Control Apple Maggots
Apple maggot adults lay their eggs just beneath the skin of apples. The larvae tunnel into the ripening flesh and ruin the fruit. To control damage, lure the adults away from your fruit by hanging red rubber balls in your trees and covering them with a sticky substance, such as Tanglefoot. When the adults land to lay eggs on the fake apple, they get stuck and die.
If tomato plants get too much nitrogen, they'll produce lots of lush green foliage and plenty of flowers, but the blossoms won't set fruit. You can avoid overfertilizing and still give your plants a boost with a dose of fish fertilizer or a half-strength dilution of liquid fertilizer. You'll keep those ripe tomatoes coming through the rest of the summer.
Practice Good Garden Sanitation
When your veggie beds have finished producing, rake and clean them to remove spent foliage and other debris. Slugs, bugs, and disease pathogens prefer unkempt gardens to clean ones. By removing their favorite hiding places, you'll reduce the amount of insect damage and disease in your garden for the coming crops.
When you've finished harvesting vegetables and it's time to remove the plants, be sure to add them to the compost pile, along with your grass clippings. Keep the pile turned and aerated. If kept moist and well-tended, it will produce more great compost for the garden this fall.
Prune Flowering Shrubs
After flowers are spent, prune back summer-blooming shrubs, such as escallonia and viburnum. Pruning too late in the summer will remove future flower buds and encourage stem growth that won't have time to harden before the weather turns cold. As you're reducing the height of tall shrubs and removing errant branches, be sure to thin excessive growth in the center of the shrubs. This will allow sunlight to penetrate, encouraging the formation of additional flowering branches.