August in the Garden.

August can be a challenging month in the garden, often fraught with heat, drought, and the threat of endless weeds, but it doesn't have to be that way. In this episode of Down the Garden Path, Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing show you how to overcome the challenges of August and keep your garden and landscape thriving with tips and tricks and do’s and don'ts for your August garden.

What are you looking forward to this August? We’d love to hear from you. Visit our Down the Garden path Facebook group to share your pictures or ask us questions about your August garden. And if you have an idea for a show topic, Facebook is the perfect place write as well.

Here are some of the questions and topics covered in this episode:

• Plan what fall bulbs you’d like to plant for your spring garden. Order now and buy early for the best varieties.

• Source garlic bulbs from a local farmer or reputable seed company to have them ready for fall planting.

• Continue to trim herbs like mint, chives, dill, etc., to encourage flavourful new growth.

• Cover ripening fruit to protect from birds and critters.

• Sow seeds of beans, beets, spinach, and turnips for a fall harvest.

• Check fruits, vegetables, annuals, perennials, trees, and shrubs for pests and diseases and remove as necessary.

• Use Japanese Beetle traps to control populations. Remember, 1 is enough for urban landscapes.

• Apply nematodes in mid-August, or sooner, to control white grub populations in the lawn.

• Continue to deadhead annuals and perennials to promote new blooms.

• Continue fertilizing containers, window boxes, and hanging baskets with a water-soluble fertilizer once every 2 weeks until Thanksgiving or you dispose of them for the season.

• Apply a new layer of rich compost to garden beds.

• Continue to weed your lawns and hardscapes.

• Remove small errant shoots from topiaries, shrubs, and hedges.
  

Resources mentioned during the show:

• Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden.

Season 9, episode 24 - July 31st, 2023.

Down the Garden Path Podcast

Each week on Down The Garden Path, professional landscape designers Joanne Shaw and Matthew Dressing discuss down-to-earth tips and advice for your plants, gardens and landscapes.

As the owner of Down2Earth Landscape Design, Joanne Shaw has been designing beautiful gardens for homeowners east of Toronto for over a decade. A horticulturist and landscape designer, Matthew Dressing owns Natural Affinity Garden Design, a landscape design and garden maintenance firm servicing Toronto and the Eastern GTA. Together, they do their best to bring you interesting, relevant and useful topics to help you keep your garden as low maintenance as possible.

In their new book, Down the Garden Path: A Step-By-Step Guide to Your Ontario Garden, Joanne and Matthew distill their horticultural and design expertise and their combined experiences in helping others create and maintain thriving gardens into one easy-to-read monthly reference guide. It's now available on Amazon.

Don't forget to check out Down The Garden Path on your favourite podcast app and subscribe! Don't listen to podcasts on traditional podcast providers? You can now catch the podcast on YouTube.