Here are 5 Late Summer Gardening Tips that will keep your plants producing as we transition to The Fall.
Late Summer Gardening Tips
The Kitchen Garden has begun to wane. As the vine leaves have begin to die, they reveal a cornucopia of squash and tomatoes. Keeping the beds viable past their peak takes some effort. For most weekend gardeners, it simply another part of the season.
Don’t Forget to Water
Heavy rains can make the weekend gardner complacent. Don’t be that guy or girl. While tomatoes and cucumbers are subject to root rot from too much water, squash tends to send their roots deep into the ground as each plant likes to spread out and claim more and more territory. Pumpkins, Zucchini, and their various relatives within the Cucurbitaceae genus will continue to produce throughout the late Summer and early Fall if properly cared for.
Don’t Forget to Prune
For the 2nd of our 5 late summer gardening tips we take the lesson of John 15:2 quite literally. Dead branches serve only to steal energy and nutrients from those which are producing.
Diligent pruning is an essential task for the weekend gardner. My wife’s medium-duty poultry shears work very well.
This is easier done on some plants than on others. With tomatoes for instance, it’s pretty obvious which branches need to go. Take care with squash. Dying leaves on Pumpkins and Zucchini are still feeding the produce so you may need to wait until they are truly spent before removing them.
My long-suffering wife hears it from me all the time. “If you want to get the most out of your flowers and vegetables, sometimes you have to be mean to them.” We have this standard joke with our rose bushes out front.
She always says I’m going to kill them and of course they always give us a second bloom and come back the following year. This past Summer one of them finally gave up the ghost. “See? After 15 years, I was right.” Of course you were, my Princess. We’ve replaced it with a hydrangea.
Harvest Throughout the Season
Experience, naturally is the best teacher. After a few seasons, you will know which fruits and vegetables are ready for picking. Gardening is not Farming. With Gardening, each edible is precious.
Don’t Add Fertilizer
Of all the 5 late summer gardening tips, this one is the easiest, because you literally have to do nothing. Resist the temptation to mix that last little bit of powdered plant food you picked up at the garden center in the Spring. It’s a waste of time and effort. Adding manure at this point will simply harm you plants since it takes weeks and sometimes months for it to release the stored methane.
Know When It’s Time to Pull
This might be the most important of our 5 late summer gardening tips. It is essential to learn to let go since not every plant is a winner. Aesthetics count. A Kitchen Garden should be beautiful as well as practical.
This Plum Tomato Plant suffered from root rot all Summer long due to too much rain. Plucking it out of the ground at this point would be an act of mercy.
Hope some of this helps. Enjoy this year’s photo journal.
The Colonel’s Garden – 2018 Photo Journal
Inside The Enclosure
A Garden Gate doesn’t get this beautiful over night. It takes The Almighty over a decade to weather it to perfection. This year I decided to touch up the lettering with a soldier blue acrylic.
Eggplants weigh down two plants just inside the gate.
The last two Acorn Squash. Spearmint provides a nice additive to ice tea.
Exhausted cucumber vines.
The cucumbers had us scratching our heads this year. Most of them tended to turn yellow overnight as soon as they hit 3-4 inches in length. We were able to pick enough to fill 2 pickle jars, and we ended up tossing about 30 of them. Not happy about that, but live and learn.
Branches groan under the weight of the abundant Beefsteak Tomatoes.
Sun Flowers add a splash of color.
Give it another couple of days.
Jalapeños. Oh, yes.
Outside The Enclosure
Butternut Squash. One of the “extra” seedlings and a pleasant surprise.
Marigolds standing guard. Among the easiest plants to grow, they add a touch of color to any garden and emit a natural insect repellent.
A pollen covered bumble bee takes a breather on a fence post. A sure sign that your garden is maintaining it’s viability through the late Summer.
Pumpkin Patch
The sign says it all.
A pumpkin vine spreads out from it’s bed across the lawn.
As the leaves begin to clear, we get a glimpse of the garden’s yield.
Morning Glories. Who can argue with this?
From Humble beginnings.
Pumpkin bud
The Throw-Aways
The Throw-Away Patch. About a dozen pots were left over from the initial planting. I figured – sure, why not?
Throw Away Patch Grafted Vine
And to think, I almost didn’t plant this one.
Getting Wild
Wild Morning Glory crawls along the ground by the burn barrel.
Happy accidents as Bob Ross would say. A wild zucchini vine spreads out in front of the deck.
Wild zucchini tap root.
By the ramp leading to the shed, a wild pumpkin vine made for a pleasant surprise.
Another “Left-over”
An extra seedling planted at the base of the back deck soon flourishes and wraps it’s way around the post.
Thanks for stopping buy. I’ll try to post an update next week.
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