3 Tasks Not To Do This Week in Your Southern California Garden

Sometimes we are so focused on what TO DO in the garden, we wind up doing things we should leave alone. Here are three gardening tasks you should NOT DO this week if you live in Southern California.

Do not add large amounts of nitrogen fertilizer. Add nitrogen with caution in active beds and near plants as it may activate heat-generating processes in soils. Encouraging growth by adding nitrogen fertilizer adds additional stress to plants already stressed by heat.

Do not discard your seeds. Consider saving seeds from spring-and-summer bolted vegetables and herbs such as arugula, basil, beets, chard, and lettuce after seed stalks are brown and dry; and from warm-season vegetables such as tomatoes. Seeds saved from this year’s plants are likely to produce healthy plants in next year’s garden. For additional articles on saving seeds, see:  Saving Lettuce Seeds After Early Heat Waves; The GardenZeus Guide to Saving Tomato Seeds; and Saving Pumpkin Seeds: It’s Complicated.

Begin the process of saving tomato seeds by removing the seeds from the cavities.

Do not compost the roots of expired plants.  Cut off expired plant stems at ground level after harvest or as plants die, leaving roots in place to feed soil.

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