July.
- New fruit plants – keep watered their first spring, summer, and fall.
- Hand-pick cabbage worms from cabbage and broccoli.
- Thin seedlings.
- Apply dormant oil spray to fruit trees.
- Pests to watch for: Asparagus beetle, aphids, cabbage worms, corn borer, corn earworm, cutworms, Japanese beetles, and tomato hornworm.
- Diseases to watch for: Fungal, bacterial, viral diseases.
- Here are some more UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips.
Lawns
- Move in the early evening and cut off no more than one-third of the grass height at one time. Leave clippings on the ground to provide nutrients.
- Sharpen your lawnmower blade.
- Test soil if you haven’t already.
- Dethatch if necessary and plug aerate BEFORE applying weed control.
- Clean yard of all leaves and other debris.
- Turn your compost pile.
- Diseases to watch for: brown patch, and red thread
- Pests to watch for: Grubs
- See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more details.
Indoors/Houseplants
- Give your houseplants a quarter turn every few weeks.
- Keep all houseplants out of drafts and away from heat vents.
- Keep succulents and cacti on the dry side.
- Repot root-bound houseplants and start fertilizing them.
- Change water in cuttings started last fall and add 2-3 pieces of fish tank charcoal.
- Do not over water house plants.
- Check on your container plants daily and keep them well-watered.
- Remove old leaves, damaged stems.
- Pinch out growing tips of leggy cuttings and plants that are overwintering.
- Clean the leaves of your indoor houseplants to prevent dust and film build-up.
- Pests to watch for: aphids, spider mites, mealybug, and scale.
- See UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips for more information.
Read and follow label instructions on all pesticides and herbicides.
Start the year off by minimizing your #risk to #pesticides and always #ReadTheLabel! Learn more here: http://npic.orst.edu/health/readlabel.html
Questions about your label? Call us! 800-858-7378 M-F 8am-12pm PST
Indoor/Outdoor Insect and Wildlife Tips
- Check indoors for termites and winter ants.
- This is the perfect time to apply grub control.
- Caulk and seal your outside walls to prevent insect entry into your home.
- Check for any stagnant water mosquito breeding grounds, especially your gutters. Dump out any water that sits stagnant for more than three days.
- Add Mosquito Dunks to any standing water in your yard such as birdbaths, downspouts, plant saucers, and gutters.
- Check your plants at night with a flashlight for any night-feeding insects like slugs.
- If you find slug damage, set out beer traps or Sluggo pellets.
- Watch for insect and disease problems throughout your garden.
- Put suet out for birds.
- Keep bird feeders clean and filled.
- Switch your deer deterrent spray.
- Set out traps for mice, moles, and voles.
- Watch for: eggs, larvae, overwintering stage of many species, carpenter ants, flies, stink bugs, termites, rabbits, raccoons, groundhogs, deer, mice, moles, snakes, squirrels, and voles.
- For more information, see UMD’s HGIC Garden Tips.
Source: University of Maryland’s Home and Garden Information Center (HGIC) and the Washington Gardener.
See more tips from HGIC:
Gardening Tech at A Glance with Senior Planet Montgomery
TUESDAY, JUL 9 • 11 AM – 12 PM
Benjamin Gaither Center
80A BUREAU DRIVE
GAITHERSBURG, MD 20878-1431
Phone: 301-258-6380
FREE and open to the public
Want to improve your green thumb or make gardening easier? Technology might be the answer. Join us for an introductory lecture on gardening tech. We’ll explore popular apps that help with garden design, plant identification, and care. Plus, you’ll learn about smart irrigation systems, sensors for outdoor gardens, and indoor gardening devices.
Tastemakers Trail
Did you know that Montgomery County has a number of fantastic wineries and breweries? You can make a day of it–or even a weekend–by planning your trip through Visit Montgomery.
Many of the establishments are family friendly, so you can bring your kids while exploring the diverse breweries, cideries and wineries in the County.
Annual Farm Tour & Harvest Sale
Saturday-Sunday, July 27th and 28th
Twenty-four farms will be participating in this year’s Farm Tour over the course of the weekend.
You can also explore the County’s Ag Reserve and/or Farms anytime by checking out 3 self-driving tours: Grape & Grain Tours, Farm-2-Feast Tours, and Revive the Sunday Drive!
Montgomery Parks – Hot Volunteer Opportunities!
| Are you looking for a way to complete your Student Service-Learning Hours? Or are you looking for a way to give back to your community? Check out these gardening volunteer opportunities: Gardener | Various dates and times | Ages 16+ | Agricultural History Farm Park Gardener | First Tuesday of every month beginning May 7 through October 1 | 9 am to 1 pm | Ages 21+ | Silver Spring Intermediate Neighborhood Park Crop Production Aide | Various dates and times | Ages 18+ | Pope Farm Nursery Grown@Pope Volunteer Coordinator | April through September | Ages 18+ | Pope Farm Nursery Grown@Pope Workdays | Various dates and times | Ages 16+ | Pope Farm Nursery |
| Trail Ambassador Program Two sessions: June 17-28 or July 8- July 19 | Ages 15+ Various Locations Work with your peers to complete hands-on trail improvement projects in the morning and enjoy a group ride in the afternoon to celebrate! Spots are limited so be sure to apply here! |
Montgomery Parks – Flora & Fauna Program
Montgomery Parks is pleased to offer a new online learning series for adults that teaches you to recognize the most common species of Montgomery County. Led by our expert Parks staff, you’ll practice identification skills, learn the best ways to see wildlife, and be empowered to practice conservation in your own neighborhood. Montgomery County is a biodiverse place with so many interesting plants and animals, and we can’t wait to share them with you!
Go to Montgomery Parks event calendar for a complete list of special events and programming and to learn how to sign up using ActiveMontgomery. Visit the Spring 2024 Montgomery Parks Program Guide
Montgomery College Lifelong Learning Home and Garden Classes – Summer 2024
See Schedule of Summer Classes below:
| Home and Garden | |||||||||
| Course | CRN# | Course Name | Hrs. | Mode | Start Date | End Date | Days | Times | Loc |
| LLI022 | 11824 | Orchids:How to Grow and Bloom | 3 | Structured Remote | 8/10/2024 | 8/10/2024 | Sat | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM | A-DL-WD&CE Virtual-Remote |
| LLI022 | 11826 | Orchids:How to Grow and Bloom | 3 | Structured Remote | 8/10/2024 | 8/10/2024 | Sat | 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM | A-DL-WD&CE Virtual-Remote |
Let’s Talk Gardens
Thursdays 12 to 1 p.m.
Smithsonian Gardens
“Grow” your gardening know-how! Our free online gardening program, Let’s Talk Gardens, covers a wide range of topics presented by our own professional staff, as well as guest speakers.
And we encourage you to watch videos in our Let’s Talk Gardens Video Library.
