August Gardening Advice and Tips

TAG: Gardening Diary by Christina

August can be one of the hottest months of the year.  Where possible use your dish water to water plants unless you still have water available from water butts, the best time for watering is early morning or late evening when it will be more beneficial to the plants, water right at the base of the plant to avoid water wastage.

Jobs For August

  • Achilleas - dead head to encourage more flowers
  • Aucuba japonica - Take semi-ripe cuttings in summer, selecting healthy shoots of the current year's growth that has just started to become woody. 
  • Baliota Pseudodictanus - take cuttings of short, non-flowering side-shoots, and root in a propagator.
  • Bluebells - divide
  • Camillias - water in pots for the next 6 weeks - this will prevent buds falling off in the Spring
  • Corncockle - sow seeds
  • Cornmarigold - sow direct to soil
  • Cranesbill geranium - collect seeds and sow in seed trays immediately
  • Deadhead - flowering plants regularly.
  • Erigeron Karvinskianus (Mexican Fleabane) (syn.  Profusion) - collect fresh seeds and plant them into seed trays.  Fresh seeds are the best seeds
  • Euonymus - prune again to keep in shape
  • Evergreens - Take Semi-ripe cutting
  • Fatsia Japonica - Take semi-ripe cuttings
  • Field poppy - sow direct to soil
  • Foxgloves - sow in pots or direct in soil (plant out in September or next Spring).
  • Fuchsia - take soft wood cuttings from fast growing stems about 6-8cm long.  Can start roots in water in the kitchen window, then pot up in house.  Put out next year after frosts.
  • Hellebores - can plant any time of the year if available in garden centres / sow seeds in August
  • Iris - lift and divide.  Gentle lift them and remove dead or damaged rhizomes, keep the healthy ones and separate them keeping two leaves per rhizome.  Plant them on the surface of the soil in full sun.  The rhizomes like to be baked by the sun.  I have a very hot garden, so I've found placing soil over the rhizome is the only way I can get mine to flower.
  • Lavendar - trim back after it has finished flowering
  • Montana Clematis - take cuttings
  • Musk Mallow - sow seeds
  • Penstemons - take cuttings of 5 to 10cm in length.
  • Potted plants - feed with tomato or seaweed fed as compost nutrition will be depleted now.
  • Rosemary - take cuttings, pick side shoots from a main stem - strip a few lower leaves off - place each cutting in a mix of compost and grit round the side of the pot - store in a cool, well lit spot - keep well watered
  • Salvia - take cuttings
  • Seeds - plants seeds should now be ready to collect
  • Shrubs - Prune summer flowering shrubs.
  • Skimmia - take cuttings from semi-ripe stems
  • Soil - feed the soil with manures or fertilisers if you don't have a wild garden.
  • Strawberry Tree - Select healthy, non-flowering shoots from the current season's growth, and take cuttings that are approximately 10-15cm long.  Remove the lower leaves and plant the cutting in a well-draining potting mix.  Keep the cuttings in a warm, sheltered spot with indirect sunlight, and water it regularly until roots develop
  • Thyme - cut back after flowering
  • Wallflower - Erysimum Walberton's Fragrant Sunshine & Erysimum Bowles's Mauve - take cuttings (perenials).
  • Wallflower - plant perennials
  • Watering - containers and new plants, at this time of year may need watering on a regular basis.
  • White Campion - sow seeds
  • Wisteria - prune
  • Yellow rattle - sow direct to soil

Happy Gardening!

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