August Garden Calendar

– Harvest crops often so they continue to produce. Use clean small shears to harvest instead of pulling on plants or stems. Beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash and corn are ready to harvest.
– Peppers can be harvested as small as 3 to 4 inches in length. Red bell peppers need more time on the vine, but it’s OK to harvest them while green.
– Bigger eggplants aren’t better, so harvest when they are large enough to use, but before their skin loses its gloss.
– Are your tomatoes setting fruit? Consistent temperatures over 90F inhibits the plant from setting fruit. Tomato and Pepper Set Spray makes blossoms set fruit despite hot weather. Nearly every blossom will produce larger, meatier, tomatoes, ripening up to 3 weeks earlier. May be used on Tomatoes, Beans, Cucumbers, Eggplants, Melons, Okra, Peppers, Strawberries and Grapes. It promotes flowering, increases blossom set, reduces end root, and increases fruit yield.

– Clean up flower containers by pruning for shape or getting rid of spent flowers and dead patches.
– Deadhead spent blooms, pull weeds and plan.
– Purchase fall bulbs, including garlic, and save some money to buy bulbs from your local garden center later in fall.
– Mid-August is the recommended last feeding time for roses. Fertilizing later in fall may result in more lush growth too close to the first frost. We carry Natural Guard Rose & Flower fertilizer. It is OMRI and 3-4-3.

– Protect your plants from being eaten by deer, bunnies, or rodents. Bobbex is a fantastic product that uses natural and safe ingredients to repel deer and other herbivores. It also repels herbivorous insects.

– Powdery mildew may appear on susceptible plants like bee balm, veronica, lilac, roses, squash and pumpkins. Neem oil and sulfur based fungicides are effective controls. We have both in stock. Safer 3 in 1 is a great product. It controls both insects and fungus.

– Sprinkle Diatomaceous Earth (DE) around plants to deter pests. As an insecticide it is not poisonous, rather slugs and snails do not like to crawl over DE because the silica skeletons are very sharp-like tiny pieces of broken glass. The result is cuts to their soft bodies, loss of fluid and eventual dehydration. This process works on soft bodied insects, including caterpillars and aphids, and on those with hard shells too such as beetles, fleas, cockroaches, and even bed bugs. Sprinkle bands of it around the plants or you can dust the leaves of a plant, for example, potatoes that are infested with potato beetle larvae. We carry Natural Guard OMRI Diatomaceous Earth.

Adapted from: https://extras.denverpost.com/graphicsdept/gardencolorado/calendar /gardencoloradocalendar.html

$2.50 – 4″ Perennials