It's August. Your vegetable garden is finally giving you more than mosquito bites and anxiety.
INSTEAD you're getting tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and mosquito bites and anxiety. So it's a very exciting month.
I’ve been meaning to ask you; are you liking this whole vegetable gardening thing? I feel a little bit like I pushed it on you, but that just means we’re really good friends you and I. Because pushing vegetable gardening on my friends and family is kind of my thing.
That and eating potato chips. And of course sometimes swearing at inanimate objects, but really I think that’s everybody’s thing, not just mine.
Hopefully you’ve liked the whole experience so far because the hard work – harvesting and preserving is still to come. That’s what I’ll be focusing on in September, but for now let’s deal with this month – August.
People automatically think of flower beds when they think of pollinators but vegetables put out a HUGE amount of flowers for bees and butterflies. A loaded vegetable garden will also be loaded with flitting and flying creatures. Just something to keep in mind that most people aren't aware of.
WHAT TO EXPECT FROM AUGUST.
You are still watering, weeding and keeping pests away. I guess now is as good a time as any to tell you those are things you’re going to always have to do in a garden.
I didn’t want to let you know that right up front because it might have scared you away from growing your own vegetables.
August you’re going to be busy picking things and starting to think about preserving them.
For instance; as soon as I'm done writing this post I'm going to head to the garden to see if I have any pickling cucumbers that are ready.
I have a bunch in the fridge that I picked 2 days ago and as soon as I get another pound of them, hopefully today, I'll make my bread & butter pickles.
AUGUST TASKS
MAINTENANCE
- Pick any herbs and dry them before they go to flower. If your basil is flowering already, pinch those flowers off.
- Top up plants that are heavy feeders with some compost.*
- Pinch off the top of your tomato plants around the middle of the month so they don’t grow any taller. Not because you care if they’re tall, but because if they stop growing taller they’ll be able to focus their energy into ripening fruit that’s on the vine as opposed to growing more leaves.
REMEMBER: In optimal conditions it takes 1 month for a tomato to develop to full size, then another month to become fully ripe. So work back 60 days from when you know bad weather is typical. That's when you should pinch back the top of your tomato plants. - Save seeds. Any plants that are heirloom varieties have seeds that will produce the exact same plant next year. Hybrids are crosses between plants and their seeds won’t produce an exact replica. Tomatoes, beans, lettuce that has gone to seed, peas, and squash are all examples of vegetables you can save seeds from.
- If you harvest a bed (like I did with garlic a couple of weeks ago) you need to do 1 of 2 things.
a) replant it with a short season crop like beets, carrots, peas, beans or lettuce, or
b) Rake it out and add a layer of compost on top so it's ready for spring planting.
The best thing to do is replant it with something so you don't have to deal with weeds until the end of the season. If you leave it bare, mulch it with something to keep the weeds down.
* Heavy feeding plants are corn, tomatoes, beets, cabbage and brassicas like broccoli, Brussels sprouts and cabbage.
HEAVY FEEDER OR LIGHT FEEDER?
Generally speaking things that grow above the soil are heavy feeders and things that grow below it (onions, carrots, leeks, potatoes, beets) are light feeders.
TOMATO SEED SAVING
Saving seeds is usually just a matter of letting the seeds dry. But tomatoes take an extra step to get rid of the jelly like coating around the seed. You need to soak the tomato seeds in water for a few days to dissolve it. You can read a full explanation of how to save tomato seeds here.
PESTS AND SOLUTIONS
BUG & PEST CONTROL
In August you’re going to be tempted to let your whole garden implode because you’re sick of keeping up with weird bugs you didn’t even know existed before. Soldier on. You’re smarter than a corn earworm, I just know you are.
CORN EARWORMS
(You should be harvesting corn by now but just in case it's late ...)
Corn earworms are exactly what they sound like. They’re worms that eat the ear of your corn. They enter the corn at the top where the silk is growing as eggs laid by moths. They then hatch, eat the silk and travel down to the tip of the cob and eat their fill.
To stop them before they get started you can use an eyedropper to drip 4-5 drops of mineral oil (just regular drugstore mineral oil) at the tip of the husk where the silks are poking out.
ONLY use this treatment once the silks have turned a bit brown, showing they’ve been pollinated. Using it prior to pollination could stop your cob from forming.
VINE BORERS
Keep checking for vine borers at the base of zucchini and squash stems. Here's the whole guide to getting rid of vine borers.
CORN SMUT
I didn’t know corn could be smutty until I found out it could. Walking through my cornfield (O.K. my patch of corn in a 4’ x 4’ bed) I was a bit alarmed to see that one of my corn cobs had a monster oozing out of it. I mean you just don’t see that sort of thing every day. It was blue and puffy and weird.
Corn Smut is a fungal delicacy that's a lot more expensive to buy (if you can find it) than corn. But I'd rather have my corn thanks.
Corn smut isn’t a pest, but rather a disease caused by a fungus.
You can read my entire post on corn smut but in a nutshell ...
Control: To control corn smut, remove it as soon as you see it. It doesn’t scatter its spores until it starts to turn black, so picking it off when it’s grey or blue will help contain the spread. Also clean up all husks and stalks immediately after harvesting to help stop the spread of unseen smut.
Prevention: The smut enters the corn at injury points so try not to tear the husks of your corn and refrain from peeking inside growing husks/cobs to check on your corn. That provides a perfect entry point for the smut.
POWDERY MILDEW
Squash (both summer and winter) are where you’re going to find yourself battling powdery mildew. Contrary to logic, powdery mildew actually thrives in HOT dry weather.
So spraying your plants with a hose when it has powdery mildew will actually help it.
I have a whole post on how to control powdery mildew and you CAN control it.
BLOSSOM-END ROT
If you’ve ever grown tomatoes to have the bottom of them turn black and then spread around the tomato, you’ve had blossom-end rot. It isn't a virus or other disease that can spread. The issue is calcium.
It used to be thought that it was caused by not having enough water, but it’s actually either the plant not having enough calcium, or more accurately - not being able to absorb the calcium - because the soil is too dry and needs to be watered.
Preventing it.
This is where the water comes in. Making sure your tomatoes are evenly watered so they can take up calcium throughout August will help prevent blossom-end rot. Also amending your soil whether it’s in a container or in the garden will help give your tomatoes the calcium it needs to prevent blossom-end rot.
(having said that most gardens have plenty of calcium, the problem is usually the tomato plant isn't able to access it. Wet soil from watering allows the plant to take the calcium up)
Treatment
THERE'S A 90% CHANCE (i made that figure up but it's close) THAT YOU JUST NEED TO WATER REGULARLY TO ELIMINATE BLOSSOM END ROT.
ONLY treat your soil if you have tested it and determined it actually needs calcium.
You need to make a slurry of limestone and water. Use “Pelletized lime” which you can find in any building store. Add 1 large handful of lime to 1 gallon of water and mix it up until it’s a grey slurry. Water your affected tomatoes with the mixture at a ratio of around ½ gallon per tomato plant.
If you have 10 tomato plants, fill a 5 gallon bucket with water, add 5-6 handfuls of lime and you’ll have enough lime slurry for 10 tomato plants.
BLIGHT
As in July, you still need to keep an eye out for blight.
If your tomato leaves are drying out, turning yellow and getting spots chances are you have blight.
If you can find a biofungicide with Bacillus subtilis it will stop blight. But it's difficult to find.
TOOLS
You’ll have all the same standard tools as I mentioned last month and the month before and the month before (dutch hoe, clippers, trowel, shovel, gardening gloves, stakes/cages, row cover, compost bin, bags or baskets for carrying vegetables home, fresh water to keep yourself hydrated, scissors and a knife for cutting off damaged sections of plants and for cutting off vegetables).
Additional things you’ll need in the garden for August are:
- Pelletized Lime (if tests show your soil is calcium depleted, otherwise just water more regularly)
- Compost for giving to heavy feeding vegetables (those that grow above ground).
- Garbage bags for putting diseased foliage and stems in.
ALWAYS remove diseased leaves and vegetables from the garden and put them in the garbage. Not in the compost bin or anywhere else in the garden.
WHAT CAN BE PLANTED THIS MONTH
You can throw in some fall peas, beans, carrots, beets, radishes and leaf lettuce now. All of these things have shorter growing seasons and can handle shorter days and cooler weather.
Sow your lettuce under a piece of burlap or shade cloth because lettuce is not a heat loving plant. The bit of shade will help the seeds germinate by cutting down on the heat plus it’ll prevent the plant from bolting and turning bitter once it’s growing.
If the late August weather is cooler, you can remove the shade cloth.
Happy gardening.
Barb
Hi Karen,
Love your gardening tips. I am a first time vegetable grower here in Victoria BC. I planted one cucumber plant and now have too many cucumbers. Any tips on how to store them. Also I grew pole beans from seed and although the plant has grown really tall I haven't had one single bean from it. It was watered regularly so I'm dumbfounded why it failed to produce not one single bean. Any tips going forward. Thanks
Karen
HI Barb! Lucky you in Victoria! I just keep cucumbers in the crisper area of my fridge. However - If I want to store cucumbers for a very long time, I do what they do in the grocery store. I wrap them tightly in plastic wrap and put them in the refrigerator. As far as the bean plant goes, it could be a couple of things, the first of which is is just hasn't had time to produce flowers and beans yet. :) The other 2 potential reasons for bean vine but no beans is the plant isn't getting enough sun or water for it to have the energy to produce flowers and beans. It could be a mineral/nutrient deficiency in your soil as well but that's a less likely reason. Good luck. ~ karen!
Joanne
So I had a wonderful garden last year, more vegetables than we could eat. This year, a groundhog or raccoon enjoyed my small plants and anything that was sprouting - including my lovely row of sunflowers. I put a cage around my kale, which saved 2 plants, and the animal doesn't seem to like to tomatoes, so they are doing fine. I went out to gather my FIRST harvest yesterday - 3 beans (total - the rest are gone) 3 strawberries, 2 cherry tomatoes (lots more to come though) and 1 yellow tomato.
I have grown my garden in the same spot for about 7 years - the soil is finally getting good, and I was really looking forward to this year. Now I can hardly bring myself to go out there. :(
I do live in the country and have had to accept the odd intrusion into the garden, but nothing like this. Next year we hope to move, and will be building a military grade green house for our garden
Gayle
Great reference for august! Thanks! Have you ever tried peroxide in the garden for blight? I used it (1 cup 3% per gallon water) in ly when I noticed the beginnings of blight on my tomatoes and have held it off since then. Maintenance is a solution made from ½ cup per gallon, but since blight has been so bad every year for me, I continue with the stronger solution once a week. So far, so good tho…
Karen
I've been gardening for so long that I honestly can't remember if I've tried this or not.😂 ~ karen!
Kat - the other 1
Do you water the plant with this?
Or spray it on the plant?
Kelly
Thank you for this thorough post. Love it Karen :)
Karen
Hope it's helpful! ~ karen
Celeste
Yassss, I love getting gardening EVERYTHING.
Karen
Me too! ~ karen
Lyn Richards
Just wondering why you recommend stopping tomato production so early, Karen. We let ours run, and harvest a lot of green tomatoes when using frost covers is not going to be enough....sometimes as late as October. Then we store them in shallow cardboard boxes to ripen gradually throughout the winter. Even the ones that finally ripened in May (!) this year still tasted better than store-bought. Never bought tomatoes all year, so it was economical and sustainable.
Karen
Hi Lyn! For me personally, I'd rather speed up the ripening of the ones on the vine now to eat. I do and have done the same thing, picking all the green ones to store, but my cold room storage space is limited. ~ karen!
Stan W.
My zucchini plants used to get tons of powdery mildew in the center from all the leaves and then white flies would come in and kill the plants, I started using your technique of cutting off the non-productive leaves and they go all season with no problems. Thank you for all the great gardening advice ! Keep up the good work.
Karen
Thanks for letting me know Stan! I love hearing that. ~ karen!
Randy P
I thoroughly enjoy all your posts, including those dedicated to the gardening arts. I always learn something, have a chuckle or three and delight in the wonderful world of Karen. Does it inspire ME to take up the hobby/labor of tilling the soil. Let's just say that 'sometimes' I DO buy a fresh vegetable, rather than canned or frozen, from my local supermarket. That suffices. But I luv what you do.
Karen
I'll look into a method for growing canned vegetables. I'm guessing rust will be the biggest disease issue. ~ karen!
Randy P
It WOULD give you a chance to beef up your metal working and soldering skills? So there is that.
Wendy
Best tip! Pick your tomatoes before they are fully ripe. I’ve only lost one to the feckin chipmunks this year, as opposed to almost all of them last year. Keep all the great info coming.
Karen
I wish I could do the same thing with my apples.🍏🐿️ ~ karen!
Katt
Keep the veggie garden info coming! Grabbing my nippers now to go top my tomatoes
Karen
I'm going to wait a couple of weeks I think because the weather has been so upside down. My tomatoes are *just* starting to ripen and I'm soon going to be drowning in tomatoes. ~ karen!
Anita
The garden is thriving this time of year. Thanks for all your gardening tips, but the one I've appreciated most was grow silver slicer cucumbers. They are amazing! Thanks for introducing us.
Patti
Gardening rocks my world. I started gardening at a very young age with my grandfather and have passed on the love to my son. Your posts are extremely helpful.
Karen
Thanks Patti! People bring their kids and grandchildren up to my community garden and I'm AMAZED at how much their little brains absorb about weeds and vegetables and bugs. ~ karen!
Kat - the other 1
Are you sure it's the kids brains absorbing bug stuff and not that they're just you know, eating the bugs? 😆
EC
Your photographs are consistently stunning. P.S. The butterfly one would make a great puzzle! I hadn't done puzzles in ???!!! Then I happened upon The Art of Doing Stuff. Now I'm hooked! I blame you!!! LOL
Karen
I will 100% accept that blame.😆 ~ karen!
Annie
LOL As I as reading, my distracted brain read "And of course sometimes swearing at inanimate objects" as "And of course sometimes wearing intimate objects" and I thought "wait, she only wears underwear sometimes?"
Renee Ryz
I have a bumper crop of shishito peppers, and jalapenos and cherry bombs. A ton of Holy Mole peppers. Just have to figure out what to do with them! lol I got raised beds on legs at Menards, and they are awesome! Easy to see what needs picking and easy to water. I think that is why the pepps are exploding. My tomatoes are doing eh. I did try Sakura cherry tomatoes, and they are doing nicely. They are bigger that the usual Sweet 100s I plant, but great for grilling. Cukes are not doing so great, but I should get a few at least.
Cynthia
These posts have been fun! I've been sharing them with my niece in law who has her first garden and encouraging her to learn. She's had a good start with tomatoes and zucchini and a few failures. I've been telling her that it's taken me 15 years to produce a decent-ish garden. This year has been a good year for our garden. While I've had some tomato plants that gave up fairly quickly, the vast majority are really starting to put out the ripe tomatoes. Turns out doing what your 80 year old neighbor has always done works! His secret: He neglects his tomatoes! HA! All my indeterminates I've left alone except for taking off dying leaves. No pruning. Most tomatoes I've ever gotten from the plant and bug free! The determinates are doing the same. Tomatoes everywhere and huge and disease and pest free. He's a genius. I would marry him if it wouldn't upset my husband! And his wife. ;) We should get cooler weather next week (NW Missouri) so I'm going to be doing some canning. We have had 1 zucchini plant this year that just keeps producing. Usually we have 5 or 6 and they struggle all summer to provide anything. This year I kept it very simple. I wanted to can tomatoes and have some zucchini to cook with. Success so far! Last year we got maybe 3 cantaloupe melons, something kept eating my started from seed plants. So this year I went a little bonkers thinking I'd only get 1 per plant anyway because nature hates me. Well at last count I have about 45 melons growing from 8 plants and we've already harvested 3. Our son wanted to try watermelons so I put them in and we had our first juicy sweet melon last night. My husband, son and I stood around the kitchen island and ate the whole thing in about 15 minutes. It was so good! I'm just a little behind on green beans, but have 3 raised beds growing, just waiting for them to get big enough to produce what we need to can. We also put in many grow bags full of sweet potatoes and they're going nuts! I've got their vines everywhere and have to keep propping them up so they don't grow into the soil. I'm looking forward to a really big harvest to last us through winter and into next summer!
It's been a good year so far, but I'm sure next year will decide to knock me down a peg or two. LOL
AJ
Yes, yes, and yes. I am enjoying the monthly "what to do in the garden" and "what to expect this month" along with all other interesting posts you provide. I particularly look forward to the humor injection. You come across as a real person that does the work.
Please keep at it. Your posts make my day!
Mary W
Even though I garden in Florida with entirely different temps, humidity, sun, soil, insects, disease, I still love to read your gardening info. I always learn and enjoy the efforts of letting you do the work and I get to drink coffee and my recliner. I can't get enough and truly thank you for your blog posts! (My Karen starter is still active!)
AJ
I forgot to add that I tried the fairytale eggplant this year. It flourished and has produced 5-10 eggplants a week. Yesterday, I harvested 25 mini eggplants. They are great fried, shredded, or chopped. Leaves and plant stems can cause allergic reaction, so wear gloves!
I will be planting this next year.
Randy P
Let me be frank, even though I'm better at being a Randy, I'm truly enjoying learning about what takes to be a successful gardener such as yourself. I'm thoroughly convinced that I don't have what it takes - lol - but I'm enjoying the educational and entertaining journey immensely right there alongside the most avid green-thumber. Your expertise is well and demonstrably earned. Thanks for sharing your gift of making the soil yield something far more valuable than mud.
Petra
Yeah, mostly pleased with the garden in spite of the weird wet weather this spring that kept us waiting to plant. I've happily had late crops of peas and lettuce and favas but tomatoes are weeks away from ripe. The zucchini wars have begun and I'm busy making all variations of pesto, I do not can much but freeze what's appropriate and dehydrate herbs etc,
Right now I have flowering oregano and thyme that the bees are nuts about. The buzzing is deafening.
My one big booboo are three eggplant plants that I picked up from Home Depot that turned out to have some kind of verticillum (sp?) wilt. Ack. Looked great then developed dry curling leaves. They flowered but the fruit would not set. I've carefully removed them and hope that the pox has not spread. Damn!
Elsewhere in the garden I have a couple of aubergines grown from seed. Fingers crossed.
Now clearing some space for fall planting like more lettuce, kohlrabi, beets, sprouting brocc, radish etc. Hope to overwinter some savoy and will put in a new planting of rainbow chard. Thas all folks!