August Notes from the Studio

Garden tasks and growing flowers

What to do in August

Have you noticed the ‘turn’? I have. The turn of the year and a build up towards the orchestral finale that is September. For me, this means, the good stuff starts flowering and my favourite combinations come together.

It is August, some plants look tired, reduced a little. Work towards next year’s flowers have begun too. As ever, the gardens are a sum of many parts, each in its own unique chapter of its growing season.

Here is this month’s list of my top recommended tasks to get the best of, and enjoy your garden and growing space.

1. Pick flowers and dead head

   Numero Uno - To keep flowers coming, keep harvesting and certainly pinch off the spent flowers to stop plants running to seed. If they do, collect the seeds (how to save and why your own saved seed is always better)

2. Plant out biennials

   By now, June sown biennials, foxgloves, honesty, sweet williams and sweet rocket, wallflowers and daucus are large enough to prick out and transplant. I am growing them on in a nursery bed. Next month I will lift and move into final positions.

   

   Biennials being planted out in a nursery bed. Some seedlings need growing on a little more before pricking out.

3. Green Manures

   It’s a great month to sow green manures. Either for long term, growing and cover over winter, or a shorter, over few weeks before clearing for autumn planting. These are great fast growing plants that bring nutrients up, open up the soil, add organic matter and suppress unwanted weeds. They also activate the soil biology if the ground has been bare by making food. The easiest way to great soil.

4. Stake late flowering perennials

   Echinacea, aster and rudbeckia’s.

5. Cut back flower stems

   Delphiniums, poppies, lupins, geraniums and other herbaceous plants that have finished flowering. Chop down spent stems and tired leaved.

   

   Cutting back early summer perennials to lift the August border and a toppling wheelbarrow of trimmings.

6. Feeding

   Some plants, tomatoes, sweet peas and dahlias will enjoy a weekly feed, the rest of the garden will get a monthly spray of a very weak feed. I spray directly onto the leaves, in the cool of the evening. A little goes a long way. Here are my feed recipes. If you haven’t made your own feeds, I recommend this and this.

   

   A compost tea diluted into a sprayer. Mixed to about 1/30 dilution, looks like a weak tea.

7. Take cuttings

   Of tender perennials, verbenas and pelargoniums.

   Helpful Summer Reading

   Watering: How to reduce the time and resource to water effectively and efficiently.

   Going away? Prepare your garden and plants to return to a thriving space.

   Mid Year Review - why it’s helpful to reflect on your growing (not just in the garden?) as I look towards the other half of the year.

   Why your own saved seed is best (and it’s not just because it’s free. It really is better!)

   How to cut and condition late summer flowers top tips on cutting flowers and how to prepare them for a long vase life with some special notes for plants such as zinnias, cosmos and dahlias.

   Narcissus shopping list now is the perfect time to put in spring bulb orders. A list of all my favourites narcissus and why you should be growing them.

Late Summer Brights

Harvesting

What you are picking, or aim to this time next year.

Shrubs, Trees & Climbers - Now, finally, we can start cutting the foliage! Now the leaves and stems have matured, they will conditioned to arrange with. My favourites - physocarpus, jasmine, honeysuckle, eucalyptus, beech, buddleja, continus and hydrangea.

Perennials - End of the mints and oregano, going strong, eryngium, ecinops, dianthus, verbena bonariensis, salvias, macleaya plumes, aster, persicaria, dahlias, phlox, astrantia and monarda.

Bulbs - Crocomisa, lillies, gladioli.

Annuals - Loads, all of them! chrysanthemum, corncockle, end of (my) sweet peas, calendula, cornflowers, corncockle, nicotiana, snapdragons, achillea, daucus, nasturtiums and many more.

New half hardy annual for me this year, Arctosis fastuosa ‘white’ Really love it

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Practising splitting dahlias and spotting growth points earlier this year.

The year long practical in person course on the plots to ‘Grow Your Own Cut Flowers’ begins in September, just a few weeks away. If you want to cultivate a deeper relationship with your growing space, grow cut flowers then cut and condition them, please join me.

All about the course and what is included with the session dates below. If you’d like to find out more about the course, let’s arrange a call for a chat about it.

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