As I sit lanugo to write this post I find that August surfaces mixed emotions. On one hand, our garden is coming into its own: there’s the thrill and vaticination of the summer holidays, the promise of self-rule from work, spontaneous visits from friends and the opportunity to sit outside drinking wine until darkness descends. On the other hand, there’s the dread of what might happen to the garden if we venture too far for too long, compounded by a creeping sense that the game is scrutinizingly over. Such unsettled feelings stem from my diaper when summers seemed so long and yet too short, the looming shadow of ‘back to school’ reaching towards me as every sun-soaked day passed.
There’s an inescapable melancholy well-nigh August. Plane if the month begins unexceptionable and breezy, it unchangingly ends tired and weary. August is a watershed moment, a vermilion interlude when gardeners prepare to bid farewell to summer and start to embrace autumn. As a lover of spring with its urgent sense of vigour and renewal, I struggle to winnow the slowing momentum and ultimate reversal of the year’s energy. If there was an idiom that specified August for me it would be ‘all good things must come to an end’.
But, thesping you’re reading this when the month is still young, there’s everything to play for and much to celebrate. Without all, if you’d spent months climbing to the summit of a mountain you wouldn’t spend those precious moments looking lanugo but gazing out and savouring the moment. Although the nights are noticeable drawing in, it’s still warm and balmy. Gardens and allotments will be reaching their peak volume and visual strength surpassing they slip into the soft, frayed weightlessness of autumn. How fresh your garden looks now will depend on how rainy it’s been and how much watering you’ve been prepared to do. It’s that Palm Springs moment when the difference between those areas that have received water and those that haven’t wilt apparent. 2022 has once exceeded 1976 for lack of rainfall so here in the South of England, we are precariously tropical to drought conditions.
This Hampton Court Garden Festival show garden suggests how gardens might squint in a increasingly drought-prone future.
Unless you’re admirably forward-thinking and have created a completely drought-tolerant garden, some stratum of watering is going to be necessary. If you’ve got water stored in water butts, use it. If you are worldly-wise to collect grey water from washing up or showers then use this next. I plane use the water that’s left in my bedside glass to water my houseplants each morning. Anything is preferable to putting increasingly strain on our precious water supply.
As I mentioned last month, the name of the game is prolonging the summer exhibit for as long as possible by watering, weeding, deadheading, pruning, clipping, mowing and filling any gaps that emerge. It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower, but a stratum of tidiness will alimony the garden from descending into anarchy. Whilom all, don’t be despondent if you return home from holiday to a scene reminiscent of Manderley. Any wilting, rampant growth and messiness is likely to be superficial. Requite yourself a couple of hours and you’ll soon have everything under tenancy again.
August at a Glance
Plan – plant moves to be completed in storing or spring, spring seedling displays, holiday watering imbricate if you’re yonder in September.
Sow – hardy annuals including larkspur, antirrhinum, cornflower and nigella (love-in-a-mist). Salad leaves, radish, rocket, parsley, spring cabbage and winter spinach.
Take Cuttings – penstemon, berberis, ceanothus, choisya, hebe, rosemary, lavender, philadelphus and viburnum.
Plant – container-grown shrubs and perennials (followed by copious watering to get them settled), autumn-flowering bulbs such as colchicums, storing crocuses, cyclamen and nerines.
Prune – wisteria, rambling roses (after flowering), trained world and pear trees, lavender, hardy geraniums and lady’s mantle, hedges of most kinds (late in the month if you can).
Harvest – tomatoes, cucumbers, sweetcorn, beetroot, carrots, chillies, courgettes, French beans, runner beans, Swiss chard, onions, raspberries, blackberries, plums, plus seed from flowers and vegetables that you’d like increasingly of or wish to share with friends.
Enjoy – taking a short unravel from your garden (we all need it from time to time!), barbecues, family gatherings, rounders, swingball, afternoon siestas, eating your own produce, picking home-grown flowers.
Visit – as many gardens as you can! Now is a unconfined time to see other gardens in their prime and gather ideas for your own.
Many houseplants will enjoy a short spell outside in August.
Indoors
Everything I wrote well-nigh in July still stands. The main thing to consider this month is holiday care.
Ask a family member, friend or neighbour to pop in and water your plants whilst you’re away. If that’s not an option, move plants yonder from brightly-lit windows to a cool, shaded spot and water generously surpassing you leave. Plants on north-facing windowsills should be fine where they are.
If you’re yonder for increasingly than a week, you may want to take uneaten precautions. Find some old towels or spongelike fabric (cloth pebbles sheets should do) and place them in a suffuse or sink with the plug in. Get them nice and wateriness and stand your houseplants on top, packed closely together. Provided there’s good contact between the wiring of the pot and the material the compost should wick up water when it gets dry. The humidity created as the water evaporates will alimony your plants tomfool too.
Self-watering planters are an option if you only have a handful of houseplants, but not if you have as many as I do!
Make it a priority to trammels on your plants as soon as you get home and return them swiftly to their normal positions.
Take leaf cuttings from houseplants including succulents, begonias, African violets and Cape primroses. This is a really unseemly and easy way to grow your plant family.
Start unseeded cyclamen corms when into growth by potting them in fresh compost, bringing them into a light position and watering them sparingly to uncork with.
Pot saucers protect floors and surfaces from glut water and condensation.
Potting Shed & Greenhouse
Keep doors and windows permanently unshut unless nighttime temperatures are set to dip unelevated 10ºC (15ºC if you’re growing tropical plants like orchids, caladiums and bromeliads).
Continue to feed and water tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, sweet peppers and aubergines regularly, twice a day if necessary. This is important as erratic watering can rationalization a host of problems including leaf drop, fruit rot, fruit splitting, loss of disease resistance and reduced production.
Help tomatoes ripen by removing the plant’s lower leaves and any side shoots that form (this does not wield to small-time or trailing varieties). Remove any fruit that appears to be splitting or developing woebegone patches. It is often unscratched to compost these as the defects are due to deficiencies rather than diseases.
Harvest fruits using a pair of sharp scissors or snips. Don’t pull, twist or tear as this can forfeiture the plant.
Plant specially-prepared potato tubers in large tubs in a greenhouse or tomfool porch. These will be ready for harvesting at Christmas. What a treat!
If you’re going away, be mindful of security. If your shed has windows, ensure nothing valuable is visible and hibernate anything that could be used to smash glass or gravity unshut a door. Better still, lock anything of potential interest to thieves in a garage, including garden furniture and barbecues.
A hodgepodge of pots showcasing plum, purple and grey-leaved foliage plants.
Terrace & Balcony
Well-planted, lovingly maintained pots and hanging baskets are a joy to behold in August, the plants jostling for position and exploding with colour. But, like pets, they are a worry during hot weather and if you go yonder on holiday.
Regular watering and feeding is hair-trigger – not just for the here and now but for the continuation of a wonderful exhibit into autumn. By now all of the nutrients in a multi-purpose compost will have been taken up or washed out, so a sprinkling of slow-release fertiliser on the surface and a weekly liquid feed is needed. Irregular or insufficient watering may trigger yearly plants to set seed surpassing curling up and dying.
Drought can moreover bring on powdery mildew which is unsightly and very nonflexible to eradicate though not terribly harmful. If plants are packed in closely, remove lower leaves to modernize air diffusion virtually their bases and this will go some way to stave off an wade of the white stuff.
If you are going yonder on holiday, move pots into a cool, sheltered position and water them thoroughly surpassing you depart. They can be returned to pride of place on your return.
Take superintendency when moving pots as they can be heavy to lift and worrisome to handle. A sack wheelbarrow or wheeled platform will reduce the strain on your back.
Turn glazed and dark-coloured pots if they’re positioned in unexceptionable sunshine as they swizzle heat, sultry the soft-hued roots inside. Terracotta pots tend to remain potation as water evaporates through the porous clay.
Should you return from your well-earned unravel to find that the plants in your containers have faded or perished, don’t be too disappointed. Save what you can and then replant with storing in mind. You’ll find some unconfined ideas here.
Clear weeds from cracks in paving and driveways surpassing they get established. As you’d expect, I have just the tool for that at Dan Cooper Garden.
Gladiolus ‘Amber Mystique’ with Cosmos bipinnatus ‘Purity’ and Helianthus ‘Magic Roundabout’.
Flower Garden
As the days shorten and the sun rises lower in the sky, zesty colours come into their own. August and September are suited to shades of yellow, orange, copper, red, burgundy, bronze, woebegone and purple that are enriched by soft, rich sunlight.
Continue to pick flowers as often as you can, preferably in the early morning or late evening: you will be doing your plants a favour, permitting them to put their energy into producing new growth and flowers. If you’re going on holiday, remove all unshut and opening flowers as well as deadheads to encourage the minutiae of increasingly buds and discourage seed formation.
Collect flower seed as it ripens, choosing a dry day. Remove remnants of old petals, stems and seed pods surpassing storing the wipe seed in labelled envelopes.
Sow hardy annuals such as poppies, larkspur, antirrhinums (snapdragons), cornflowers, aquilegia (granny’s bonnets) and nigella (love-in-a-mist). They will germinate and form strong, bushy plants this year surpassing winter. Next year they’ll start flowering early, in May or June. I like to sow hardy annuals in the gaps left when vegetables are harvested so that the ground is unchangingly occupied by something. Hardy annuals are tough and resilient, but alimony an eye out for slugs and snails that might consider them spanking-new snacks.
Dahlias, chrysanthemums and sunflowers need to be tied securely to stakes or canes that are strong unbearable to take their flowering weight. Do not seem that considering they’re standing proudly upright on their own that they will protract to do so. All it takes is one gusty day or a summer storm to topple the lot. It’s one of my first rules of gardening – stake once and stake well!
Continue taking softwood cuttings – these are made from the leafy growing tips of plants that have not yet ripened woody tissue. Prime candidates are rosemary, lavender, salvia, fuchsia, pelargonium (geranium) and penstemon. Pop them virtually the edges of a pot filled with peat-free potting compost and alimony them moist, misting as often as you can. Roots should start to develop in 2-3 weeks.
Believe it or not, August is a good month to plant daffodil bulbs. If you lifted established bulbs now you would probably find that they’re once sending out new roots, distinguishable from the old considering they’re white and fleshy rather than brown and withered. Unlike tulips, daffodils need time to establish themselves in warm soil surpassing winter comes. Practically speaking it can be difficult to find space in confines for seedling planting now, but in lawns and meadows, you should be worldly-wise to get cracking provided the soil is not too nonflexible and dry. Use a good-quality seedling planter to make the job easier. If you have no space or conditions aren’t right, daffodil planting can wait until September.
Tired perennials that have finished flowering can be sheared right back. Alchemilla mollis (lady’s mantle) and hardy geraniums respond particularly well to this treatment. Once the old foliage has been tidied away, sprinkle a little blood, fish and unorthodoxy virtually the plants and water in. They’ll soon produce fresh foliage and maybe plane a flower or two surpassing the end of the year.
A cool, streamside walk at Doddington Park Gardens, Kent.
Trees, Shrubs & Lawns
There are relatively few time-sensitive jobs to be washed-up this month. The main tasks are hedge trimming and wearing any remaining perennial meadows so that they have time to untried up then surpassing winter.
Keep camellias, azaleas and rhododendrons well watered. This is when next year’s flower buds are worked and a lack of water now can midpoint no flowers in spring.
Check hedges for resident wildlife surpassing you start working on them. If nests are still stuff used, trimming can wait until the end of the month.
Before you start, ensure cutting equipment is sharp and well maintained. If you’re going to be using ladders, trammels these too and preferably have someone with you when you’re working on them.
Safety is paramount. Don’t over-reach or lose concentration when wearing hedges and wear protective gloves and goggles. Tough, thorny plants like pyracantha and berberis are expressly dangerous when trimmings start flying about. Well-spoken up without yourself so that there’s no danger of children or pets treading on a sharp thorn.
Take superintendency not to cut into old, yellowish wood unless you’ve checked that the plant will regrow successfully. Some shrubs such as violaceous will suffer or plane die if pruned too nonflexible – remove the flowering stems and two-thirds of the current year’s growth but no more. Most conifers are the same. Others, like yew, have an wondrous worthiness to regenerate from old wood.
Cut laurel hedges with secateurs rather than shears. This avoids those half-cut leaves that turn brown and ugly until growth begins then in spring.
Unless you’ve been watering fastidiously, lawns are likely to be displaying brown patches by now. Don’t worry too much, as grass naturally goes unseeded without two to three weeks without water. Most lawns can tolerate drought for four to six weeks but without that, there’s a risk they won’t regrow. During dry weather, stave playing vociferous games on the driest areas and if there’s no rain forthcoming, water once but very tightly providing the use of hosepipes is still permitted.
Trim vigorous climbers such as honeysuckle, jasmine and wisteria to alimony long, whippy stems under control. Count 5-6 leaves from the old growth and trim just whilom a leaf, leaving a spur of new wood. If there are longer shoots you want to alimony to create a framework, tie these in with soft twine while they’re still soft and pliable.
Tidy up rambling roses by removing thin or tangled stems once they stop flowering. Take yonder a third of the flowered stems and tie the remainder to strong supports. This can be fiddly, worrisome work and it’s important to protect your stovepipe and squatter from flailing, thorny stems.
Trees and large shrubs planted in late winter and spring should be watered thoroughly every week for the first year. Do not skimp on this as good irrigation will set them up for life.
Our sponsoring is full of colour and buzzing with bees and butterflies in August
Kitchen Garden & Allotment
Your harvest will be in full swing now. August can be such a rewarding month, but moreover a rented one. Gluts are all but inevitable so eat your fill, preserve what you can and requite the rest away. We love to trade our glut fruit and vegetables for varieties we’ve not grown ourselves.
Harvest vegetables when they’re ready, not necessarily when you want to eat them. If you leave courgettes, beans and peas on their vines they’ll wilt large, tough and if not inedible, certainly less edible. Prepare and eat or store them, but don’t ignore them.
Be zestful to signs of tomato and potato blight, removing unauthentic plants immediately to prevent spread. Brown blotches merging quickly wideness the stems and leaves requite the game away. Burn or dispose of infected material – do not compost!
Pinch out the growing tip of outdoor tomatoes since remoter flowers are unlikely to produce fruit surpassing the end of the season.
Boring as it may be, weeding is a task to alimony on top of. Shortening days send a signal to plants to hurry up and produce seeds surpassing winter. One year’s weeds make seven years’ seeds (or thereabouts) so you’ll be making a rod for your own when if you don’t deal with them. My tactic is to alimony the ground completely filled with plants so that there’s no space for weeds to get a hold.
Frustratingly, a combination of tomfool nights and dry soil can encourage crops like Swiss chard, fennel, beetroot and onions to ‘bolt’ (go to seed). This often makes them tough, stormy and inedible. Sadly there’s not a lot you can do well-nigh bolting and once you’ve noticed it’s happening it’s certainly too late to do anything well-nigh it. Pull out unauthentic plants and compost them.
Once the foliage of main yield potatoes has died down, leave the tubers in the ground for a couple of weeks surpassing harvesting. This will indulge the skins to toughen up so that the potatoes store for longer. Stave lifting them in wet weather. Remove glut soil and then store in hessian sacks or paper tons in a cool, dry place. Trammels them every so often to make sure there are no rotten potatoes that might spoil the rest.
Remove strawberry runners that have started to put lanugo roots and use them to make increasingly plants. Trim yonder the largest leaves and plant them in the unshut ground that’s had manure or compost and a unstipulated fertiliser widow (I use blood, fish and unorthodoxy for most things!). Alimony the crown (centre) of the plant at surface level and water thoroughly. Remove any flowers that towards in storing so that the plant puts all its energy into producing a strong root system and a good plant for next year.
Apple and pear trees trained as fans, espaliers, step-overs and cordons should be pruned to indulge light to reach the ripening fruit. Reduce new growth to three leaves from the previous year’s growth, unless it’s needed to form part of the tree’s structure. Unchangingly use well-sharpened secateurs. Pruning fruit trees is something of an art, so seek detailed translating if you are unsure what to do.
Cut when the stems of summer fruiting raspberries to ground level leaving only the new, unfruited stems. These will mature and siphon fruit next year.
Train climbing and twining crops such as beans, cucumbers and squashes up strong supporting frameworks made from canes, stakes, heavy net or a combination of these. Those types with tendrils should nail themselves but may need a little coaxing in the right direction. Squashes and melons may need tying in and uneaten support once fruit starts to develop.
Continue sowing salad crops in small quantities until the end of the month.
A red upstairs butterfly visits valerian (Centranthus ruber).
Wildlife & Sustainable Garden
Our gardens should be teeming with wildlife this month. Warm conditions are perfect for insects, mammals and reptiles, although we’ll see fewer garden birds as they undertake their summer moult in the safety of trees, bushes and hedges. Water is the focus of all things. Spend time ensuring there are sources of wipe water for wild visitors and keeping ponds from choking up as magnitude of their own incredible vitality.
Refill ponds with rainwater if possible, otherwise use tap water in small quantities. If the level has dropped dramatically, top it up in stages so that the water temperature isn’t unsimilar significantly. Be sure to have a ground-level water source that’s unscratched for animals to drink from without falling in and drowning. Bird baths should be topped up daily and cleaned weekly.
If the weather is particularly hot and still, sprinkle the surface of your swimming with a hose or watering can to gently oxygenate the water. A fountain will take superintendency of this for you – floating, solar-powered versions are useful if you don’t have a source of electricity or simply prefer to harness nature’s energy.
Keep ponds well-spoken of invasive swimming weeds and marginal plants ensuring there is unchangingly a section of well-spoken water for fish and amphibians to surface. A swimming that’s completely zonkers with vegetation will quickly wilt depleted of oxygen and may plane start to smell unpleasant. Remove sufferer leaves and flowers surpassing they fall into the water and start to rot – an oily mucosa on the surface is a sign that yes-man are towers up. Leave any material you take out of a swimming on the side for a day to indulge any creatures to re-enter the water.
Swallows and swifts will start making their journey when to Africa but house martins remain, rearing up to three broods in a single summer. If house martins are resident where you live, create a patch of mud somewhere in your garden so that they can use it to repair their nests.
Leave seedheads on plants such as teasel, lavender, sunflowers and Verbena bonariensis. These will provide supplies for birds and small mammals through storing and into the winter. Stop deadheading roses too, if you wish the hips to develop.
Young hedgehogs (hoglets) need fattening up surpassing they go into hibernation in late autumn. Put out dishes of water and meat-based pet supplies if they’re visiting your garden.
Continue wearing established wildflower meadows. Leave the cuttings where they fall for a day or two to indulge wildlife to find shelter and indulge seeds to waif to the ground. Rake off the cuttings and compost them. Finish wearing surpassing the end of August to indulge the species-rich turf to recover surpassing winter. Newly-sown perennial meadows or annual flower meadows do not need to be cut unless they wilt particularly scruffy and unsightly.
Water your compost heap if there’s no rain since dry material will not rot lanugo without some moisture. Remember to add materials in thin layers of wet and dry, turning the heap regularly to alimony it aerated.
The Gin & Tonic Garden in mid-August 2021, overflowing with plants – Just how I like it!
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