Added on August 5, 2019 Sara Swanson

August 2019 gardening advice

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by Jennifer Fairfield, Garden Mill and Manchester Community & School Gardens

August 8th is “National Sneak Some Zucchini onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day!” It's fun and easy to celebrate - just wait until your neighbors have gone to bed, and put some of the loads of zucchini you've been picking every day onto their porch. They'll never know it was you (unless, of course, you are the only one in the neighborhood with a garden, and you've been trying to give them zucchini every day for the last couple of weeks)! If you're one of my neighbors, I'm just saying - if you wake up to zucchini on your porch that morning, it might have been me! But I have some really great recipes to share, too!

August is usually a pretty warm month for us, at least in the early part of the month. It’s also normally pretty dry. This means we should be spending a lot of our time making sure that our gardens are getting enough water.

In your yard and gardens:

Don’t think that, just because we get a thunderstorm once in a while, your plants are getting what they need in the way of water. Our plants need regular water, not just occasional downpours. Those downpours aren’t really very helpful for our plants – much of the water runs off before it can be absorbed by the soil. So, keep an eye on the rainfall in your yard with a rain gauge, but don’t rely too heavily on it. Give your gardens more water when we aren’t getting at least an inch of rain each week, that comes in lighter, longer rain events. And during warmer and windy conditions, plants dry out even more quickly, so watering a little more is even better. Letting plants dry out too much between waterings can create a number of issues, including things like blossom-end rot in tomatoes and peppers.
Container plants need to be watered even more frequently than the ones planted in the ground. If they are under the cover of a porch or building overhang, they aren’t as likely to get the benefit of any rain we get. On the other hand, if they are out in the open, the sun is baking them. Remember to give container plants a little food regularly too, to keep them looking good throughout the remainder of the season.
Keep deadheading the annual flowers in your container plantings as well as bedding plants to ensure continuous blooms.
When mowing, keep the grass a little longer during the hotter and drier summer. Cutting to no lower than 3 or 4 inches allows the blades of the grass to shade the roots from the heat of the sun, and helps those blades feed the roots – taking the sun’s energy and turning it into food through photosynthesis, just like all the other green things in our yards. More blades of grass mean more food for your grass, which means healthier grass. Longer grass also helps to smother out weeds, which is never a bad thing!
Trees and shrubs also need regular watering, especially if you planted them in the last couple of years. Newly-planted trees’ roots aren’t as deep as the roots of established trees are, and they are not as effective at drawing water from the soil. Young trees that are stressed because they are not getting enough water may not be able to make it through the winter, so it’s important to make sure you keep them well-watered – but don’t keep the soil soggy either. One way I simplify the whole thing is to use tree watering bags. I planted a number of very young evergreens this year to replace some old ones that were dying. The tree watering bags I have around them have been helping to keep them alive in the heat we’ve had. I just fill them up a few times a week, and they take care of giving the trees the water they need over a period of a few hours, allowing the water to seep in, rather than run off.
I’ve noticed some trees in my neighborhood looking very stressed – what were healthy-looking trees just a month or so ago now have large sections of brown leaves or have dropped many leaves. There are a number of possible reasons for this. I have read that some trees got super stressed by the polar vortex we had this past winter, so that’s one possibility. Another is that, when we got all that rain this spring, it encouraged trees to put out lots of leaves. The dry conditions that followed (especially in my area, where we seem to missed a lot of the rain that fell in Chelsea), could have caused the trees to shed some of those leaves because it couldn’t support all of them. Disease and pests are also possibilities. The best way to find out what’s going on if you have trees that aren’t looking so good is to get an expert opinion. One option is to ask an expert at Michigan State University’s Extension Service, through their website: www.canr.msu.edu/outreach/ask-an-expert. There, you can submit your question along with pictures, and have them give you a diagnosis. Your best results will come with a very complete description of the problem, along with multiple pictures – you can submit up to three. I would suggest one of the overall appearance of the tree, one close-up of the area of the tree affected, and one of a close-up of leaves, so they can see whether there are any spots or signs of insect damage. If you see damage to bark, that would be a good picture for the close-up of the damaged area.
Harvesting is the major activity of vegetable gardening in August. Keeping up with harvesting will keep your plants producing. If you don’t keep your beans, zucchini, cucumbers, etc. picked regularly, the plants will work on maturing the fruits they have, rather than producing more. It’s much like deadheading flowers – if you leave spent flowers on the plant, it will work on creating and maturing seeds from those flowers. Remove them, and the plant essentially gets tricked into producing more. Removing the seeds (those beans, zucchini, and cucumbers are seed pods, after all), does the same thing for your vegetable plants. In both cases, you get what you wanted – more flowers or more to eat!
August is also the time to put some “succession” plants in your veggie garden. Beets, radishes, lettuces, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, and peas all can be planted in August for harvest into the early fall. Take a look at the seed packet for the “days to maturity” to determine how late you can plant and still harvest before frost (and some things, like kale, are even better after a light frost). To figure out your safe planting time frame, just count backwards from your average first date of frost (usually around October 1st for our area). So, if your packet says that the days to maturity is 45 and it takes 5 to 10 days to germinate, then you need to make sure that you have your seeds in by no later than August 7th. If you’re looking for seeds, we do still have some at the store, and they’re on sale!
If you haven’t seen any signs of disease in your garden yet, don’t think you’re safe. Many things start to really show up now. The Michigan State University Extension Service recently sent out a notification that cucumber downy mildew has been found in Michigan – on the west side of the state, but it will be heading in our direction. Late blight, which affects tomatoes and potatoes, has been found in Erie, PA, which means it’s in the northern states, so will likely be seen in our area sooner rather than later. Keep up with a schedule of fungicide spraying to give your plants their best chance of surviving the diseases we know are going to get to us eventually. In general, a weekly application of an organic fungicide is your best defense. Once disease takes hold, it is all but impossible to get rid of, so prevention is the best medicine.
We are in prime garden pest season now. Japanese beetles have been eating everything in sight for a few weeks, flea beetles have been leaving holes in leaves everywhere, and grasshoppers and many damaging caterpillars, such as tomato hornworms and corn earworms, are just getting started, as are things like squash bugs. Keep an eye out for these and other insects around your plants. Controlling them is important, not just because they eat your hard work, but also because they can transmit infection to your plants from diseased plants they’ve visited. But be sure to read the labels on whatever you choose, as these products can generally also kill beneficial insects. The best way to minimize harming bees and other beneficials is to be very precise in your spraying – only directly spray the pest you are trying to kill, and don’t overspray. Broadcast spraying will almost guarantee that you kill things you don’t intend to, and spraying until the leaves drip means that you will have pesticide dripping onto other plants or the ground, where beneficials can come in contact with it. Spraying in the evening can also reduce the chances of harming bees.
One last thing – keep up with the weeding! It is much easier to keep them under control if you get to the weeds while they are small. Do a little every day or so, and it won’t get out of control. Of course, I say that having let a bunch of weeds get on top of me in one area of my yard (in case you can't tell, there is a juniper shrub in there somewhere with the crabgrass, thistle, and plantain). So, this is a “do as I say, not as I do,” thing since I will be spending lot of time this weekend trying to get the weeds under control again in this area. Wish me luck (and maybe some slightly cloudy and cool weather!).

For the birds:

Be sure to keep hummingbird and oriole feeders cleaned out and refilled at least twice a week in the warm weather. Sugar water can spoil quickly in hot weather, which is harmful, if not deadly, to the birds. And yes, some of the orioles are still around – I just had one at my feeder Tuesday evening.
Actually, regularly cleaning all bird feeders is a really good idea. It helps to keep diseases from spreading through the bird populations visiting your feeders.
Keep bird baths cleaned out and filled up too. Dirty water in the bath can be just as harmful to your birds as dirty feeders, and you aren’t as likely to attract birds to a dirty bath. Empty out old water, give the bath a good scrubbing, and refill it with clean water at least every-other day (daily is even better), and you’ll have healthier, happier birds!