August seems to signal the "beginning of the end" of the gardening season. Vegetable gardens are heavy with fruits while leaves and stalks start to look exhausted. Flowers and foliage have cycled through peak blossoms and beauty, and the hotter days seem to have taken their toll.
Your garden is hardier than you think! There are plenty of gardening tasks for August that will keep your flower and vegetable gardens going longer, as well as opportunities to get a head start on next year's garden plans. Here is a Garden-To-Do List for the sultry month of August:
- Keep Harvesting! There's always something to make with zuccini.
- Plant a fall crop of peas and spinach
- Pick herbs for fresh use and for drying. Harvesting will keep them
growing longer as well.
- Order spring bulbs for planting and forcing.
- Check that your mulch hasn't decomposed and add more as needed.
- Spread a mid-season layer of compost or manure.
- Keep deadheading but leave some to self sow.
- Start saving seeds and taking cuttings.
- Remove any diseased foliage now, so it doesn’t get lost in the
fall leaves.
- Cut back the foliage of early bloomers to revitalize the
plants.
- Prune summer flowering shrubs as the flowers fade.
- Trim and feed hanging baskets to prolong their beauty.
- Take pictures of your garden at peak and container
combinations you’d like to repeat.
- Begin dividing perennials.
Start with the
bearded iris.
- Plant trees, shrubs and perennials now, so they can take root
and keep them well watered.
- Plant your fall-blooming crocus and colchicum so they’ll bloom
on time.
- Start moving houseplants back indoors so they get used to
limited sun and humidity.
- Feed citrus trees after harvest.
Source: http://gardening.about.com/od/summerinthegarden/a/AugustToDo.htm
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