Mzzz Bs August Garden Blog

These roses hate the rain but are looking stunning at the moment and have a glorious perfume.

Looking a bit like a jungle- persicaria, day lilies, hydrangea, crocosmia and Purple phlox providing a complemenTray colour.

Brilliant pink phlox behind tall almost black stemmed aster (Symphiotrichum laevis Arcturus) to flower in late summer, but glorious for its stems before that.

The garden has continued to flourish now it has had some rain! The roses are having a comeback, but the garden has moved on, gone are most of the hardy geraniums, and aquilegias,- phloxes, salvias, lilies, and day lilies, hydrangeas , Crocosmia, and Periscaria have moved into their slots along with a few annuals. The colours in the garden are stronger, more vibrant. There are however some geraniums that keep on flowering , relatives of geranium sanguineum are still going strong, they are low growing plants great for front of the border , or tumbling over a wall.
In the vegetable garden broad beans and peas have gone to be taken over by french and runner beans and courgettes- how many ways can you find to cook that glut of courgettes? The yellow ones seem especially prolific this year.

It's time to think of the next season , I have just planted out some leeks that should have been done some time ago, they have taken over the space where the broad beans were, hopefully making use the fixed nitrogen in the soil, from the nodules of the bean plant roots.
Time to sow lettuce for the autumn and winter, last year I sowed Chinese mustard greens of various sorts which kept us going all winter in greens for salads and for stir fries.
Jobs for August:

• Sow quick salad crops – lettuce, radish, rocket, mustard greens for winter
• Sow Spring cabbage and spring onions
• Prune summer fruiting raspberries cutting out old canes and tying in new growth for the crop next year
• Prune trained fruit trees like espaliered trees
• Continue cutting back perennials that have finished flowering.
• Take cuttings for next years plants~_ Choisya, Hebe, Cistus, Penstemon, Salvia
• After flowering cut back lavender, but not into old brown wood.
• Cut back herbs to encourage new growth and dry or freeze the trimmings.
• Trim hedges but make sure no late nesting birds are still in residence.
• Once flowers are over -and the seeds have set, mow wild flower patches,, leave the mowings on the ground for a few days for the seeds to fall, then rake the rest and compost.