As this strangest year keeps plodding along, our gardens beginning to wane a bit in this mid-summer heat. Vegetables and flowers may be yielding a bumper crop, but your garden may not look as picture perfect as you imagined it to be. Plants are maturing, setting their fruit and seed, or even looking a bit worn. Foliage may begin to yellow; flowers start to slow down and sometimes plants just die. If your garden has any of these symptoms, here are a few perk up tips to keep it looking great the rest of the summer.

Jenny Uglow, British biographer, historian, critic and publisher has a quote that is so appropriate for our times right now - “We may think that we are nurturing our garden, but of course it’s our garden that is nurturing us.” We are spending a lot of time at home right now and when we give our gardens some attention, they can add to our well-being in this time of great stress and fear.

We are all optimistic that the soil that we have in our gardens will do the job we ask of it – grow beautiful, healthy plants.  But really most soils in Seattle don’t provide the basic nutrients for growth.  As plants grow, they need to absorb nutrients and leave the soil less fertile or heavy rains wash them away.  By applying fertilizer, you are putting back the lost nutrients to ensure that your produce and flowers will be bountiful in the future.

We are all optimistic that the soil that we have in our gardens will do the job we ask of it – grow beautiful, healthy plants.  But really most soils in Seattle don’t provide the basic nutrients for growth.  As plants grow, they need to absorb nutrients and leave the soil less fertile or heavy rains wash them away.  By applying fertilizer, you are putting back the lost nutrients to ensure that your produce and flowers will be bountiful in the future.