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Gardening tips for late summer

In August flower gardeners reap rewards from the hard work they did in spring and can relax knowing that most of the ornamental garden work can be left until weather cools in September. Even dead-heading flowers is an option.
Garden
Late summer is the time to water your garden and lawn less. It’s also not too late to sow seeds of a few things: arugula and corn salad are especially useful because they mature very fast and are fairly slug resistant.

In August flower gardeners reap rewards from the hard work they did in spring and can relax knowing that most of the ornamental garden work can be left until weather cools in September.

Even dead-heading flowers is an option. People who want a second crop of shrub and perennial flowers will get busy shearing back roses, buddleia, phloxes, lavenders, globe thistles, anchusa, penstemons, yarrows and toadflaxes But people who hope for rose hips or seed for future planting don’t even have to do that.

In August petunias often start to grow long and lanky. It’s fine to shorten them. They’ll be pathetic stumps at first, but before long they’ll be shooting back, budding and flowering.

Soon Autumn crocus (Colchicum) bulbs will be in nurseries. These aren’t cheap, but they’re such good value because they’re pest-free and spread and flower reliably in sun with very large pink-purple crocus-type blooms.

Gardeners who keep their garden mulched can relax the frequency of watering except for moisture-loving plants such as hellebores or mints. There’s no problem either in abandoning lawn watering for a couple of months. Lawns green up fast when rain arrives.
Any water saved from the lawn, will be needed in the vegetable garden because moisture is needed to help beans, zucchinis, squash and tomatoes root and leafy crops get larger. Any crop that’s partly self-pollinated, such as beans, will also benefit from a swoosh of the hose over the plants to get their pollen moving around.

Tomatoes grown under cover also need a good shake for pollination. These are greedy feeders and moisture lovers. So are squash. Bush squash need very rich nourishment especially if they’re in a big container – fish fertilizer, sea soil or a balanced (all numbers the same) organic fertilizer are all suitable.

Rural gardeners often have space for vining squash, which seek out their own food if allowed to run because auxiliary roots form on the wandering stems. The leaves are quite beautiful, like huge earthbound water lilies. Heirloom squash are often vining. Fruit of some kinds can be large and very heavy.

Garlic doesn’t need watering now, nor do shallots because both are in the run-up to harvesting. August is good timing to harvest these, especially before the stems dry and disappear. Invisible stems mean a few root clusters also vanish. In spring they reappear in inconvenient places.

With some crops, harvesting fits nicely with composting unusable plant bits. Every time a broad bean plant is stripped of its last beans, it’s easy to pull the plant and pile it ready for compost. If you’re armed with a pruner, the last crop of summer raspberries can dovetail with cutting fruited stems.

It’s not too late to sow seeds of a few things: arugula and corn salad are especially useful because they mature very fast and are fairly slug resistant. Green onions, radishes and spinach can also be sown now.
My father, who gardened in South Surrey, used to plant peas in the last two weeks of July, calling it his “silly” crop because whether it ever matured was always dicey. But planting pod pea seed gives you a harvest a week earlier than shelling peas do.

Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden questions. Send them to her via amarrison@shaw.ca.  It helps if you add your city or region.