This is not your average August
Usually, I don’t need to write lists for jobs to do in August. The garden tells you what it needs, and my hope is that you would be far too busy being outdoors having fun to read my writing anyway. This year, I am writing this to you on a Tuesday in early August, wrapped in a blanket and with all the lights on at four o’clock in the afternoon. I have therefore amended my usual instructions to revel in long evenings under warm skies, and to remember to water the tomatoes.
This is what I am doing…
Take photos
I did write a recreational photography blog post last week, but this is a different sort of photography. More record keeping. The refrain of almost every gardener is that there is always next year. Perennials will be more established, annuals will be tweaked, staked earlier, or protected from pigeons more, combinations with be more (or less) foliage. The list goes on. The thing I adore and the thing that exhausts me about the garden as a work of creation, as a work of art, is that it keeps changing. Nature never stays still.
August is the second peak of the floriculture year (the first coming with the roses in June) so now is the time to capture what worked and what didn’t. if your dahlias all flowered double and you wanted singles, you need to make a note to order different varieties for next year.
Artist’s impression of the Arne Maynard border
Looking ahead
I don’t know about you, but I have started to consider this season something of a washout. Ever the optimist though, this just means that I am getting far too over-excited for next year. Whole new planting schemes, more trees in the flower forest upper layers, more shrubs, more perennials. The area under the tree where I had wondered about putting a bog garden is now a spring garden, as filched from Arne Maynard in his H&G article a few years back. (The quotes for renovation work are already mounting up and yet I am still hovering over the ‘buy now’ button for a selection of eye-wateringly expensive Molly the Witch peonies.)
But now is the time for reviewing, renewing, planning and dreaming. It is so hard to imagine spaces in the middle of winter, at least in August there’s a chance you can look at tricky corners in the daylight, even if you are carrying an umbrella. There is also time to order hardy annual and perennial seeds for sowing in September, either for germination in the autumn and overwintering for a spring head start, or for exposing to winter cold to germinate in the spring (stratification).
I also have an eye on bare root season. My cuttings of the roses I already have were a raging success, but I also have my eye on some Rosa mutabilis. Sadly, so does everyone else because of that Chelsea garden. (Also worth investing in in the bare root season: fruit, hedging, trees).
Talking of selling out, if you leave ordering your bulbs until the schools go back, do not come complaining to me that there are no Narcissus bulbocodium to be had anywhere.
Dom Pedro tulips
Buying bulbs
Bulbs I am buying, even though I said I wouldn’t ever buy any more
Dom Pedro (because the bulbs I lifted last year have got some disease that even Polly Nicholson couldn’t identify
A handful of Absalon (because that’s all I could afford and because they are my absolute favourite)
Narcissus bulbocodium 'Julia Jayne' (just a shade yellower than the pale ‘Arctic bells’, but not yellow-yellow)
Galanthus 'S. Arnott'
Please check that you are sourcing from people who pledge not to use neonicotinoids, I recommend Organic Bulbs and Peter Nyssen. If you are not convinced, this recent article in House and Garden is terribly informative about bees, as well as being incredibly beautiful.
You can also read my interview with Polly Nicholson, queen of all things tulip, here.
Seeds to sow
Towards the end of the month is the perfect time to start sowing hardy annuals for early flowers next year.
Seeds I am sowing now from the Gather shop
Agrostemma (corncockle)
Ammi majus
Bladder campion
Borage
Bronze Fennel
Chicory
Cornflowers
Cerinthe
Dill
Dog daisy
Grasses (all of them!)
Larkspur
Marigolds
Nigellas
Opium poppy
Orlaya Grandiflora
Phacelia
Scabiosa
Heartease
Wild carrot
Starting perennials
Malus Farm is being guided more and more by regenerative principles and that means the surface of the soil should be covered, and the body of the soil should be as undisturbed as possible. That means as much permanent planting - perennials - as possible.
This month I will be buying for sowing later in the month:
Yet more rare campanula varieties
Cephalaria gigantea
Dianthus (Try D. carthusianorum)
Echinaceas (I favour E. pallida and ‘Hula Dancer’)
The big textural plants such as Echinops and Eryngium
Bupleurum
Rudbeckia triloba - hardy enough for overwintering
For unusual and interesting perennial seed, have a look at jelitto.com, Green & Gorgeous, Chilterns, and . I am not sowing hollyhocks again, because of the rust…
If you aren’t ready for the perennial level of commitment, then scattering phacelia seed as a green manure on any patches of empty ground will do wonders for the health of your soil. Aim for it to germinate and grow in the autumn, protect the soil over winter, and hoe in in the spring.
Seeds to save now
If you want more flowers, you need to keep cutting. Even if you are just putting the flowers you have harvested on the compost, leaving everything to go to seed will finish of a display of blooms. I’m after the seeds so I don’t find, but if you want more flowers, just keep cutting.
If the flowers have gone over and set seed, get catching. One of my flowers of the year has been the rusty foxglove (Digitalis ferruginea 'Gigantea'). Initially, I was slightly baffled as to where it came from and, for a brief mad moment, I wondered if my woolly foxgloves had inadvertently crossed with a chocolate. But they just kept growing and growing, and then there were these incredible six foot spires of nectar-filled heaven - they were simply swarming with bees. Apparently, the trick to saving any sort of foxglove seed is to go and buy as many sticks of French bread as you have foxglove spires. The paper bags that they come in are perfect for slipping over the top and catching the seeds as they gradually ripen. (Like the flowers blooming, they start at the bottom and get to the top a few weeks later.) Given the number of foxgloves I have, I would have to eat a lot of bread to employ this method, so I am going to apply the two thirds rule; as soon as two thirds of the seeds are ripe, I will cut the lot down. I might lose the earliest seed, and the latest seed might never ripen off the plant, but the thing about foxgloves is that one spire gives millions of seeds, so I can afford to be a little slapdash.
Any of the daisy type flowers (ox-eye daisies, dyer’s chamomile etc) are ready. Be mindful that the first matter that comes off when you rub them is the old petals, you need to get to the next layer down.
Aquilegia. The first flush of flowers came and went months ago, but my lovely yellow ones are just setting seed. Sometimes I just encourage them to scatter, sometimes I put them in pots of gritty compost in the greenhouse.
Sweet peas. There are boxes and trays everywhere. Each one contains a variety of sweet pea seed pods, labelled twice for luck. The harvest has surpassed all expectations and I could not be more thrilled. Even more enjoyable has been the popping of the dried pods. If you like popping bubble wrap, this is right up your street.
Other jobs:
Digging out bindweed, a bumper year for that too.
Layering compost with grass clippings.
Hoe little and often if you are on top of the weeds, it makes all the difference.
You can start to cut back hedges now the nesting season is over. If you have a chipper or a shredder, hedge clippings have the perfect combination of greens and browns for hot compost.