August Gardening Essentials - Trees & Shrubs
Trees, Shrubs and Climbers
Water as necessary concentrating on newer plantings.
Keep weeds down to minimise competition.
Collect fallen diseased leaves from beneath trees, shrubs and climbers.
Deadhead roses and lavenders.
Prune rambler roses as soon as flowering is over.
Finish summer pruning wisterias.
Gardening Year - August
With temperatures likely to be high and rainfall low this is often deemed to be the holiday month, the time to put your feet up and recuperate for a week or two.
Well, the great thing is that if an annual break means leaving the garden to its own devices then August is a relatively good month to do so. Watering trends tend to be fairly time consuming and if there are crops to harvest you may well need to get someone to do both these jobs for you but apart from that growth often slows up somewhat so smeaking off for a while should not be too much of a problem.
If this is a month when you have to stay at home and enjoy sitting out on your garden or patio furniture then August is usually great for this too, with plenty of colourful flowers and a good supply of home grown crops too. A little bit of casual pottering around in the garden is pure pleasure so it pays to keep up with deadheading, the odd bit of pest control, some routine weeding and of course mowing the lawn while surrounded by a good looking garden and with any luck some sunshine.
What Is Decking?
Decking is fairly new to the UK but in America and other parts of the world it has been big for years. It is very contemporary and yet very natural because it is made of wood. It looks a bit like having a dance floor in your garden, wonderful for walking on barefoot but sudden death to stilettos because of the gaps. It is very adaptable and brilliant for a sloping garden, where you can make several timber terraces linked with steps but on level ground you can build up decking on two levels to make it look more interesting.
You can also cut bits out, plant through holes, build on stilts and do all sorts of things you cound not do with a couple of tons of paving slabs if you had chosen to have a patio instead. For the fashion follower, decking is the hottest must have garden ingredient and usually can be purchased at places like Homebase garden furniture if you cannot make it for yourself.
A brand new deck looks a bit stark and it wants a few touches to make it sit happily with the house and garden but don’t be tempted to start cluttering it up too much. Decks look much better with just a couple of things on them. For a totally maintenance free look I like to plant through a gap in the deck. That way the plants are growing in properly prepared soil and virtually look after themselves. Depending on the layout of your particular deck you could make a small sunken gardn packed with plants in the middle, or banks of evergreens set in beds round the table. But my first choice would be a single tree or shrub growing through a cut out square.
Gardening Year - July
July is when your garden is likely to be looking at its best with wonderfully colourful displays in flower borders, pots and containers. If you have managed to squeeze in a few vegetables, many of these should now be cropping heavily. As the weather is generally a good deal warmer now and days are longer there are many opportunities to enjoy your garden, sitting out on your garden furniture with a glass of wine and relaxing in the late afternoons and early evenings.
You might think this to mean that there is also a lot of work to do but to be honest this is not one of the most time consuming months in the garden, which is great because it means you have all the more time to enjoy the fruits of your labours. However, if you want to keep the garden looking as good as it can for as long as possible, you still need to carry out a fair amount of maintenance work and to keep your eye on plants and their problems, just in case anything tries to get out of hand.
Space Outside Our Homes
Most of us have a space outside our homes and most of us attempt to keep it tidy, if not easy to look at. Whether it consists of bare soil or whether it is covered with paving, bricks, concrete along with some fancy garden furniture and a barbecue, if left untouched a variety of different plants will start to grow on it. Most of these plants will be weeds, tangled, living and dying and not particularly ornamental.
With only a little help this space can still have a variety of plants growing in it but it can be a chosen variety, colourful, healthy and frangrant. Going a step further it can provide food: potatoes, lettuces and tomatoes, strawberries, apples or melons, flavourings such as parsley, mint and garlic.
However, a good many home owners faced with this space perhaps for the first time in their lives either decide that growing plants on purpose needs too much technical knowledge or that it is going to take more time and work than they can supply.
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is a great deal of unnecessary fuss made about cultivating plants i.e. gardening so that it is surrounded with an aura of green fingers and double digging. But if you remember that plants are alive, as you are and need food and drink and air, as you do, you are halfway to being a successful and enthusiastic gardener. One way in which plants eat is by absorbing particles of minerals, potassium, sulphur and iron dissolved in water through their roots. Another way in which they obtain the fuel they need to go on living is by making other foods and oxygen out of the air with the help of the energy provided by the sun. Much of your garden is aimed at providing the best possible conditions for both these activities.
