Garden Planning, Tips and Planting Advice

Gardening Tips: August Lawn Care

If the weather permits, your lawn should be mowed once a week. Regular cutting helps the grass thicken and reduces weed. Now the grass is growing faster, you can set you lawn mower blades to a medium or low cut – about 2 cm.

The edges also need trimming with long handled shears, an edging tool or strimmer. Apart from looking good, this helps prevent grass spreading into your flower borders.

You may also need to use a lawn feed to encourage strong growth and reduce the amount of weeds and moss. You can spread the lawn feed by hand or use a Spreader.

Note: In long dry spells, let your grass grow longer and do not use summer feeds that force lots of growth. Leave your lawn to go brown and it will recover in the autumn.

Gardening Tips: August Evergreen Hedging

In August keep evergreen hedges trimmed and tidy. When trimming hedges, make sure you brush off the clippings to prevent the spread of diseases. Depending on the length of the hedge ‘run’, you can trim evergreen hedges with hand shears or with an electric, battery or petrol hedge trimmer. If you are using a powered hedge trimmer, use protective goggles and gloves.

Gardening Tips: August Pruning

Cut back the flower heads of roses once their flowers fade and fall, using secateurs. If you have rambler roses, any long branches should be cut to a few inches from the ground. However, with rambling roses, you can leave some flower heads to go to seed to give you brightly coloured hips in autumn.

Gardening Tips: August Planting

To plant, the type of equipment you will need includes:

• Trowel
• Shovel
• Rake

Watering can or hose

When planting or transplanting, use compost from your compost bin, manure or purchase compost. Once you have dug a hole big enough for the plant, add 2-3in of compost or manure into the hole to feed the plant. Fill the hole with water, preferably from your water butt and let the water sink in. Place the plant in the hole and water again. Fill in the hole with soil to the top of the root ball and water again.

Examples of the type of plants you can plant in August are:

• Vegetables
• Broccoli
• Celery
• Kale
• Leeks
• Flowers
• Autumn flowering bulbs, for example, crocus and sternbergia (autumn daffodil).

During the growing season, you must ensure they are well watered and feed your plants with a good plant food/fertilizer and keep them well watered. For watering you may want to consider purchase a water butt to save on your eater usage. If you have a large garden, you may need to consider using a hose instead of a watering can.

Sow

Note: Always check the instructions on the seed packet concerning time of sowing and transplanting. Different varieties are designed to grow at different times. The information below is a general guide for common vegetable and flower seeds that can be sown this time of year.

Vegetables

The following are examples of the vegetable seeds you can sow outside:

• Spring and summer cabbage
• Red cabbage
• Winter spinach

Harvest your vegetables

You will find some of your vegetables are ready to harvest in August, for example, broccoli, carrots, courgette, lettuce, potato, radish and tomato.

Flowers

The following are examples of flower seeds you can sow outside:

• Stock
• Forget-me-not
• Hollyhock
• Pansy