Add native plants to your landscape

Native plants require less maintenance than lawns, mulch tree, shrub and perennials bed. Once established, they require less water, no fertilizers and no pesticides. An additional benefit is they attract native birds, butterflies and admirers.

Give your houseplants a summer of rejuvenation

Now that nighttime temperatures don’t go lower than 55 degrees, set houseplants out on a screened porch where they’ll get more sun and fresh air. Their time in a new environment will also promote growth and blooming.

In the vegetable garden

In the vegetable garden, it’s time to plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melon, summer and winter squash. Use cutworm collars on tomatoes, eggplant and peppers. Cutworms chew off your plants just above ground level but can be deterred by a simple collar of stiff cardboard or a bottomless can pushed one inch or more into the soil around the plant’s stem.