Stink or Sink – How Fertilizers Help Your Garden Grow

You have lawns. You have flower beds, and in other places, you have garden beds. You even have beds of vegetables and herbs in a raised kitchen garden. You go! Look at the amazing bounty you enjoy with all those gardens and flower beds!

As we go through summer, you notice that some of your beds are withstanding the heat better than others. This seems pretty normal; you don’t feed them all on the same schedule or the same stuff. Wait – you do? Let’s get in touch with our Divine Lawns team and see if they have any advice on fertilizers and what kinds we should use.

The consultation!

Your Divine team is awesome. It was really important to them to tour your landscape and beds and point out some areas that might have a bit of trouble by fall.

Regular Checkups

Your beds are checked and maintained every week. Weeding, mulching, pre-emergents, and cleanups are all done on the established schedule. In addition, your trees are fed fertilizers and other nutrients regularly, and your beds are checked for pests (none!) and weeds. A quick check of everything keeps them healthy and gives your landscaping team ideas about making your landscape easier to maintain.

Divine inspirations

When you sit down with your Divine Lawns team, you will notice how prepared they are to get on the problems you’ve been seeing. And look there! Fertilizer for the garden beds!

Some commercial fertilizers might help, but you need very little to be effective – your Divine lawn maintenance team will bring you a small bag to spread around but will fertilize the beds that seem to need it.

Summer weather – having a fling!

Some of the problems with the flower beds have nothing to do with fertilizer – the summer weather can be hard on flowers. So the Divine Lawns garden pro has reset the watering schedule for the flower beds, so they get a little more in the early mornings to last through the day. Watering just before the sun can save your plants and grass from sunburn when the water droplets act like lenses.

Mulch ado again?

Mulch might be contributing. Your team will inspect the mulch in the flower beds to ensure it’s not degrading too quickly and replace it where necessary. Usually, mulch for the whole landscape is replaced or partially replaced in the fall, before the first snowfall. Sometimes circumstances cause schedule changes, though, so refreshing the mulch where needed seems like an easy fix.

Compost and water

It looks like the plan for the container gardens is to start small – start using some kitchen waste to get a compost going. Compost can be blended into the soil, enriching it and helping new plants to a healthy start.

You can buy worms for your compost at most garden shops or fishing outfitters. You don’t have to have worms, but that means turning over your compost by hand every day. It’s your choice, of course.

Holding it together

Some of the plants may need props or little guides to grow. This is especially important when the plants start to fruit. Tomatoes, for instance, have such heavy fruit that it’s not unusual for branches to sag or break from the weight before the tomato can be harvested. There are different-sized “cages” that you can get at any garden area of a department store or hardware store. These are also good for some other plants with heavy fruit.

Herbs and spices

Your herbs are also doing well, although some have wilted a little. Since these have drip irrigation, we’ll up the water and see if the plants are just a little more thirsty with summer coming on. We can always add some compost to the soil if needed, but look for the simplest solutions first!

Fertilizing during hot weather

In general, fertilizing in hot weather isn’t a good idea. We are adding small amounts of “natural” fertilizer to the soil with extra water. This will hopefully solve the problems your Divine Lawns team has noticed. They will keep an eye on things to make sure progress continues.

While summer rolls on, you and your Divine Lawns team continue to monitor and sometimes change the water or fertilization schedule for each group of plants. With a modern irrigation system, you can do most of the changes from your phone.

Keep on going; it’s all looking Divine!