June Gardening Checklist for New York, New Jersey & Connecticut

1. Get a Quality Trowel

A garden trowel is like a painter’s paintbrush—it’s the tool that you’ll use most often to bring your ideas to life. Since you’ll use it for everything from planting to weeding to potting houseplants, make sure you have a good trowel that will last through many seasons, even with heavy use. Buy the DeWit Forged Trowel, Fisher Blacksmithing's Planting Trowel, or Sneeboer Half Round Transplanting Trowel. All of these tools will last decades if you take care of them properly.

2. Plant Vegetables in Succession

If you want vegetables in late summer and even into fall, plant crops in succession—wait a week or two between plantings so they mature at different times. Lettuce, kale, carrots, beets, radishes, Swiss chard, herbs, tomatoes, and beans are crops are perfect for succession planting. For more information on succession planting in intervals view this chart from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

3. Plant Peppers and Eggplants

Don’t delay—get these warm-season crops in the ground now. To be successful, peppers and eggplants should transplanted and well into their growth cycle by mid-June. Keep areas around these plants weeded so they get all the water they need to produce their tasty flavors

4. Mulch Everywhere

Take mulching seriously. It can help reduce the amount of time you spend weeding both your vegetable garden as well as other garden beds around your home. Mulch also reduces the strain on plants during summer because it helps retain moisture in the soil around the root zone. When mulching, make sure not to pile mulch around the root flare of shrubs and trees or directly around the base of other plants—this can cause rot. Leave a few inches around the base of trees and shrubs and an inch or so around the stems of perennials and annuals. Also, make sure your mulch is thick enough. A good rule of thumb is to spread 1 to 2 inches of mulch evenly across bare soil. Learn more about mulch.

5. Use Compost Teas

You might have heard about the benefits of compost tea but have you tried them? You should. They are a wonderful way to add nutrients back to the soil as well as build up proper soil chemistry. Compost teas can be used anywhere in the garden when they are certified organic. A few good choices include Sustane Compost Tea Bags or Bu's Brew Biodynamic Compost Tea Bags from Malibu Compost. The tea bag approach is often the least messy options. Fill a five-gallon bucket of water; let it sit overnight with a cloth over the top (you’ll want to keep mosquitos out) to let any chlorine off-gas; then dunk your tea bags as the instructions outline. You can pour compost teas onto soil around plants or use a small pump sprayer to give plants such as tomatoes a foliage feeding.

6. Encourage Pollinators and Wildlife to Visit Your Garden

Even if you don’t have an elaborate wildlife habitat garden there are ways to attract more birds, bees, and butterflies. One of the best ways is to plant more native plants that wildlife love. Some of the best perennials for wildlife include native goldenrod, sunflowers, Joe pye weed, lupines, iron weed, baptisia, yarrow, spicebush, helenium, and cardinal flower. Though they do have the biggest impact on attracting wildlife, this is not a good time of year to plant trees, so hold off until fall or spring.

7. Give Plants a Light Pruning

Now is the time to remove any diseased, dead, weak, or crossed branches of trees and shrubs. Pruning will stimulate new growth and focus the plant’s energy on the right branches. For spring-blooming trees such as lilacs, rhododendrons, azaleas, or dogwoods, trim blooms for bouquets as needed. Wait until blooms have faded before pruning larger sections or branches. Learn more about pruning.

8. Refresh Container Gardens

Unless you very recently planted your containers, chances are they’re ready for a refresh. Remove any plants that are past their prime and either compost them or move them to another area of the garden (you can even save spring-blooming bulbs to use again next year, if you’d like. Learn more about storing bulbs.). Fill empty spots in your container gardens with summer and fall-blooming perennials such as coneflower, black-eyed Susan, Mexican hat, dahlias, or mums. Another idea for refreshing containers is to add grasses to fill in gaps. Ornamental grasses often love the heat that containers provide—just be sure your containers have adequate drainage. For containers in areas with part sun or shade, go with Japanese forest grass, carex, or sweet flag. In sun, plant molinia, feather reed grass, or prairie dropseed. (See Grasses as Container Plants for more.) Proven Winners has a great selection of plants you can buy online and have shipped straight to your door as well as hundreds of container recipes.

9. Visit Inspiring Gardens

New York is filled with amazing gardens-both private and public. Going to the High Line may seem like something for tourists, but locals actually get the best experience since you get to see it in every season. And if you’ve already seen the High Line but it’s been awhile, we recommend checking it out again—it’s only gotten better as it’s aged. Check out the calendar of events to see what they have going on. You may also want to check out one of the botanic gardens such as the New York Botanical Garden or the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It’s also possible to get into private gardens through several tour programs that showcase residential garden design. Check out Garden Dialogues put on by the Cultural Landscape Foundation or Open Days put on by the Garden Conservancy.

10. Grow a Themed Garden

If you’re looking for a more extensive list of chores for the New York area, visit Margaret Roach’s blog and website, A Way to Garden. One of her ingenious ideas is to grow a soup-themed garden with ingredients to grow her favorite vegetable soup—for example, ‘Juliet’ tomatoes, ‘Piracicaba’ broccoli, ‘Aunt Ada’s Italian’ heirloom pole beans, and shelling peas such as ‘Lincoln’ or Mayfair’. When she has extra ingredients, she freezes them so she’s able to make the soup year-round. Visit Margaret’s blog for a complete description of her soup garden.