Garden in August. August garden jobs

Hey guys, it's Marta. Welcome in August. How did that happen? Half of the holidays are over. Today I wanted to meet with you, walk through the garden, show you what's blooming and tell you what jobs I'm planning for August. Let's go! We are standing in the front border because this is my favorite border in August because of all the hydrangeas. The Annabelle's behind me look so magnificent and I absolutely love this time of the year. It starts late July and then goes into August. I just love coming here, seeing what other hydrangeas are blooming now. Paniculatas are going into their prime. In the video about hydrangeas I told you that we had unusual July for us because the place where we live in we get a lot of rain and we usually get rain once a week. So my garden knows that it's coming and it didn't this month. So July was pretty dry. We had a lot of problems especially around birch trees that the plants had problems with the lack of water and if they've been in a situation like this from when they were young that would be great but they are used to getting a lot of water every week so they were not that happy. But we got a lot of rain in the past week and I also fertilized the hydrangeas and I watered them by hand for a whole week and they've recuperated. You can see the difference now between the time I showed you in the video and now. So they are much more happy. One of my main jobs in August are staking and deadheading. Staking because when we get a lot of rain and we usually get thunderstorms we get a lot of wind so a lot of plants are bent over. I'm trying to do as many of the staking as much of the staking as I can during the first part of the season but sometimes you need to adjust. You need to come and see if something if it has such big flowers as Annabelle's even the best staking sometimes needs some tweaking. So I come after the storm and I try to tweak the type of staking I have. But my main job for August is deadheading. I'm deadheading mostly roses. This is what I do on a regular basis starting in July and I just go and either I deadhead only the flowers or I prune them harder. I've shown you that in the previous video about cutting lavender and deadheading roses. So I'm almost done with most of them and some of the roses started blooming again but also I'm deadheading a lot of perennials. So perennials like phlox, geraniums, catmint, sometimes salvias. Depending what has stopped blooming I will shear them depending on the plant. Some of them I will shear harder, some of them I will just remove the flowers or a part of the stalk. Like with phlox I will just cut them by a third and then I can expect another bloom. So that is great. Learning about deadheading the plants was one of the best things I've learned about gardening. If you deadhead your plants of course they need to be plants that re-bloom. So deadheading a tulip will do nothing but if you deadhead plants that re-bloom you give them a signal that they weren't able to make the seeds so they need to bloom again so that the whole process is full and that way you get more and more flowers. And being diligent about deadheading and deadheading not waiting too long sometimes gives you three or four re-blooming periods which I absolutely love. So my main deadheading is of course roses but from perennials I'm pruning phlox by third, my geraniums, some of my salvias still, alchemilla mollis I have also but I've cut it almost to the ground because the flowers were spent but the leaves didn't look that well. So if I see that a plant looks really ugly sometimes I will prune it harder. August is also a wonderful time for me in my garden to do the pruning. I will be pruning my boxwood. I've been waiting for the pruning because we had so much scorching sun and if you prune in scorching sun or you prune before and then you'll get scorching sun you will get those brown or yellow tips of the pruned leaves. I don't like that so I much prefer to wait for the perfect weather so no raining no scorching sun. You can still prune your boxwoods in even August even the beginning of September. Another job for August is fertilizing my lawn. I used to do it every four or five weeks but last year we started having those automatic lawn mowers that mow the grass all the time and they are sprinkling all the grass clippings on the grass so there's more nitrogen introduced to the lawn. So now I'm fertilizing every six weeks because I can still see that the lawn looks good after four and five weeks so but now I really need to do it. This week we are having a lot of rain in the forecast which is very good so I will be just spreading the fertilizer today and hopefully this will be the last summer fertilizing because then we are starting to use the autumn fertilizers that have less nitrogen and I will be using that until October maybe the beginning of November because I tried that last year and we had the best lawn during the winter months. We'll see. But today for me fertilizing the lawn and then maybe trimming the edges of the lawn because they are now growing faster than they were in the beginning of the year. Okay now I wanted to talk to you about how I'm saving the seeds from my plants like Orlea. I will show you how they look like and what to do with them. Let's go. I'm letting all my annuals go to seed because I really want to collect those seeds. This is Orlea. You've seen it in spring, late spring. It was beautiful, white and I love it and the best Orlea seeds are the fresh seeds and I wait for them to become beige, brown, very dry. They will look like little, I don't know, they don't look nice but now is the time to collect them because you can see that they are trying to escape from the mother and now I will sprinkle them in the places I want them to grow. Of course you don't have to sow the seeds now. You can also collect them, store them in a dry place. I usually take it from here and I let it dry in a space, in a room that is dry and it's normal temperature so I never put them into an envelope when they are a bit wet because then the mold can get in. So this is the way to store them. I've had best results with Orlea sown late summer, early fall. So this is what it would do now itself. It would just spread the seeds but when they come up, I would say in September, October, then they overwinter and in my country you can get winters with minus 20 degrees Celsius. We usually get minus 15 and I've never had a problem with them overwintering. I was really surprised that they do so well and the flowers from those sown the previous years are so much bigger. The plants are so much bigger. Of course you can sow your Orlea in spring but I urge you to try the fall sowing. The flowers will be so much better. I'm also drying the seeds from my larkspur but I still need to wait a bit more. Some of them I'm pruning deadheading but some I let go into seeds. Same with my sweet peas. Now I've let this whole wall go into seeds and I will have some of my own sweet peas. I cannot be sure of the color of my sweet peas because probably they will be mixed but I like to keep my own mix and then buy the specific type of sweet pea that I know the color of. But my own kids, babies of sweet peas are also fine. But with all the seeds I wait for them to become dry, beige, brown, dry to touch. Then I dry them a bit more in the room and then I just put them in envelopes and store them in the room, in a cupboard, in a dry space. This is the most important. Don't let them go into mold. Okay guys please let me know in the comments how are you and your gardens in August? Do you like working in the garden in August or August is the month that you go on holidays and you don't want to do anything in the garden? I always wonder. For me August can be tricky depending on the temperature. If the temperature is low I love working in the garden but if it's hotter I would rather sit on a bench or lie on a you know something lounger and read a book. Let me know in the comments. If you like today's video please give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing and I will see you in the next one on Saturday. Bye!