Easy tips for tending to summer plants

Keep your summer garden looking fresh and neat by removing yellowing foliage and spent flowers.

Cutting back more vigorous perennials can help keep your border from looking overgrown. Cut individual leaves or stems off at the base to reduce the size of the plants without having them look pruned.

Some perennials, such as astilbe and coneflowers, have flower heads that are interesting when they dry and provide seeds for birds. You may want to leave those spent flowers rather than removing them. Goldfinches visit my coneflowers in fall and eat the seeds.

Make note of tall perennials, such as lilies, that have flopped and need staking, so that you can install a support system next spring before the plants actually need it.

The gladiolus produces a large, showy flower spike that lasts for several days, whether in the garden or in a vase. The blooms open in turn from the bottom of the flower spike toward the top.

To get the most out of gladiolus blooms indoors, cut the flower spike when the lowest blossoms have begun to show color. Place the cut stem in water as quickly as you can.

You can stagger your planting of gladioli over a period of weeks in the spring to provide cut flowers over a longer period of time.

If the new growth at the tips of your pine tree's branches has turned brown, a disease called Diplodia tip blight may be the problem. It is too late to spray fungicides now, as infection occurs in the spring. Prune out dead tips in dry weather to reduce the spread of infection; fungus spores thrive in moist conditions.

Disinfect your pruners in between plants when pruning out diseased branches. I use Lysol disinfectant.

• Tim Johnson is director of horticulture at Chicago Botanic Garden, chicagobotanic.org.