IT IS JUNE. Everyone has a pretty garden with flowers. I want one!
CAN I PLANT NOW?

Not for free. Only if you buy potted plants with big root systems. So for a few thousand bucks, you can have flowers, bushes, vines, tree with a few days of easy work in JUNE. But you are at the FREEBIE GARDENING WEBSITE. So my idea is you start composting now, start planting in AUGUST or SEPTEMBER (if you have no freeze).  In colder areas, with a real winter freeze, you gotta START in SPRING!  Then, you can do A HUGE GARDEN with absolutely no money. But Summertime? That's really hard. A GENIUS gardener would have a hard time now. WHY? It's oven baking hot out there! Soil is parched. You'd have to buy a truckload of fine humus, plant store plants. Costs THOUSANDS! Well, if you buy from a mushroom factory, they have to give away their soil every few weeks. 150$ for a truckload of great, black, moist soil. Still you have to buy plants at HOME DEPOT. There's the money!

If you have no freeze in winter time, then there are scores of different COOL WEATHER plants can get planted in a month or so, after heat diminishes, like August or SEPTEMBER. These hardy customers "live over" in zones 9 and l0, tolerate even the 37 degree coldest nights folks call winter in Florida, Texas and California and they bloom all winter long and bloom even harder in SPRING. Many bulbs, annuals, Perennials and Biennials "winter over" just fine as we have no fierce freeze here in the 9 and 10 zone but in other  states,  colder states, you can only garden in a greenhouse then. Hardy Dutch bulbs will bloom early, Feb, March. That's about it.

Warm states get this wonderful second spring in SEPTEMBER. That deadly heat isn't there for the next six months. So concentrate on building soil now with compost, with your neighbors' garden clippings, especially grass. I trot their green barrels right over to my compost pile which is along front driveway, do it all winter long. By Spring you'll have l00 bags of rich soil, if you'd purchased that soil as potting soil, it would cost 800$. Then in SPRING, you plant free seeds and cuttings. You can start the cuttings now under plastic. Four poles, a painters plastic tarp. Staplegun. Sunny southern side of house, right next to a warm wall. GREEN HOUSE.

YOU MAY be able to make cuttings now. I create tables on south side of house under shade of fruit trees, and do cuttings all summer. Bright shade is what I have there. Rooting hormone made of crushed willow twigs soaked in water.

In September of this year we can start our garden with these cuttings & with Perennials and Biennials which are handled the same way. By that I mean planted  in autumn, they do some flowering in spring but better is their  second year. Best is their third!

What you want to do now is start the soil. Start compost piles. Collect everyone's yard clippings all summer, their cut grass. Autumn leaves, too. Striate it with chicken poop from local egg farm. My supermarket had local eggs in boxes with some guy's name on it, I phone, went over with buckets.

Talk to local gardeners, watch what they're doing, get clippings you can root. Read --- the local paper has a gardener with a website, he's a great resource. Read gardening books and mags at library. And at the 99c store, start buying that 17c a package seed for annuals, perennials and biennials. Read the seed packages carefully and see what timing  they suggest and what kind of plant you have. TIMING IS EVERYTHING.

NOW, that leaves one kind of plant group you may be able to plant in JUNE if you have a deft hand. Summer ANNUALS! Annuals are usually planted after all danger of frost is gone. MARCH  21st to end of APRIL. They only have one year so they rush to complete their job fast. Heat may not deter them as much as say, BIENNIALS which live two years and are slow starters. PERENNIALS live for a dozen years.

But in this June heat, YOU CANNOT plant anything unless you have table in bright shade meaning tall trees, and spray the entire area fifty feet high several times daily to cut the wilting heat. Turn those trees into a refrigeration grid.

Most certainly you cannot plant it directly in the ground as snails, sow bugs eat almost everything small and tender. The exception is a prickley baby squash plants. So you can try tomatoes and hope for a long autumn with out freezes. Try squash, gourds, if you use shade cloth you can start babies at the height of summer.

So get plastic flats at the nursery. Fill with the best soil possible. Make your own humus. That takes six months but it's the best stuff to use. All your garden waste, wet down for six months until it's a mountain of worm full soil. Set the sown flats on tables under trees in dappled shade. Pure sun would fry the seedlings.

Sterile soil mixtures just don't do right, I find. So you've got these seeds in your flats. Keep everything high on benches or tables. I cut a ping pong table into FOUR  SEPARATE TABLES! Put legs made of lumber on the edges that didn't have them. That is for growing seeds/flats.

I set them in semi shade or dappled sunlight as babies don't like full sun. The important thing is that Snails cannot get up there. Problem is cats can and they sit on flats. So stick lots of sticks in them. sticking up like a palisade. THAT MAY deter a cat that wants to lie down.

We have a SEASONALITY problem. It is blasting hot now in JUNE. You have a real hard time starting little wee tiny seedlings in a blasting hot oven, won't you? SO, you must keep them in semi shade, on tables away from snails, and HOSE down the whole area in morn, daytime, repeatedly to keep all branches of trees, moist to keep humidity in the air or AIR blasts them even if sun doesn't. BUT you cannot spray leaves of trees after 4 pm because they will mold. Apricots, peaches, nectarines, roses, squash all mold if damp when sun sets.

While it is difficult to next to impossible to start babies NOW, it is possible. DEFINITELY not out in beds, in sun. But in flats, up on tables, in semi shade, dappled sunlight, like lanai with bamboo roof, like under a tree, on a table, MAYBE/ YOU MUST keep humidity around them daytime ONLY. Any humidity post four pm invites WILTING thru microbial ferment on them. Damping off it's called.

As you plant each packet of seed in the flat,  read up on that flower  in a garden mag or catalogue or book. They give you tricks for each plant! All plants are different.

BECAUSE depending on what kind of plant it  is........... the procedure changes! BIGTIME. You may get lucky, grow them to adolescence, no direct sun, plenty of moisture in air and in root system by day, no moisture whatsoever at night. (as hot dark places invite mold.)

BUT ANOTHER danger day comes when you transplant your adolescent plant to the ground. You must TENT THEM WHEN YOU TRANSPLANT TO  GARDEN. Get a torn sheet, staple it to four sturdy stakes to give them milder heat/sun. Keep it on as long as you can. Cats will be enthralled so keep them in the house with AC on or they'll tug at the sheeting.

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