August is a lovely time for a garden party…a weekend breakfast or perhaps at the Full Moons Aug 1 and the Aug 30 Blue Moon! Or wear your loveliest summer hat at the Afternoon Garden Tea Party! By fabulous illustrator Kate Greenaway!
Veggies and Flowers, Birds & Bees! Summer is in full swing at Rancheria Community Garden! Please enjoy tasty images of beauty and bounty at Rancheria Community Garden! We are Sowing the Future!
Share your gardening stories! Community of Gardens, a digital archive hosted by Smithsonian Gardens, is gathering gardening stories from gardeners and community gardening enthusiasts. Your participation can help others to better understand the meaning and value of gardens to American life – today and in the future. Submit your images, videos, and stories to their archive by emailing communityofgardens@si.edu or sharing your stories through their website.
Across-the-Plot Gardening Tips
In SoCal, trees bloomed a month late; birds arrived a month later than usual. July has been coolish, lots of overcast and mildews, some plants never got full stride, some are ending a bit early. BUT, here at the very end of July, here in Santa Barbara, we got 84° the 25th with more heat predicted! In spite of that, get those winter plants going. That will give you time for second winter plantings November/December. When hot, it is a tad challenging getting winter seeds and starts going. Watering will be critical, 2 to 4 times/day sometimes. Morning water is best for your plants in general. It keeps the ground cooler during the day when your plant needs that protection. Shade might be crucial for seedlings; Mulch well. Don’t slack off; you will be glad for the earlier rewards later.
For those of you who planted early spring, many of your plants are now finishing. It’s time to save seeds from your best plants! Clear space and ready your soil for winter planting. Start mini nursery seed beds in your garden or for transplanting from local nursery starts as soon as they become available. If you haven’t installed gopher protection wire, this is the best time, as summer ends, fall begins!
Just getting started in a new garden, or you just love to plant?! Summer plants you can still plant for fall harvests are early varieties of determinate tomatoes, bush beans and corn. Today, 7.31, I saw six packs of peas at a nursery! Hope they are late summer hardy! Corn is more disease prone at this time though. Tuck in your year-round fillers, beets, bunch onions, carrots, summer lettuces, winter radish, to keep a colorful and delicious variety on your table.
ONIONS For the biggest, sweetest harvests, late summer and early fall are the prime times to sow seeds of short- or intermediate-day onions. Fall-sown short- and intermediate-day onions tend to yield more and are larger and sweeter than those seeded or transplanted in early spring. Onions have stupendous flavor and come in white, yellow, red!
In our hot Santa Barbara foothills and further south, watch your melons, big squashes and pumpkins for their best harvest time – when their stem is brown and dry, or they ‘slip’ off the vine. Let your winter squash harden. When you can’t push your fingernail in winter squashes, and the stem is brown, it’s ready to harvest. Hold off irrigating melons about a week before they will ripen so their sugars will concentrate. Harvest okra while it is small and tender – bigger is NOT better!
Keep up with harvesting so plants don’t quit producing. More about harvesting! As in July, keep up with watering just beyond that dripline, maintain trenches and berms, replenish mulch.
If you want to extend your season, give your favorite late summer/fall heavy producers a good feed to extend their harvests. Eggplants have large or many fruit, beans put out a ton of beans, tomatoes, big or small, are working hard, peppers can be profuse! They like a tad of chicken manures scratched in, bunny poop and straw (pick up at Animal Shelters), well aged horse manure and compost makes them dance with the faeries in the night time! If you are avoiding digging pests, use alfalfa meal, but avoid fish emulsion, manures and worm castings that attract them. Do this also if you planted late or have second rounds that are just beginning to bud and bloom. Compost is #1 because it gives a sustained feed and increases water holding capacity.
- First, pull back your mulch, scratch the soil lightly to break up any crusty area. Scratch only around your plant in spots, not the whole area. You want to leave the majority of the surface feeder root system intact because they are where your plant uptakes most of its nutrients, oxygen and water.
- Use a spade fork to open holes around your plant, water well.
- Lay on what you are adding on the surface out to just beyond the drip line. If your plant has grown beyond the basin you made for it, enlarge the basin to fit it.
- Mix your amendments in gently in a few spots or not at all, so as not to break surface feeder roots. Again, feeder roots not only supply your plant with food and oxygen, but also uptake water so needed in late summer in SoCal.
- Pull the mulch back into place, replenish if needed, replace if it is no longer doing its job.
- Water again, gently and slowly so not to wash the mulch away, to let the water and nutrients soak in. You can water once then come back and give them a third round of water to let it soak down a little deeper. The nutrients from the feed drizzle down and act like compost tea.
Fertilizers highest in P, Phosphorus – the P in NPK, keep blooming and fruiting optimum. Liquid fertilizers are absorbed easily and promptly, and there is no root damage. Now is the time you wish you had added mycorrhizae fungi, the good guys, at planting time, to enhance Phosphorus uptake! Aged organic compost makes for healthy roots that make their own natural organic phosphoric acid that helps break down compounds of calcium and phosphate into a usable, soluble form. It’s too late to add bonemeal or seabird guano. They take 2 and 3-4 months respectively to become available to your plants for blooming. They are another must add at planting time. NOW, Phosphorus from fish bone meal 3-18-0 is easily taken up! So is chicken manure 1.1-0.8-0.5, but the P is a lot less. Add chicken manure using the process as in the list above. Lettuces thrive on chicken manure feeds! Reminder, don’t use these if you have digging predators like raccoons, skunks.
- Peppers specially like a foliar feed of non-fat powdered milk (Calcium) and Epsom Salts (Magnesium & Sulfur). They also can use more Potassium. This time of year kelp meal is good source and releases quickly. If you have predators about, don’t get the kind mixed with stinky fish emulsion.
- Foliar feed all your plants with a super mixed tea – use NO manure in teas you will use on leaves you will eat, like lettuce! At the same time, for deeper root feeding, use a spade fork to make holes about your plant. Push it into the soil, wiggle back and forth a bit, then pour the rest of that tasty mixed tea down the holes. Replace the mulch and water well at soil level to a bit beyond the dripline.
A word to the wise. If your plant is done, it’s done. No amount or any kind of feeding will ‘help’ it. It’s nature. Thank it. Either save seeds or if it is clean, not diseased or infested, compost it.
Seeds are your last harvest! Allow your healthiest top producers to seed. Tie a ribbon on plants (at top and bottom or where you might grab it if in a weeding frenzy) or on fruits you want to save seeds from so you don’t accidentally harvest them too soon! Each year keep your best! Remember, these seeds are adapted and localized to you, your location, how you garden! Scatter some seeds about if they would grow successfully now! Or just scatter them about and when it’s the right time up they come, even if it’s next spring! Many seeds, especially self seeders, will come up quite well on their own, even the tiniest ones like Breadseed Poppy, chamomile and some lettuces! Some need Cold Stratification, overwintering in the ground, or some time in your fridge!
Save enough seeds for your own planting, for several rounds of planting across next year’s season, for replanting when there are losses. Save some to give away or share at the seed swap. Our 2024 Santa Barbara area Seed Swap is in January! If you are willing, take some of your extras to a local Seed Bank! While you are there, pick up some of your favorites and some new ones to try out! Keep the local races going. 2020 Note! As your plants come into seeding time, consider sharing them as soon as possible! “Little Free Seed Libraries” are Sprouting Up to Help Gardeners Share Seeds in Troubled Times. Take a look at some very clever and loving ideas!
Store your keepers in a cool dry place for next year’s better than ever plantings. See more about SeedSaving! How to Save Tomato Seeds!
After seedsaving, when your plants are done, let them go, compost if pest and disease free, start clearing space for fall soil prep. Bag up ground waste where plants have had disease or infestations and put it in the garbage, NOT in the green waste recycle.
Fall Soil Prep!
August is perfect time to ready your soil for the very first fall plantings, starting mid-August from seed!
At this time of year, seasonal change, before deciding how to prep your soil, decide what you will plant! Some plants are perfect this time of year and the next couple of months. See Photoperiodism! Know if your favored plants need regular or acidic soil. Make or amend accordingly for more bountiful harvests! Maybe put the acid lovers in a area of their own?
Designing your winter garden depends on your microclimate, seeds you have or can get, transplants you can get or grow, the amount of space you have, whether you will be growing a soil feeding leguminous cover crop. How you prep your soil depends on what your soil already is like, what your plants need. Many plants need slightly acidic soil. Some areas need more rich soil for high production winter ‘heavy’ feeders. Some want a little sand, others don’t want soggy feet. If you are planting seeds, do the seed beds first! Seeds germinate faster and healthier with worm castings. 25% is ideal. Be sure to protect this area from worm loving predators like raccoons or skunks. Check out Designing your SoCal Winter Veggie Garden! Think Big!
EMPHASIS! Some would consider the ultimate ‘soil prep’ to be installing GOPHER wire protection, LOL! Here we are at the turn of the season, a very good time to do the job. Water well and deeply each of 3 days before if your soil is hard deeper down. Test a spot first. Get a team of friends together and go for it! Appoint a watcher to play music, make sure everyone stays hydrated. Bring gloves, wear sturdy shoes, safe boots. You may not be able to do the whole area at once, but do what you can. You will be so glad you did! You can do it!
Cover crop soil restoration! You can plant herbs, Calendula, all sorts of things, but a Green Manure mix including lots of legumes and oats does the best. Legumes collect Nitrogen from the air, N being the number one element plants need for leaf growth! Know that Nitrogen fixing plants don’t pull nitrogen from the air on their own. They actually need help from a common bacteria called Rhizobium. Whether you are planting cover crops, beans or peas, if there is no Rhizobium in the soil from previous plantings, add the bacteria to the seed mix, making a seed covering slurry, then plant immediately. Legumes deposit the N on their roots in little nodules. When you turn the legumes under, they not only feed your soil with their leaves, but those little nodules on their roots! Beans and Peas are legumes. Always cut off rather than pull out their roots. Leave those roots there to feed your soil! Their nitrogen isn’t released until the plant dies. The deep roots of oats loosen your soil, creating channels for oxygen and water and soil critters to navigate. Also, they produce more growth in late fall/early winter than in spring! Perfect for winter crop plantings! The Basics – Cover Crops In depth about Living Mulch!
If you have enough area, plant one space entirely with a cover crop. If your area is smaller, each year plant a different section with your cover crop. Some years you can get two cover crops in, especially if you are planting successively for a steady table supply. When the first patch is done you plant it. You start your second patch where another area has been finishing. Or if you are doing one area for early planting, save another for planting bareroots in January.
If you are inclined, always be making compost with clean garden waste, kitchen scraps. Decide where you want to compost; leave space next to it so you can move your compost back and forth. Or you can move your composter around to enrich the soil there. The fastest way to compost is to make a pit or a trench. Add your healthy green waste or kitchen waste, chop it fine, turn it in mixing it with your soil. If you trenched it, turn it a few times over the next few days. If you have a pit, turn it two to three times over the next few days, then add it where it is needed when it is done. To balance the materials, add dry newspaper or something dry that decomposes quickly. Straw can literally take months. If you don’t have dry material, add bought compost that has plenty of bark type bits for water holding capacity and to keep your soil looser.
If composting isn’t for you, buy the best in bags you can! In addition to the basics, we want to see worm castings, mycorrhizae fungi, bat guano, kelp meal, maybe some peat to loosen clay and add more water holding capacity, chicken manure. If you soil isn’t loamy and doesn’t hold water well, look for a texture that has bits of bark that will add more water holding capacity.
Start Seedlings for transplant, or plant seeds right in the ground!
Choose the very best seeds possible! We want health and abundance! Climate is your first consideration. Cold tolerance if you are in a year round area. Disease and pest tolerance, resistance. Pests are per your area and time of year. For strong mildew resistance, more, take a look at Cornell’s super plant by plant Veggies Disease Resistant List! Allow plenty of time. It covers a lot. Also know that some of the plants are commercially produced and may not be what a home gardener wants ie a tough plant that can withstand processing before it gets to market. But sometimes, those commercial plants are the very best and the latest on the market! Try two or three varieties!
Seeds germinate really well, quicker and healthier when worm castings are added to your soil along with the compost. Castings strengthen your plants’ immune systems germination is faster, they have water holding capacity! Add 25% for best results. Boost up seed beds and add amendments out to the dripline where you will be installing transplants. Put a stake where your planting holes will be so you can add more at those points when you install your transplants. See Soil for Seed Starting! DIY, Pre-made Remember to protect any areas where you use worm castings in advance!
Plant seeds of small plants where they will live permanently as space becomes available. That’s beets, celery, chard, mustard greens, parsley, winter radish varieties, kohlrabi, Mizuna, bok choy, rutabaga, turnips. Peas are a well favored winter crop! Pole peas go up on the trellis to save space! Sow carrots (they do best from seed). Keep the soil moist and shaded until they’re up, and then gradually allow them more sun over a week’s time. Some plants, especially hard seed carrots, do well in mini low sided trenches where they keep more moisture to germinate.
Plant the seeds for biggies in little nursery areas. Plant them far enough apart that you have plenty of space to get your trowel in, not damage any neighbor seedling roots, to transplant them to their permanent home as space becomes available. That’s Brassicas: cabbage (especially red, and savoy types that resist frost better), broccoli, Brussels sprouts, collards, cauliflower and kale babies!
Don’t forget to plant your plants’ companion plants as well! In fact, plant them together in your Nursery Patch and transplant them together when their space becomes available! A great winter set might be Broccoli, cilantro and lettuce. If you choose cilantro, don’t delay transplanting when space becomes available – cilantro makes deep roots fast! The exception is carrots, another deep roots fast plant. Better to plant them in a permanent location. Instead of a trowel, leave enough space between them and other companion sets, to lift them out with a small shovel! When ready, predig their new space for them, dig deeply so there is room for their roots to go straight down. Add winter amendments as needed and mix them into the soil. Water the hole just enough to moisten it. Dig deeply under your companion sets so not to cut their growing roots, and transfer them to their new planting hole. Immediately give them their first pest/mildew prevention treatments. Voilà! Happy plants! They will grow quickly, be strong and productive.
See Super Fall Veggies for help choosing the very best varieties and Fall companion planting! Don’t forget to plan space to commingle your valuable companion plants! They enhance growth, repel pests, bring pollinators, can help withstand diseases. Here’s your quick handy list of winter companions:
- Cilantro with Broccoli! It makes brocs grow REALLY well, bigger, fuller, greener!
- Celery, potato and onions enhance broccoli flavor! Chamomile is thought to too and, called the Plant Dr, heals nearby plants!
- Lettuce among, beside Cabbages to repel cabbage moths
- Chives, Cilantro, Garlic, Geraniums, Lavender, Mint family (caution – invasive), and onions are said to repel aphids.
- Mustard and nasturtium can be planted near more valuable plants as traps for the aphids. A word to the wise, nasturtiums are often snail habitat and can quickly take over an area!
- Calendula is a trap plant for pests such as aphids, whiteflies, and thrips by exuding a sticky sap that they find more appealing and delicious than nearby crops. Plant them a bit away from the plant you want to survive.
- Peas and carrots are terrific together but NO onion family with Peas!
- Include winter blooming flowers and herbs plus habitat for your pollinators!
PLEASE plant winter habitat and flowering plants for our beneficial insects – bees, hoverflies, butterflies, pollinators! Here’s a BC list of 15 Plants that Help Bees through the Winter If they will grow there, they surely will grow here! We depend on bees for our survival! See Pollination: Honeybees, Squash Bees & Bumblebees! How to Care for Your Pollinators in Winter
Winter plants that get a good start while there is still some heat, will be producing a lot sooner than plants started when it gets cooler. You will have a much earlier crop, plus time for a successive crop, maybe start another round in December! Be sure to leave space to plant additional rounds to keep a steady table supply, especially peas! You can plant the waiting to space to quick small growers for table variety. Just harvest them when you are ready to plant your second round.
If planting from seed is not for you, no time, gone on vacation, of course you can wait and get transplants when the nurseries bring them in. Just know nursery selections are not as big as what you can buy as seeds. They sell what sells most. Island Seed & Feed has the best and greatest selection of organic seed in the Santa Barbara area, and there are marvelous ethical seed companies. Be sure to get seed varieties that are right for your area! Always choose the best, varieties that resist or tolerate local pests or disease, that in winter can withstand frost/freeze.
Keep harvesting, do your soil preps, plant some seed, and wait for September or October for transplants. Labor Day weekend is a favorite big planting time for many gardeners, and that’s only a month away now! At that time you can plant both seeds and transplants of the same plants! Effectively that’s two rounds at once, the seeds, depending on weather, coming in six to seven weeks after the transplants!
Among HOT August days, there are hints of fall. Days are a tad shorter; shadows fall in different places. For us SoCal gardeners it’s time to design – Think Big! It’s in our minds, maybe put to paper. What will be new and different this year. Will you relocate your garden, reroute your paths? Start a Food Forest?! What new foods will we try, is there a more productive or resistant variety? Will you be adding compost space, or a worm bin? Would you like raised beds on legs this time? How about a greenhouse?! Have you ever planted a green manure cover crop? Will your soil be different? Will you be planting tall indeterminate peas in a cage that shades, or quickie low bush peas? Both?! Is the gopher wire installed yet? What about greywater systems? Rainwater capture?
Put your feet up, review your garden notebook. In the cool of late summer evenings think it through…. Dream about your new winter garden…
Updated annually
Check out the entire August 2023 Newsletter!
Winter Garden Design!
Veggie Garden Nursery Patch!
Broccoli, the Queen of Brassicas!
5 Simple & Easy Storage Ideas for your Harvest Bounty!
Dehydrate?! EZ, No Storage Expenses, Use Less Space, Nutritious Tasty Results!
Upcoming Gardener Events! Get your lodgings for the 10th Annual National Heirloom Exposition, Ventura CA Sep 12-14! Sep 27-30 44th American Community Gardening Assn Conference in Houston. Santa Cruz Permaculture is in full swing – get your Certificate and MORE!
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Love your Mother! Plant bird & bee food! Think grey water! Grow organic! Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
The Green Bean Connection started as correspondence for the Santa Barbara CA USA Pilgrim Terrace Community Garden. Both Santa Barbara City’s remaining community gardens are very coastal. During late spring/summer we are often in a fog belt/marine layer most years, locally referred to as the May grays, June glooms and August fogusts. Keep that in mind compared to the microclimate niche where your veggie garden is. Bless you for being such a wonderful Earth Steward!
Late July, gardeners are starting to want new ways to enjoy their Zucchini! 
Cool summer evenings enjoy Zucchini Lasagna! You can even eat it cold, and for breakfast!
Tasty Zucchini Rolls made with Sunflower Seeds Pate, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Spinach! See complete recipe by Chris at 
Late July, gardeners are starting to want new ways to enjoy their Zucchini! 
Cool summer evenings enjoy Zucchini Lasagna! You can even eat it cold, and for breakfast!
The soil is warming, soon it will be the ideal time to start Peppers!
If you are container gardening, or have seedlings, use a spray bottle. If you are growing in the ground, get a watering can with a nozzle that rotates to spray UP under your plants’ leaves where some pests live. What goes up between the leaves will fall down and do the tops of the leaves at the same time! In other words, foliar feed your whole plant!
Cucumbers
Another vining plant, like melons, huge leaves and vine, or patio minis! Big squash plants have the biggest leaves in the garden. They aren’t shy about growing 30′ or more!
Green Bean Connection 