August – In Your Garden

Resident expert Chris Francis has supplied his monthly tips for your garden this August! Collating the best tips from garden experts, and his own advice, this should keep you busy for the warm month ahead!

Prune your perennial herbs such as Thyme, Oreganum, Sage etc .

Cut back your lavenders to keep them compact, take away the complete flower stem and a couple of cms of this years growth.

Keep dead heading your pots and baskets especially your petunias and dahlias.

Keep hoeing your borders regularly to keep weeds down.

Trim evergreen hedges so they look good over Winter. During the summer, box hedging laurel and other hedging plants will have put on a lot of growth making them look shaggy. Using a pair of shears or a powered hedge trimmer, start by cutting the top of the hedge flat and then the sides ensuring the top is narrower than the base.

Vegetables

If your growing squash to help speed up ripening remove the large leaves that shade the developing fruits.

If you are growing tomatoes and you have a black flat hard bottom this is a sign of blossom rot. It’s a common problem caused by lack of calcium, which is found in water, to avoid this happening water daily and if its really hot even twice a day .

To ensure your courgettes remain productive keep picking the fruit regularly, generally when there about 10cm long .

If you want a fresh supply of parsley over the winter sow your seed now.

Sow overwinter salad onions, Japanese onions, spring cabbage, turnips and carrots in your vegetable garden .

Don’t forget to keep your bird baths filled up especially in the hot weather .

Holiday Jobs

Here’s a few tips you can do in the garden before you go on holiday (if you are this year!).

• Move any patio pots to a shady part of your garden and water well. Give them a drop of plant food too.
• Dead head annual plants and roses. By the time you come back from your holiday they will be in full flower again.
• Cut your lawn before you go. You will not believe how fast grass can grow if its warm and wet while your away.
• Move houseplants away from window sills and place in a shady area of the house. Make sure you water and feed them .

Diseases

Powdery mildew can be a problem this time of year and can be devastating to the plants . Spray at the first signs with an appropriate fungicide .