Garden Maintenance Tips for August

Cut back perennials that have finished blooming. They’ll look neater and many will surprise you with a second bloom when prevented from setting seed the first time.

Keep picking your vegetable gardens. By picking, you are preventing your plants from going to seed so they keep producing. If you have more vegetables than you can use, offer it to friends or call a local food pantry and ask for their drop-off days. 

Replant this month for a more bountiful fall crop: green beans, peas, cucumbers, carrots, kohlrabi, summer squash, early sweet corn, green onions. Water seeded areas by hand daily until the new plants are up and a couple of inches tall. Cover the newly planted seeds with row covers to help keep them cooler and out of pecking range of birds. You can take the row covers off when the plants are several inches tall.

Keep Weeding!

Pull them, dig them out, or cut them back. They’re competing with the plants in your garden for water. Weeds allowed to set seed ensure that you will be working harder next year. And, because your weeds likely are making seeds this month, go the extra step and put them in the trash, not compost.

Spring Bulbs

Any remaining foliage should be cut off and removed now. If you had areas that did not bloom well in the spring, the problem could be that the bulbs divided and are now too crowded. Or if you weren’t happy with an area of your yard this year, dig the bulbs up carefully now, dry them in a garage or garden shed and replant them in the fall. If you’re thinking of adding bulbs for next spring, this is the month to order those new bulbs for fall planting. The selection only narrows as summer turn to fall.