Now that you have those spireas trimmed, you can keep your shears in hand to clean up your daylilies. The dwarf varieties like Happy Returns or Stella D’Oro have pretty much finished blooming for the first time around. They are called repeat bloomers because they will come back into bloom in just a couple of weeks. To encourage that rebloom and to keep them looking clean and fresh, you want to cut out those stems that have finished blooming. Many of the stems will have seedpods on them and you can tell the difference between the pods and buds. The pods are blunt ended and the buds are long and pointed. Remove the stalks of finished blooms as far down as you can, and when you have finished, the plants will look like they did in the spring … we’d all like to look like we did in the spring, wouldn’t we!This is also the time to give your roses a last round of fertilizer for the season. Feeding them after the first part of August encourages new growth that will not have time to mature or harden before frost, and this growth will die back in the winter. Also, be sure to be on the watch for holes in the leaves indicating another hatch of those worms we dealt with in late June. This is about the time we see another round of them, and their feeding does even more damage to the plant now than the first hatch.If you have cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, or Brussels sprouts, the cabbage loopers (again a green worm) are trying to eat the plant so you don’t have to! Broccoli that has been harvested earlier and kept reasonably safe from the worms will make a great fall crop. Often during the summer, small heads form and turn into yellow flowers almost overnight. If you aren’t keeping up harvesting those small heads, keep cutting them off, and as the weather cools in the fall, you will be rewarded for your efforts with a crop of the best broccoli of the season.The worms are easy to control with either a dust or a spray. We carry Dipel Dust, which is a biological insecticide … it is toxic to the worms, but not as toxic to humans. Using a dust or a spray isn’t my issue … getting the application made is. If the leaves are stripped from the plant before you counter the attack, the plant will not have the strength to make that great crop I was talking about earlier. If you have ever-bearing strawberries, now is when you want to start a faithful watering schedule to insure a good fall crop of berries. My new patch is producing great berries right now, and I give them about an inch of water per week, and they are rewarding me for my efforts. Fall-producing raspberries likewise should be kept watered now. The plants are in bloom and watering them now will insure a quality crop of berries later in August.