KENT GARDENER

By Maggie L. Moor

Delaware Cooperative Extension

Delaware State University

 

 

The following article is your August gardening update.

Back to July's Calendar 

The first week of August: 

¨      Now is an ideal time to take pictures and plan for next year’s vegetable

 and flower gardens.

 ¨      Order your spring flowering bulbs now.

 ¨      Check your garden plants, shrubs, flowers, and trees for diseases and

insect pests.

 ¨      Begin planning and planting your fall vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes,

kale, spinach, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and peas.

 ¨      Pinch back to remove dead heads from annuals.

 ¨      Remember to make arrangements with a friend or family members to water

your house plants while you’re away on vacation.

 ¨      Harvest vine-ripened vegetables.  Share extras with non-gardening friends and neighbors.

 ¨      Harvest and hang herbs before they go into bloom.  Tie in little bunches and

hang in a ventilated warm space to cure.  After thoroughly dried, put in sealed

            jars to use in the water.

 Mid-August: 

¨      Apply a second treatment of lawn insecticide for grub control or use milky spore dust, a bacteria that will attack over forty species of white grubs; this can be applied any time.

 ¨      Collect materials for dried flower arrangements, including weeds, flowers, marsh grasses and foliage.

             ¨      Prepare lawn or lawn areas that are going to be seeded.  The Kent County Master Gardeners are going to have a workshop on Lawn Establishment on August 12, 1997.  If you would like to attend, call #730-4000 to pre-register and/or for more information.

             ¨      Harvest ripened vegetables.  Sweet corn is ready when ears feel full and firm and the silks have turned brown and dry; cantaloupes are already to eat when stems slip or separate easily from the fruit.

       ¨      Feed roses for the last time. 

¨      Continue to compost grass clippings, pruning pieces, and weeds that have not gone to seed. 

¨      Check azaleas if they are beginning to look pale green to yellow.  This is called chloritic.  Check soil pH.  These acid-loving plants may need to be fed. 

¨      Continue to hang harvested herbs. 

¨      Check vegetable and other plants for evidence of insect pests and disease. 

Late August: 

¨      Grapes that are ripening now perish easily so keep refrigerated after harvesting. 

¨      Inspect trunks and branches of dogwoods and other trees for injured bark or fine dusk pushed from burrows in trunk by borers. 

¨      Fertilize fall vegetable garden plants. 

¨      Plant new lawns or reseed bare spots in old lawns.  This can be done until September 30^th in Delaware.  If it’s dry, be sure to water newly seeded lawns every day. 

¨      Harvest ripened vegetables and share extras with non-gardening friends and neighbors. 

¨      Harvest and hang small bunches of herbs before they flower.  Tie in little bunches

and hang in a ventilated warm space to cure.

 

September Calendar