GARDEN PREPARATION - AUGUST

August marks the transitioning of  gardens from mid-summer to late summer.  Harvesting is  in full swing while the pests, weeds and miscellaneous diseases are hotly vying to take over.  In some gardens, as I have observed and you may have also noticed, they have clearly won...

But for gardeners with persistence, here are some things that will keep you trapped in the garden.

• Cancel any remaining vacation and harvest those beets, garlic, shallots, beans, tomatoes etc. and pull those weeds! Everything is a treat - remember to sample a hill of new potatoes and test a fresh carrot..

• Replant - beets, beans carrots (remember to keep carrot seed moist)

• Transplant seedlings such as Brussel sprouts, broccoli and lettuce.  It's too late to sow seed for the sprouts and broccoli, but you can start lettuce seedings inside for transplanting in late summer.  Given normal summer daytime temperatures, direct sowing of lettuce seeds in the garden will only make the seeds go dormant.   

Late blight also can strike early. Source: Cornell U.

• Watch out for the blights! High daytime and nighttime temperatures combined with high humidity create the perfect conditions for early and late blight as well as other plant diseases.   If your veggies start looking yellow or have suddenly turned a very dead brown, your garden is probably infected by one of them.  Too bad, there are not really remedies at this stage. The best protection is actually prevention.   For tomatoes, a crop especially prone to LB, backyard gardeners can minimize their risks by staking or trellising vines, pruning shoots to a minimum number (4 - 6) and by removing any leaf shoots within 6" of the soil.  The increased airflow this provides will slow  disease development.  

• Gardeners with probiotic leanings might consider applying a biofungicide using baccilies subtitillies, a bacteria naturally found in the ground as well as the human gut as a possible control.  For those less inclined to organic type methods, you can look for  fungicides containing Benomyl. Both need to be applied in advance of the outbreak of problems.  Benomyl is not harmful to mammals (including people) or birds, but it is toxic to earthworms. As a realist, however, I admit that the blights frequently seem to win before the first frost...

Enough of this blogging.  I need to get back to the garden.

And Remember:

"Criticizing another's garden doesn't keep weeds out of your own." - Proverb