Friday, August 10, 2012

AUGUST GARDENING CALENDER


First week of August:
v     Now is the ideal time to take pictures and plan for next year’s vegetable and flower gardens.
v     Order your spring flowering bulbs now.
v     Check your garden plants, shrubs, flowers and trees for diseases and insect pests.
v     Begin planning and planting your fall vegetables, such as lettuce, radishes, kale, spinach, carrots, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and peas.

Mid-August:
v     Apply a second treatment of lawn insecticide for grub control or use milky spore dust, a bacteria that will attack more than 40 species of white grubs; this can be applied anytime.
v     Collect materials for dried flower arrangements, including weeds, flowers, marsh grasses and foliage.
v     Prepare lawn or lawn areas that are going to be seeded.
v     Feed roses for the last time.
v     Check azaleas if they are beginning to look pale green to yellow. This is called chloritic. Check soil pH. These acid-loving plants need to be fed.

Late August:
v     Grapes that are ripening now perish easily so keep refrigerated after harvesting.
v     Inspect trunks and branches of dogwoods and other trees for injured bark or fine dust pushed from burrows in trunks by borers.
v     Fertilize fall vegetable garden plants.
v     Plant new lawns or reseed bare spots in old lawns. This can be done until Sept. 30 in Delaware. If it’s dry, be sure to water newly seeded lawns every day.