The Midsummer Refresh

If you’ve stepped outside over the last several days, you’ve probably noticed the hazy skies and poor air quality from the Canadian wildfire smoke. Air quality alerts have covered much of Indiana, and a lot of you have asked the same question: is the smoke hurting my plants?

Fortunately, the answer is generally no. Heavy smoke can slightly reduce the sunlight reaching your garden, but ornamental plants are far less affected than we are — the lower light can even ease heat stress and slow water loss during hot stretches. Unless the smoke sticks around for weeks, your flowers are far more likely to be affected by heat and watering than by the haze itself.

So when the air clears, get back out there. A few minutes of pruning, deadheading, and fertilizing now can completely change how your garden looks through August.

This week’s lineup:

· Monarch Magic Ageratum — why a mid-July haircut brings the butterflies back
· Meet Helianthus SunCatcher — a new sunflower bred to keep blooming, trialed and tested as a Zone 5 perennial
· Begonia Wookie — a fuzzy new begonia that has everyone asking about deer resistance