Gardener's Monthly Checklist For August
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August is no time to relax in the garden. It’s a great time to reflect on your gardening efforts this past season and to complete some necessary gardening tasks.
Keep your late-summer garden looking fantastic with these easy tips:
Audit Your Gardening Efforts
1. Ask yourself and take note of:
- Are you happy with the varieties of vegetables you grew this year?
- Is there something that could have worked better?
- Did the perennials you planted in spring get enough sun or could they benefit from being moved next year?
- Did you enjoy the color and texture of your annual gardens or is there a different plant or color scheme you would like to try next spring?
- In general, what worked well this spring and what did not?
Vegetables
2. August is a great time to harvest vegetables such as peppers, beans, tomatoes, zucchini, corn and cucumbers. Harvesting now will encourage more production in the coming weeks.
3. Planning on growing cool season crops for the fall? August is a great time to direct seed beets, spinach, radishes, and kale.
4. Don’t forget to water, maybe even watering some of your beds two times a day if they are in direct sun and drying out quickly.
Annuals
5. Continue to prune and deadhead your annual beds and containers. This will encourage continued blooms throughout the rest of summer.
6. Want to add some more color to your garden or outdoor space? Look for heat-loving and drought-tolerant flowers to refresh you space. We love Lantana, Angelonia, Petunias and Crossandra this time of year.
7. Inspect flowers for Japanese Beetles. Japanese Beetles can do a lot of damage very quickly. We recommend hand picking them off your flowers daily. Fill a cup with warm soapy water, using a handheld shovel or a gloved finger. Remove the beetle and place into the soapy water cup. Read our blog on the 6 common garden pests in Colorado.
8. Start thinking about how you will transition to fall flowers. You will want to consider cold-hearty flowers in rich autumn shades. We love Mums, Flowering Kale, Ornamental Peppers and Pansies. These will start showing up at your local retailers in early august through October.
Perennials
9. Continue to deadhead your perennials to encourage extended blooming.
10. August is a great time to divide perennial flowers. Perennials such as Hosta, Daylily and ornamental grasses can benefit from being divided and replanted. Use a small handheld shovel to carefully life the plant from the ground. Be careful not to damage the root ball. When the clump is out of the ground, use a large garden knife to cut it into smaller pieces. Then, replant the divided pieces right away.
11. Give one final fertilizer application mid-month. Avoid feeding your plants in late summer as doing so can encourage new growth that likely will not survive the winter. Cutting back on fertilizing now will allow the plants to toughen up before the cooler freezing temperatures hit.
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