Keep your late-summer garden looking fantastic with these easy tips for your August garden.
1.Divide Perennial Flowers
Digging and dividing perennial flowers is a great way to keep your garden beautiful. If you’re looking for the best time of year, August offers ideal conditions with plenty of sunshine and moderate temperatures so that freshly-dug plants can be replanted as soon as they are divided. Using sharp tools, cut clumps into smaller pieces before planting them back in their original pots or new ones!
Trial Garden Tip: Some perennial flowers such as bearded iris and ornamental grasses have a tendency to die out in the center. When you divide these perennials, cut around the centers and toss them on your compost pile!
2. Add Fall Color
Chrysanthemums are an excellent choice for late-summer flower borders. They come in a large variety of colors, shapes and sizes to suit any garden decor tastes. Plus these blooming beauties attract pollinators with their overflowing nectar! Mixing single or double flowering varieties create the perfect balance between color and shape through season transitions from fall into winter – don’t forget about migrating Monarch butterflies who love chrysanthemum’s sweet pollen over other plants’.
3. Replace Annual Flowers
You have been planting all summer and now it is time for your annual flowers to go into their winter hibernation. You can give them a makeover this fall with new, ready-to-bloom plants! Just gently pull out dead or dying annuals, mix in some fresh soil and replace the old ones with these beautiful cool season varieties that will keep you looking good through autumn.
Trial Garden Tip: If you’re looking for a new challenge in the garden, it’s time to experiment with something else! Be creative when selecting replacement annuals. Your trial will give your yard an entirely refreshed look and feel without all of those pesky costs involved in planting trees or shrubs.
4. Repot Houseplants
Weather can make houseplants more stressed and this often leads to a lot of new growth. If you’ve given your plants the summer off outside, August is prime time for them to go up in size before winter arrives. To achieve maximum health while reducing stress on their roots during transplanting, one should check the drainage hole prior to selecting a larger pot with fresh soil – if there are drooping roots visible then it’s time!
Trial Garden Tip: One way to reduce the chance of introducing pests, diseases and weed seeds into your container garden is by using a high quality soilless potting mix.
5. Wage War on Weeds
The garden is an amazing place that can produce the most beautiful flowers and vegetables, but it also needs a lot of work. If you’ve been putting off weeding chores in the summer like I have then August is your time to finally get busy because annual weeds start producing thousands of seeds at this point as well. The best way for me has always been after rain when soil still moist from heavy rainfall or irrigation beforehand if there hasn’t been sufficient natural precipitation lately–making them much easier to remove! You can pull weeds by hand or use a hoe. Just be sure to remove the roots, as they will quickly regenerate if left in the soil; this is important for preventing unwanted plants from growing back so soon after weeding them out! As soon as you have removed all of those pesky weeds that are scattered throughout your yard, cover it with some thick mulch made up of compost and other organic materials-this helps keep moisture levels steady and prevents weed growth while also enriching your lawn’s topsoil.
6. Plant Perennials and Shrubs
Late summer is the perfect time to plant your garden. Planting perennials and flowering shrubs now will give them a head start for next year, so you can enjoy their beauty from spring until fall! Some of our favorite flowers that are great for late planting include hydrangeas, daylilies, lilies (daffodils), sedums (stoneseed) ornamental grasses such as bearded iris or peonies; mulching also helps preserve soil moisture in hot dry weather. Mulching the garden beds with leaves and straw not only preserves moisture, but also keeps your soil warm. The best time to mulch is just before winter starts so that you can protect them during their first year of life!
7. Water Evergreens
Evergreens are known to be a favorite choice for homeowners. That is because they maintain their leaves through the winter season, and this can make them susceptible to dry soil if it goes untreated. One way of combating this problem would be by watering your evergreen trees early on in fall so that when cold weather arrives their roots will still have moisture around them from earlier rainfall or irrigation sessions.