Your Garden Guy: Put these items on your garden to-do list this week

In general, prune flowering trees and shrubs for up to two months after they bloom. Pruning after this point will cut next year’s flower production.

Add some soothing sound to the garden with a wind chime. Larger wind chimes provide richer tones. Look for quality, and spend a little extra.

Fertilize annuals and perennials.

If your gutters overflowed during the recent rains, it is time to clean them. Clean gutters help protect the plants below -- and your foundation.

After a good rain, it’s a great time to transplant trees and shrubs.

If fire ants are building mounds in your yard, it’s time to treat the landscape with a bait-type insecticide. I have excellent results when I broadcast the entire yard, rather than treating individual mounds. Try boric acid powder as an effective alternative. It takes a little longer, and you will have to treat the individual mounds (a little goes a long way).

It’s still too early for fall mums, unless you just enjoy these plants.

It’s time to start searching for fall blooming perennials. Remember, we are trying to set up the landscape so that something is always blooming!

Todd Goulding provides residential landscape design consultations. Contact him at www.fernvalley.com or 478-345-0719.

This story was originally published August 26, 2015 at 10:35 PM with the headline "Your Garden Guy: Put these items on your garden to-do list this week ."