August
August is the new spring. Look around you and its impossible not to notice flowers everywhere and perfume heavy in the air. Be enthusiastic and start that kitchen garden project or pop in some herbs. Rejoice with the birds and plant a native, or encourage some bees with sensitive planting.
Prepare
Get a jump-start on spring and feed your garden. You can use bags of cow manure as a light top dressing on your edible garden, slow release lawn food on your lawn and citrus fertiliser on your citrus fruit. Indoor plants can have some Osmocote that is specially formulated for indoor plants.
Nothing beats freshly dug homegrown potatoes. Dig some trenches now for a crop of your own potatoes, and start the off by letting them ‘chit’ or start sprouting - just like the shop bought ones do if they get old.
Summer bulbs like liliums, tuberoses and water lilies can all be purchased now and planted out for blooms in about 8 weeks’ time.
Start mulching and bare beds and top up thinning areas so prevent weeds taking hold
Top dress any low or bare patches in your lawn and sow seeds to cover them if necessary
Plant summer flowering annuals like petunias in frost free areas
Enjoy
• Early bulbs such as Crocus, Daffodils and Jonquils – visit our Daffodil Garden
• Winter flowering perennials like hellebores and clivias
• The last of the flowering cymbidium orchids
• The new growth on Maples – it’s as nice as the autumn show
• Flowering fruit trees like nectarines and plums as they come into flower
• Camellia japonicas and Camellia reticulates
• Azaleas and May bushes
• Early spring annuals like pansies, polyanthus and primula
• Our famous tulip display
Have on hand
Manure, fertilisers and mulch
Pyrethrum spray to deal with aphids on the new growth of roses and maples
Lawnseed and lawn top dressing
Snail and slug pellets to protect emerging foliage on your magnolias
Nets to protect new growth and flowers on roses
Shallot bulbs and asparagus crowns
Spring vegetable seeds
Seed potatoes
