Deadheading and other August Chores

It’s not only what you plant but how you care for your plants that encourages blooming and fruiting through the season.  Keeping your garden looking its best means removing fading and spent flowers, before they begin to form seed pods. In gardening terms it’s called deadheading, which simply means pruning off the old flowers. This keeps the garden neat and promotes additional blooms as well. 

Get in the habit of deadheading while you walk through your garden. It’s easy to carry a pair of light pruners with you as you make your rounds. As you spot a blossom beginning to fade snip or pinch it off. Getting on a problem early is the best way to control it.  With some plants, the heat, insect damage or disease has caused severe damage. Now's the time to prune them hard.  

Check your roses and remove spent blossoms. Do the same for your container plants, including hanging baskets. Continue to feed your baskets and containers every two weeks with ferti-lome 20-20-20.  While you’re at it, take a hard look at your tomatoes and vegetables. Removing dead and diseased leaves on your tomato plants will put more energy into fruit production. 

Recognize common tomato problems such as blossom end rot (use ferti-lome Yield Booster to increase calcium levels) cracking (watch the watering) and yellow shoulders (heat, low Potassium levels, high soil pH).  The best thing to do at this point is to maintain an even watering schedule and use ferti-lome Tomato and Vegetable Food.   As for the rest of the vegetable garden,  heat, wind, uneven watering, poor soil, over fertilizing, insect damage and disease can and will influence your harvest. The best way to determine what's going on is to bring a sample of the plant to our Diagnostic Center, for analysis. We'll determine the actual cause of the problem and recommend a solution.  This is also the time to start planning for a second crop of cool weather vegetables. Peas, radishes, lettuce, kale, spinach and many more cool weather crops can be planted soon, for winter harvest. Walk the garden every day. Time spent deadheading and pruning annuals and perennials will keep the garden colorful and fresh right to the end of the growing season.