August jobs for a gorgeous garden!
Jobs for August
Dead heading many perennials around the garden will help to keep them flowering for longer.
To encourage a final flush of roses, trim repeat flowering times down by one-third and water around the roots using a liquid feed, You’ll be surprised how fast they respond and start to make new growth and flower buds.
Feed and water around the roots of camellias and rhododendrons with a high potash fertiliser to help flower buds form for next spring. Aim to keep the roots moist through August and September if you can.
Evergreen hedges such as laurel, Leylandii and yew can be given a trim now that their growth has slowed down. This helps to maintain their shape through autumn and winter.
Wsteria can be given its late summer prune from around the middle of the month. The aim is to cut back all the new growth to just a couple of inches. This instantly tidies up all the straggly growth and it’s on the small shoots you leave, known as spurs, that flowers will develop next spring. With young plants, you can use some of the long growths to extend the coverage of the plant.
In early August I like to pinch out the growing tips of my greenhouse tomatoes. This stops them producing more flowering trusses and diverts the plants energy to developing and ripening the existing fruits by the end of the growing season.
Bend the tops of your onions over to help the bulbs ripen over the next few weeks, before lifting them.
Runner beans should carry on cropping until well into September but to help them along, pick the beans on a regular basis and make sure the roots of the plants are watered in dry weather.
Trim back the extension growth on trained fruits trees to expose the fruits to the sun and aid ripening. A final prune can be given in September by pruning back harder.
The seeds of spring cabbages can be sown around mid-August either in cell trays or short rows in the garden to grow into strong seedlings for planting out in their permanent position in late September or early October.
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Happy gardening