Prescott garden keeping - august edition

August is all about the beginning of the harvest season, ongoing tending, and enjoying the results of your efforts and labor so far.  

With any luck, the monsoon is still visiting your little part of the world fairly regularly, and you've got a garden and landscape that is showing off it's splendor.  The character of things may not be quite as pristine as it is early in the season, but the party is well underway and meant to be enjoyed.

The days are still long and if you've done a pretty good job of tending to and feeding your landscape, you may be blessed with color and the gentle shift towards late summer.  Since autumn is my favorite time of year, I find this very joyful and exciting.  

If you haven't been able to keep up with your to-do's as well as you'd liked, don't worry about it.  Just jump in and do what you can now.  It's not too late to get some cooler season herbs and veggies going.

Just be sure to look closely, use all your senses, and slow down.  A garden is truly a gift.  Enjoy!
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We don't do garden maintenance at The Whiskey Porch, but I wanted to put together a series of garden keeping checklists to help keep you on track.  Whether you are going to do it all yourself, or bring in a maintenance crew to do much of it for you, these monthly guides should be useful to you if you live in and around Prescott, AZ.

All of these checklists are very specific to the micro-climate that I am in here in downtown Prescott.  So, there will be slight variations for you depending on your specific location, as well as what you grow.  Generally speaking, these lists will relate to USDA Zone 7b.  

Each year can bring a slightly different cycle to the seasons.  And occasionally, of course, we have wild years with entirely unexpected weather patterns.  Sometimes we have our first hard freeze in late October, but most often not until early December.  Keep this in mind when planning your monthly tasks.

These checklists apply generally to a landscape garden which includes primarily perennials, as well as veggies and herbs.  

​Let's get to it.
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​PLANTS & PLANTING  🌱

• Continue harvesting and using your herbs and veggies and fruits.  This helps them to continue to produce and stay healthy.
  
• Plant out:  brussels sprouts, lettuces, carrots, and other cool season veggies like turnips and radish.
  
• Start seeds: leaf lettuces, mustard greens, spinach, swiss chard, peas, hollyhocks, foxlgloves. End of the month:  kale and collards.
  
• Local plant sales are a great way to find a few bargains to get in the ground before fall.

​WATER  💦 

• As a reminder - if the monsoon takes a break (which can happen in one neighborhood and not the next!) be sure to keep your drip system going.  At this point in the season, all the new seedlings and transplants you added should be very well established and you need to back off on the frequent/shallow watering.  Be sure you're watering deeply to encourage more robust root systems.  That can mean having your tree lines on for 2-3 hours at a time depending on the size of the tree root ball and the size of your emitters.  Newer plants that may need somewhat more moisture can easily be watered by hand in between the main cycles.
  
• If you don't have a rain/weather sensor on your drip system, I would highly suggest adding one.  It's well worth the smallish investment to avoid having your irrigation system go off on schedule when there's been a recent downpour.
  
• Also worth considering is a wi-fi integrated digital controller.  These too will make the process of making adjustments or just checking on zone schedules much easier and more efficient.  (Anyone else out there ever had to try to find and fix a leak on the opposite side of your property from where the controller is??!?)

​CRITTERS 🦌

• This time of year, I find that most of the pest challenges have settled down quite a bit - but I keep a vigilant eye open for the crickets.  Once they get going, it's really tough to get ahead of it.  My current choice to battle these guys is Sluggo Plus.  I buy it in large jugs and keep it on hand.  This product can help control slugs, snails, earwigs, cutworms, sowbugs, pillbugs (anyone else having a royal battle with these guys this year?), and crickets.  As always, even with products like these which are approved for organic gardening use, use them sparingly and in a targeted manner to reduce impacts to other species.
  
• Mosquitos and flies can be a nuisance now, but generally these guys aren't bothering anything in the garden.  Just be sure that you don't foster a colony inadvertently by having standing water around your property.  Typically, we don't have much of a problem here the way you tend to in many other parts of the country.  So, hang in there.

​MAINTENANCE  ✂️

• Staking is a weekly activity now.  I just keep a mess of various sizes of inexpensive stakes and jute twine on hand for easy access.  I prefer to use bamboo stakes and materials that aren't too noticeable.  A stake is there doing it's job but not the star of the show.
  
• Just like June and July - continue deadheading, pruning.  At this point I'm usually done pinching back new growth though.  I'm still getting a few roses by diligently deadheading.
  
• Weeding.  If you keep it up, you will actually get ahead of it!  I promise.  The key is to pull them before they go to seed.
  
• Brambles - if they've finished producing, this is a great time to cut back old canes.  This allows the plant to put most of it's work into growing new canes for next year.
  
• Cleanup any plants that have stopped producing and get them in your compost.  This makes room for fall plantings and also helps reduce risk of pests and disease taking hold.
  
• August is a good month to finish dividing any perennials that are spring or early summer bloomers.  For me that includes iris, yarrow, peony and asparagus.

​OTHER - PLANNING  📝

• Keep working on your autumn garden plan.  If you haven't already, order your fall additions now, usually to be shipped after it cools down substantially, and... be sure you have a plan as to where to plant them.
• Keep up with your journal notes - think about what you want to do more of next year, less of, timing of plantings or items to relocate to better parts of your garden, new things to try, and one that I always find somewhat hard to admit - the things to give up on.  These are the seeds or plants you have tried repeatedly and just can't make it work.  For me it takes A LOT to give up on a great idea, but sometimes it's really just better to let it go and move on.  (Am I stubborn, or just eternally hopeful??)  Having said that, I STILL am not ready to give up on Fava Beans.  New ideas on how to make it work keep floating around in my mind.  So I will jot those down now, while it's fresh, to help me when I go to start the seeds.
• It's time to order your spring blooming bulbs now.  They will ship this fall which is when they need to go in the ground for a fabulous show in the spring!

​GARDEN KEEPING JOURNAL ☑️

You'll find all the other monthly checklists with tips and suggestions here:

Monthly Checklists

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​do you have questions?  need support?

We specialize in exceptional, custom design services for Prescott homeowners - architectural and landscape design.  Are you wanting to refine and area or do a complete landscape overhaul?  Give us a call.  

​Learn more about our services here:

Design & Consult Services

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​need more inspiration for your garden & landscape?

You can find lots more good stuff and inspiration on our Garden Resources page if you just can't get enough of the garden now.

More Inspo

Thanks so much for reading along.  I hope you found one or two tidbits that were useful - either something new to consider, or a little reinforcement of what you're already doing.

As always, if you have any suggestions for a must-add, please do let me know.  

Remember to slow down and enjoy what you've created (and forget about the struggles or failures!).  

I really enjoy the comments and feedback and look forward to hearing from you.

Until next time, happy August!
~Miriam