Hi everyone! Welcome to Kellogg Garden's Youtube Channel, I'm Kim,
and today I'm going to take you through my garden and show you all the benefits
of preparing for a summer garden; But first, make sure you hit the subscribe
button and the notification bell so you can always get great content.
I basically start preparing for our summer garden in January and that's when I sow the seeds
in the greenhouse, starting with the snapdragons and the sweet peas, and then we're hardening
all the seedlings, we're planning them all. There's dividing to be done, putting down mulch,
all kinds of things. So, let me take you through and I'll show you the benefits of doing all that
before the summer season starts. This is what the raised beds looked like in the dead of winter.
I sowed my seeds in the greenhouse, starting in February
and they stayed through here until the first part of May.
Here I am in May transplanting all the seedlings and then this is about a month or so later.
And now this is what it looks like today. So, we have our snapdragons
which is the star of the show. Our zinnias I have three different varieties of them,
and the bees just love everything here. Apricot Lemonade and Cupcake White Cosmos.
And then we have more zinnias here.
Every fall I transplant my outdoor geraniums into individual pots and store them in the greenhouse
over the winter after the last freeze. I'll harden them off for two weeks before transplanting the
original plants and the cuttings I've taken back into the outdoor containers and window boxes.
And, they look as beautiful as ever, and I've actually saved so much money by doing this
year after year. Dividing perennials each season are important for so many reasons.
It keeps the plants healthy by giving them more space for the roots to grow and absorb both
water and nutrients, so you can tell here I really didn't do that great of a job.
I should have divided these a lot more. It just pretty much took over the whole entire area. so
in the fall, I'm going to divide them into three clumps.
By dividing the perennials you're also keeping the plant center from dying in the middle.
This one was divided, but it probably could have been divided more. See how the middle
is just bare right here, and it's just kind of falling over. So, I probably
will divide that even more, next year. Here's more sedum autumn joy that was divided.
Echinacea is another really good perennial that you can divide.
I just love all the bees. They love
this coneflower. As you can tell, I'm giving you more don'ts than do's today. The plox here,
and the echinacea (little bee)
were both bought last year, and I put them in one of these containers in the raised beds,
and I did it because something had died, or something had
gone through the season. And then, I took them out in the fall, and I transplanted them. But,
I didn't give them enough space, so it's really important because again
you'll have that fungus and mildew, and they're just competing with each other there's not enough
room for the roots to grow. I pinch back my dahlias early in the season when they're about
knee height, and this encourages the plant to produce more branches near the base and
that increases the amount of flowering stems and it makes the stems even longer in length.
You can tell on this one I didn't pinch it back as much as I should have. After the last frost date,
I split my dahlia tubers. I take them out of the ground and split them,
I removed the diseased and rotted tubers to keep the rest of the clump healthy, I remove the mother
tuber since most of the energy is already spent. You can definitely tell the dahlias that I split
early in the season, and which ones I didn't. So, this one I did not split, and it is really tall
and I can guarantee you when I go and get these dahlia tubers
out of the ground next year, it'll be really hard to lift them out of the ground.
I shared this back in April when lucy was getting a little suntan,
we were digging out the dahlia tubers, and I just wanted to show you here what an extensive project
it was. Putting mulch in your garden beds not only makes everything look pretty and fresh but
there are so many other benefits. So, every April we bring in a fish compost to the garden beds,
and it helps to retain moisture. It acts as a barrier against evaporation from the heat
and the wind and it holds the moisture into the soil. You don't have to water as much and that's
why I really love mulch or compost, but the other thing is that it helps prevent weed
germination and growth. So, it'll block any weed seeds from the light so they won't germinate.
Shortly after I planted these seedlings here in the raised beds, my husband and I went through
and added a netting, and it actually really helps to make sure that the snapdragons don't fall over
in the heavy wind or the rain. Now for next year, I'll make these stakes even taller so I can keep
raising the net. When I started the net was down to here and then as they grew I raised the net.
So, in a perfect world, I would have them even higher, so that's something that we're
going to do but we just screwed on the wood stakes here, so we could add the netting.
Sticking and netting perennials is not only important to protect
the blooms from rains and wind, but also to keep the stems really long and straight,
so they're great cutting flowers. Here's an example of me not staking my daisies.
Sweet peas are a beautiful flower, and they're great for cut flowers.
A lot of people say they can't understand why
mine are so straight, and it's just because I tie them to the trellis.
So, every couple of days I actually go out here, you can see, there are different layers,
and I continue to tie them up so they'll be really straight and tall, and again they'll
make beautiful cut flowers. This one needs some help right, here so I'll be tying those as well.
And the cosmos, I did more of a corral, because it was a whole clump, a big group; So I took
the twine, and I started it here at the end of this trellis and worked it all the way around,
and as they grow you can add another layer of twine. So, you can tell I've done it three times
as they've gotten taller. Thanks so much for following along, if you liked this video,
make sure you tap the like button and if you have any comments or questions make sure you
drop them in the comment section. Until next time, happy gardening!