Hand-picked Prime Day garden deals
Hi, guys!
The sweltering, oppressive heat that’s been omnipresent this summer here in my suburban New York garden has reduced my energy levels to that of a slug. Actually, gauging by the holes in my plants, the slugs are probably logging more daily steps than I am.
“Oh, I harvested two zucchini today? The green beans will have to wait until tomorrow. I’m going to lay on the couch and watch Netflix.” This is where I am right now. It isn’t pretty.
But my plants are thriving like Caligula in a Roman steam bath. My tomato vines have never been taller (although ripening may be delayed), my zucchini is out of control, and some of the most damaging pests have been on a month-long siesta.
There’s not much to do in the afternoon except shop — so this year’s Amazon Prime Day is coming along at just the right time.
The annual 24-hour sales event kicks off this year on July 16 at 12:01 a.m. (PDT) and runs through July 17. New sales start roughly every five minutes, offering more than 5 million deals across 35 shopping categories.
It’s enough to make your head spin because unless you know exactly what you’re looking for, it can be challenging to find all the price cuts in a given category. So, I’ve again rounded up what seem to be the best gardening and home sale deals.
One catch: You must be an Amazon Prime member to shop the sales. But no worries if you’re not – you can sign up for a cancellable 30-day free trial.
You can see my picks for the year’s best gardening deals here.
Stay cool, everyone!
📬 Ask Jessica
DEAR JESSICA: I have a rose bush with dark purple leaves in my flower bed. It produces yellow roses. I never planted it, nor have I ever seen anything like it. What do you think it might be? —George L. Leifer, Long Island, New York
DEAR GEORGE: I can’t be 100% sure, especially without seeing its flowers, but your plant looks like a rare, yellow-blooming redleaf rose (Rosa Glauca ‘Yellow’), which flowers in early summer (the standard has tiny, single, pastel-pink or pinkish-white blossoms).
It’s easy to grow, relatively drought-tolerant and produces beautiful hips after the flowers fade, so most growers don’t deadhead it.
The low-maintenance shrub has foliage that varies from blue-gray to deep plum, with more dramatic leaf color in part shade but better flowering and disease resistance in full sun). It’s the only rose prized more for its foliage than its flowers.
The shrubs grow to 6-8 feet tall and 4-6 feet wide and are hardy in zones 2-8. It’s also considered deer-resistant.
Got a gardening question? Ask it here.
💡 If you do one thing this week…
Check that your mower blades are set to 3” high for cool-season grasses (1-2” for Zoysia and Bermuda; 3 1/2-4” for St. Augustine). Grass needs some length to photosynthesize and thrive.
👏 Sunday shoutout
“Is it me, or do the weekly blooming perennials make the time seem to fly? This is what’s flowering in my garden these days,” writes reader Cindy Florman.
There’s nothing like growing your own bouquets!
📰This week in my Associated Press gardening column
I write a weekly gardening column for the AP, so you might have seen my byline in your local paper (or news website) — wherever in the world you happen to be. In case you miss it, I’ll post the most recent here every week.
THIS WEEK: How a heat wave can actually help your garden (and, yes, some downsides, too)
LAST WEEK: Keep your kettle whistling all year long by growing and making your own white, green, black or Oolong tea. Here’s how, step-by-step.
BEFORE THAT: How to identify and safely remove poison ivy
ONE MORE: You don’t have to live in the tropics to grow peanuts
You can read all my AP gardening columns here.
📚📺🎵 Random things I enjoyed this week
📺 I finally watched “Pearl,” the prequel to “X,” which details the title character’s murderous, psychopathic origin story. I liked it, but it’s not for everyone (I feel like I say that a lot 😂).
🚇 I took a day trip to Flushing, New York, where I grew up, with a childhood friend—and boy, has the town changed. For one, it’s much cleaner than it was in the 1970s and 80s (as can be said about most of NYC). And it’s now regarded as “the world’s largest and fastest-growing Chinatown!” It was largely unrecognizable, but we enjoyed amazing roast pork buns and Peking duck — and trying to remember which storefronts used to be where.
Let’s be friends! Follow me:
@jessicadamiano on Facebook
📧 How’m I doing?
I welcome your comments and suggestions, so please send them along — as well as any topics you’d like to see covered and questions you’d like answered in the Ask Jessica section.