August is a busy month for gardeners! With summer in full swing, there’s plenty to harvest, but also important tasks to ensure your plants continue to thrive throughout the month.
Key Tasks for August
- Harvest regularly: Pick your vegetables often to prevent them from bolting (going to seed) and to encourage continued production.
- Deadhead flowers: Regularly remove spent blooms from your perennials, such as sweet peas, penstemons, and dahlias, to promote continuous flowering.
- Take cuttings: Propagate your favorite plants like salvias, penstemons, and pelargoniums by taking cuttings and rooting them in pots.
- General maintenance: Prune wisteria to maintain its shape, water plants during dry spells, fertilize container plants with a high-potash fertilizer to extend flowering, and collect seeds from early-summer blooms for next year’s garden.
Best Plants to Sow in August
Even in the heat of August, there’s still time to sow some seeds for a late-summer and Autumn harvest.
- Vegetables: Spinach, lettuce, turnips, cabbage, and chard.
Many late-summer flowering perennials and bulbs add vibrant color to your garden in August. Here are some of our favorites:
- Agapanthus: Offers vibrant lilac-mauve flowers with dark streaks.
- Kniphofia: Features tall flower spikes with a captivating two-tone effect, often starting with apricot-colored buds that fade to creamy yellow.
- Hesperantha coccinea: Boasts slender flower spikes with vibrant crimson blooms.
- Melianthus major: Offers architectural interest with its large, grey-green serrated leaves.
- Tulbaghia: Produces elegant lavender or pink flowers, perfect for gravel gardens or pots.
So get out there and enjoy your garden in August! With a little care and attention, you can keep it looking its best throughout the late summer months.
