August isn’t for forcing buds. It’s the high-stakes maintenance window to keep the plant healthy and let its summer growth mature before fall bud-setting begins. If you’re staring at a pot of limp green stems wondering, “What the cactus am I doing wrong?” take a breath. Here are the seven August tasks I focus on before the fall…
I don’t think anybody can truly prepare for August heat, but your dahlias deserve that you at least try. Staying ahead of top-heavy stalks, dry soil, and relentless pests right now can decide whether the garden stays red-hot until frost or turns into a David Lynch landscape before Labor Day. If yours are barely flowering…
Are your summer flowerbeds looking thin lately? Angelonia can fix that, even during the hottest weeks of July. Here is how to fuel the fire. An Annual or Perennial? Check the plastic tag stuck in the nursery pot. If it labels Angelonia a perennial, it isn’t lying, but it is leaving out one brutal detail:…
If I had a dollar for every time a well-meaning neighbor drowned a perfectly good hydrangea in bloom booster chemicals, I’d have a much bigger greenhouse. Let’s set the fertilizer bag down for a second and talk about how to feed these plants before you stress the roots or end up with more leaves than…
Midsummer gardening isn’t a nurturing hobby; it’s a corporate restructuring. Once their first round of blooms fades, plenty of perennials start sending resources into seed production instead of fresh flowers. Fire the spent upper growth on the right plants now or face a fall bankrupt of flowers. The Three Degrees of Pruning Violence To make…
There are two types of clematis: dead ones and those owned by gardeners who know how to keep them happy through summer. Whichever kind of plant parent you’ve been, you’re here now, so there’s still hope. We also wrote a guide on spring clematis care so you can get the vine off to a strong start before…