Maintaining Wild Tips
by Besa Schweitzer, chapter member
Summer fruits for birds:
To attract more birds to the garden in summer make sure there is a variety of fruit producing shrubs. Cherries, dogwoods, serviceberry, elderberry, sumac, currants, pawpaw, and plums all produce fruit in the summer months. Generally, summer fruits are tastier to us because they have more sugar and less fat compared to berries that last through the winter.
Summer haircuts
Plants that bloom in late summer and fall can be cut back to keep them from falling over or getting leggy. Good dates to cut back plants are between Memorial Day and the 4th of July. If buds or blooms have appeared it is too late to cut back the plant without compromising the bloom. Trimming the plants low promotes a bushier growth. Another way to keep taller plants from falling over is to surround them with shorter grasses to give them support. This also hides their naked legs. Flowering species that respond well to this include aster, Joe-Pye weed, sneezeweed, rose mallow, turtlehead, garden phlox, goldenrod, and ironweed. The grasses include little bluestem and switchgrass. Look for spaces in the garden where selective cutting back of some plants may highlight others that are blooming.
Phlox issues
The phlox may be looking bad this time of year. There are two culprits, the phlox bug and powdery mildew. The Phlox Bug, Lopidea davisi, is a piercing sucking insect that sucks the sap out of the plant. Phlox bug damage looks like light green spots on leaves that gradually wrinkle the leaves, turn brown, and fall off. The phlox bug overwinters in the plant stems so removing the stems can disrupt the life cycle. Powdery mildew is a fungus that looks like a white powder dusting on plants. Infected leaves eventually turn yellow and fall off. Powdery mildew can be reduced by increasing airflow and sunlight to the plants. Keeping your phlox patch open and airy by thinning will help prevent this fungus.
Harvesting Milkweed Seeds
You may be tempted to start harvesting milkweed seeds as soon as the pods begin to form. Don’t do it. Wait until the pods turn brown and start to split before collecting.
About our new Maintaining Wild series:
To help you keep up with your native garden care in 2026 we’re posting a maintenance tip each week on our website and on Facebook. These tips will include native garden specific tasks as well as some basic gardening advice.
A new tip will appear weekly on Facebook, on Friday at 1 pm.
To join the discussion, comment on our Facebook page.
Stay tuned for a new garden maintenance tip each week to help get you out into the garden and make 2026 a year for Maintaining Wild. Let’s have a discussion and share our knowledge!
View all tips on a single page: https://stlwildones.org/maintaining-wild-tips/
