Coombsville Cottage Garden Notes, June 2020

Points of Interest for This Month

Summer Solstice (the longest day of the year and official first day of summer) will be upon us at the end of the month, and the seasonal shift is visible in the garden. Here are some interesting plants at the moment:

‘White Swan’ Cone Flower, Echinacea purpurea: Native to the eastern and central North America, echinacea is a welcome guest in our summer gardens. The flowers bloom for several months, providing nectar for pollinators, beauty for the garden and vase, and a boost to the immune system for believers. The seedpods that follow are equally beautiful and great food for finches, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves! Like many plants well suited for dry spells, their leaves and stems are covered with tiny hairs. This “pubescence”, as it’s called, helps the plant regulate water transpiration.

Silver Bush Lupine, Lupinus albrifrons*: Another drought tolerant plant demonstrating leaf and stem pubescence. This California native is showiest in the spring, but we think the gorgeous silvery color and unique shape of its foliage deserves equally high praise!

White Monkey Flower*, Diplacus grandiflorus, formally Mimulus bifidus: Many California native plants enter a sort of dormancy during our warm dry summers. This hybrid has been coaxed into giving an encore to it’s spectacular spring showing with a carefully timed pruning. Plant nerds may be interested to learn that in the 2012 restructuring (based largely upon DNA evidence) of the Mimulus plant genus, our California monkey flower was one of all but 7 species that was moved into a different genus, namely Diplacus. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it, but one can’t fight progress.

‘Black Jack’ Fig, Ficus carica: The heaviest crop of figs comes in late summer on the current year’s growth, but in our mild climate we also enjoy a lighter crop in the early summer on last year’s growth, which you can see is well along. This is referred to the “breba” or the Spanish “breva” crop, sometimes translated as “windfall” or “a stroke of luck”.

Points of Action for Next Month

Your hard work mulching, pruning, and dividing this spring is paying off and there’s not too much to tend to during these sleepy summer months! Here are a few upcoming tasks to keep an eye on:

-Allow lavender to fully bloom and fade on the stem (for pollinators and beauty) then cut for flower stems drying. This early summer pruning will maintain a good shape and extend the life of the plant (more so than a winter pruning).

-Monitor irrigation to confirm levels are sufficient given rising temps but not excessive, paying special attention to root crown which may be susceptible to rot if overwatered.

-Continue to control weeds mechanically (hand weeding in beds, string trimming in buffer zones). Keeping tightly on top of this will dramatically reduce weed pressure next spring and summer.

-Finalize remaining bulb and seed orders for fall and spring planting (this should not be delayed any longer : ).

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