In between harvesting ripe crops and
planning your fall garden, it’s important to keep up with the routine tasks of regular
maintenance, watering, fertilizing, weeding, and deadheading.
Irrigate, don’t water. Conserving water
is always important, so whether you water with a hose or a drip system, it’s
important to water at the ground level not overhead. By positioning the drip system
emitter or hose end sprayer where it’s needed, you’ll optimize plant water consumption
and reduce water waste due to evaporation.
Get in the habit of carrying a pair
of light pruners with you as you make your rounds. As you spot a blossom
beginning to fade snip it off. In gardening terms it’s called
deadheading, which simply means pruning off the old flowers. This keeps the
garden neat and promotes additional blooms on roses, annuals and perennials.
Keep an eye out for summer weeds.
They take advantage of cultivated garden soil to grow vigorously and can
produce several generations during the summer season. It’s important to
control them before they seed out.
Powdery mildew may be seen on squash,
pumpkins as well as peonies and other ornamentals. Use an organic fungicide
such as Sulfur to help contain the spread. Once the season is over, it’s
important to do a thorough cleanup. Leaving spent vegetation in place will
encourage mildews and other diseases to winter over and reinfect your garden
next spring. Getting on a problem early is the best way to control
it.
Check your roses and remove any spent
blossoms. Mid-August is the time to feed your roses for the season. Water each
rose bush, then apply the fertilizer and water in thoroughly.
Continue to deadhead blooming
perennials such as Hardy Hibiscus, and Butterfly Bushes to encourage more
blooms. Do the same for your container plants, including hanging baskets.
Fertilize 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 (be consistent with watering) and yellow
shoulders (heat, low Potassium levels, high soil pH). Heat, wind, uneven watering,
poor soil, over fertilizing, insect damage can also cause tomato leaves to curl
and twist. The best thing to do at this point is to maintain an even watering
schedule and use an organic fertilizer every two weeks.
Tomatoes and peppers are starting to
ripen now, so it’s important to keep up with the harvesting, which will
encourage your plants to produce more.
This is also the time to start
planning for a second crop of cool weather vegetables. Beans, radishes,
lettuce, kale, spinach and many more cool weather crops can be planted soon,
for late season harvest. Prepare the planting site by removing any spent
foliage left over from summer’s crops. Next work two to three inches of compost
and worm castings into the top six inches of the planting
site.
If you’re not planning a fall crop,
consider planting a cover crop such as winter rye or buckwheat,
Start a gardening journal. It’s
beneficial to take pictures and keep a journal documenting what went well and
what didn’t during the season. This will help when you make plans for the
upcoming gardening season.
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