Welcome to the "Dog Days of Summer!"

Welcome to August...the Dog Days of Summer. This is the time of year when the heat kicks in, the rains stop, and your lawn and garden tends to slow down for a few weeks. Luckily, the intense heat is on vacation this week, but the rains will become fewer and farther between, as usual, so you have a bit of work to do. 

Start with your summer planters. Are they looking tired and bloomed-out? It’s time to replace a few of their elements, or just redo the whole thing, altogether. The heat will be back soon. We hate to be the bearers of bad news, but it will. So plant your containers with heat-loving tropicals that will thrive from now to mid-autumn. It can never get too hot for crotons and mandevilla! This is a good time to plant summer-blooming perennials like Russian Sage, coreopsis, and coneflowers, which thrive in August, when other flowers start to fade from the heat. 

There are not a lot of perennials that like to be divided in the summer, but there are a few. Coreopsis, campanula, and Yarrow, for example, take well to dividing during summer months. In fact, stay on top of Yarrow so it does not take over. This is also a great time to divide your Bearded Iris. Dig up the tubers, check carefully for any rot, and then replant...burying the roots just below the surface.

This is also the ideal time of summer to clean up your vegetable garden. If you have any plants that have stopped producing and are not likely to produce any more, um, produce, then pull them and compost them. You can either plant some herbs, such as basil in their place, or leave that space open for the cool-weather vegetables that you’ll be planting in a few weeks. Be sure to fertilize, too. Top-dress with a slow-release fertilizer every couple of weeks and a shot of liquid fertilizer every week. And speaking of basil, keep on top of pinching off the flowers to keep it full and bushy. In fact, this is a good time to give some of your herbs, particularly oregano, a haircut, trimming off the flowers to encourage vigorous growth. Of course, stay on top of your flower dead-heading, too, to encourage new blooms. 

Are you seeing Japanese Beetles on your shrubs? They love roses and certain cultivars of Crape Myrtles. Inspect the leaves carefully, evict these unwanted pests, and prune the affected branches....but use a very light hand. Don’t get carried away with the pruners. Luckily, we have heard that the Japanese Beetles are not being seen in big numbers yet, but that could change quickly. Since they can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time, it is important to inspect your shrubs frequently. 

We’re getting some rain today, which is good, but that will only take your gardens so far. Even if we get the occasional downpour or two in the next few weeks, it won’t be enough for healthy plants, which need about an inch per week. So when it comes to watering...low and slow does it. All of your plants, from vegetables to trees, benefit from slow, deep watering. This could take a while when watering by hand, but it will take some time. Or come on in and look at our soaker hoses and TreeGators, which are highly-efficient ways to water properly.

Think of August as a maintenance month. April and May is for planting, June and July is for admiring, and August is for sprucing up. Fall is not too far away at this point, which is the absolute best time for planting trees and shrubs, so take advantage of this downtime to prepare the planting areas. You’ll want to hit the ground running…or digging.