August in Your Garden!

Sunflowers at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, Santa Barbara CA

The Next Three Months….

August is keeping your soil water absorbent, sidedressing, harvesting, plant a last round of summer favorites, start cool-season seedlings, time to preserve your abundance for winter eating, to take stock and make notes for next year’s summer planting!

September is exciting because it is the first month to plant fall veggies!  Do your final harvesting, preserving, clean up, chop and compost, and plant on Labor Day weekend!

October is considered by many to be the best planting month of the year!!  Time to take up strawberry daughters (runners) for November planting, clean up to break pest and disease cycles, plant your winter veggies, plant more veggies if you started in September!

…but specially in August:

Plant another round of your summer favs if you want, but keep in mind that Sep/Oct are the best fall planting months, so check those dates to maturity!  The sooner you start your winter plants, the faster start they have, the sooner you have winter veggies.  Things get slower as it gets cooler, so a head start makes sense.  And, heat lovers started now will have a shorter harvest period.  Just saying.

Watering:  Keep your veggies well watered, daily on extra hot days.  Seedlings may need water 2 to 3 times a day!  Keep strawberries moist or they will stop producing.  It tomatoes dry out, they drop their blossoms.  Water short rooted plants, beans, lettuces, cukes, more frequently.  They like lots of water, steady water! 

Mulch short rooted plants, beans, cukes, lettuces and strawberries, and deeper rooted chard, to keep them cool and moist.  More about summer mulching.

Feeding:  Get out your fish emulsion, get some manures, and feed your plants!  Foliar feed with compost, manure, worm casting tea.  Epsom salts your peppers.  Seabird guano (NOT bat guano) keeps plants flowering and producing!  See about aspirin in my upcoming 8.11.11 post!

Harvest like crazy!  Be thorough to keep your crop coming, and be gentle to keep your plants undamaged so they aren’t open to pests and diseases.  Be specially careful around your trellised or caged cuke’s brittle leaves.  You can hear them snap if you push against them too much or accidentally back into them.

Save seeds from your very best plants!

Pests and Diseases:  Stay with your prevention programs, and clear away debris, spent or unhealthy plants.  Mini tip:  Keep a 5 gal bucket, or wheel barrow, near you to collect debris as you work.

Prep your fall beds!

• Start making compost for fall planting.  Chop into small pieces for faster decomposition.
• Set safe spots aside for seedling nurseries.
• Install gopher wire barriers in your new planting beds, redo an old bed.
• Incorporate manures, worm castings, and already-made compost into your soil.
• Top with mulch, maybe straw mixed with nitrogen rich alfalfa, to keep feeding your soil and keep the under layer moist.

Get the best varieties of seeds for starts now for Sep/Oct planting, or to put in the ground then!

Let strawberry runners grow now.

Enjoy your harvests!  Preserve or Give Away your bounty!

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June – a Tasty Time!

June blooms mean tasty veggies!

The first tomatoes have now been eaten at Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden, and one bell pepper!

June is not so much a planting month as a maintenance month and getting those first veggies!  You can continue to plant more rounds of your summer plants, especially the ones that don’t have continuous production like indeterminate tomatoes that will produce all season long.  Stoke up your soil, replace plants that didn’t make it, that are done already – mature or bolted chard, cilantro, lettuce, arugula, beets, or are ailing. 

Special Strawberry Tips!  Don’t let them dry out, they will stop producing.  Mulching is good.  This month they tend to grow more leaves, send out runners.  Clip off the runners for now, later we will let them grow.  Give your strawberries a little fertilizer in the 0-10-10 proportions; that’s phosphorus and potassium for strong roots and uptake of nutrients, blooms and fruits!  They love pine needle mulch, if you have some about, because they prefer slightly acidic soil.  Use the  cones to drape your berries over to keep them off the ground, away from chewing creatures. 

Same as last month….

Water deeply, specially as each plant needs.  That’s more frequently for short rooted beans, cucs and strawberries, thirsty lettuces.  Irregular watering = funky shapes; too dry = bitter, production can stop.  Water seeds/seedlings daily.  If they dry out once, they’re dead.  Immediately after planting and watering your new little plant in, sprinkle on some Sluggo.  Sprinkle Sluggo just before your seedlings come up.  Tiny tender plants are irresistibly delicious!

Side dress/fertilize, especially if leaves are looking pale or your plant is puny or slowing down.  Blood meal for a quick fix, otherwise, compost, a little manure raked in, liquid kelp & fish emulsion mix.  Epsom salts for your peppers, once when they bloom and again ten days later. Go very gently with beans, tomatoes and strawberries.  These are not leaf crops, you want fruit!  Too much N (nitrogen), and you get a lot of leaf, little production.  If your planting bed was too rich or you over fertilized, bee bop on out to Island Seed & Feed (if you are in the Santa Barbara CA area) and pick up some Seabird Guano (NOT Bat Guano!).  The Seabird Guano is high in phosphorus, promotes healthy root growth, greatly increases the number of flowers, increases the available phosphorus in the soil and enhances beneficial bacteria activity in the soil!  It is good to use generally just before your plants flower or you see the first flowers!  This inexpensive treatment is a wonder!  Imagine how many beans, strawberries….Yes! 

Now plant heat tolerant and slow bolting varieties of cilantro, and lettuces – Nevada, Sierra, Jericho, Slobolt, Black Seeded Simpson.  Bolting, a natural maturing phenomena – the center of the plant shoots up and forms flowers, is caused by accumulated light hours, warm temps, and water stress.  Another thing to find is varieties that are leaf tip burn resistant.  Might plant them under a bit of a canopy or in the shade of a larger plant?  As your big plants get up, clear the lowest leaves and tuck some lettuce or dandelion greens underneath?

Harvesting is not just for food!  Just like deadheading flowers, when you harvest, they keep coming!  Eat little zuchs flowers and all!  Pull beans and cucs continuously while they are young and tender.  No storing on the vine, or you plant will think it is done!  Continue to harvest your broc side shoots.  Once it goes to flower (they are edible – sprinkle them on your salad!), no more side shoots.                                                      

* * Plant special flowers, herbs, or veggies for summer Hostess gifts!  Friends getting married in June?!  Why not give them plants for their new garden together?!  How symbolic!  Plant a little extra all the time for ready gifts for any occasion!  

 

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