The August Garden

Permelia is helping me to till.

August is the beginning of the end of summer in our garden. It's still often hot (sometimes very hot), but the days are noticeably shorter. It's time to think about the winter garden.

Agenda:

1. August harvest

2. Make fresh salsa (+ spicy tomato juice)

3. August garden care

4. Prepare for the winter garden

5. Prune my raspberries

1. August harvest:

All year, your most important task in the garden is to harvest AND USE what you’ve already grown, or share it with others. Harvest the low maintenance, high value crops first, and figure out how to use them in the kitchen. Just do what you can and enjoy it, and give away the rest before I spoils.

I'm picking summer squash, tomatoes, and cucumbers almost every day, and leeks, beets, rhubarb, and onions when I need them. I also harvested a few of the biggest decorative corn -aren't they pretty?

And of course I'm harvesting seeds, such as dill and peas!

2. Make fresh salsa (+ spicy tomato juice):

In August the tomatoes begin to stack up. I can only eat so many BLT's! One of my favorite uses for extra tomatoes is fresh salsa. My recipe is simple.

Ingredients:

• ripe tomatoes
• onion
• hot peppers
• lime juice
• salt
• black pepper
• cumin

1. Cut out the stem, and peel the tomatoes. If they are ripe, and fresh, the peels should slide off easily with a serrated knife. Chop finely and slide into a bowl, preserving all the juice.

2. Chop and add onion and peppers, and season to taste. Let sit an hour or longer to meld the flavors.

3. Strain in a colander to collect the best tomato juice ever! Serve salsa with chips.

3. August garden care:

The best tip I've read in any permaculture blog Is this: Be consistent with 15-minutes a day, year round. I try to take a 15-minute walk through my garden each day, and I alternate the front and back gardens so I don't feel rushed. 

In August I start by watering the most vulnerable plants - my new apple tree, and starts in pots. Then I look for what to harvest - I pick cucumbers that sprang up overnight. I deadhead the calendulas. I collect some seeds to dry. I check for squash bugs. Then, if I have time, I work at one bigger garden maintenance task - pruning the hedge or the roses, cleaning up the old irises, and so on.

The consistency of the 15-minute daily visit keeps me connected to my garden even when I don't accomplish much. I notice the changes of the season, and how many bees I have. As Amy from 10-Acre Farm says, "It helps me to enjoy 'being' in the garden, rather than always focusing on the 'doing'."

But on to the Doing:

• Watering: We've had no rain for weeks now, and while the soaker hoses are helping, I still have vulnerable areas that need a sprinkle every couple of days, and some trees that need a longer soak once a week.

• Squash bugs: Late last month the squash bugs began to proliferate: I've been picking off the big ones and throwing them into a bucket of water, and power spraying the smaller ones, in hopes of drowning some. I also scrape the eggs (tiny golden beads) off from the back of the squash leaves. The tide is turning, though, and these plants will need to come out soon.

• Prune raspberries: (See below)
• Deadhead herbs and flowers often.
• Prepare space for the winter garden.

4. Prepare for the winter garden:

August is is my last chance prepare for the winter garden. It's really too hot to plant outdoors right now, until the temperature is consistently below 90º, and I should have started a bunch of things indoors a few weeks ago, but instead I'll look for small starts at the plant store, and make room for the winter garden that will go in in the next few weeks.

When planting anything in the fall, make sure you plant them early enough to mature before the first freeze, which for us is in approximately 9-weeks, on October 15th. Each plant has different needs. For example:

• Beets - direct seed now, 9 weeks before first frost
• Spinach - start seed now inside, or direct sow 7 weeks before first frost
• Kale, cabbage, and leeks - transplant 6-7 weeks before first frost
• Garlic - direct sow week of first frost

This time-table creates a bit of a problem now that our summers stay so hot into September. We will experience 100º weather this week, and beets can't handle that, so I'm going to take a chance that our frost date might also be later, and wait.

New beet bed with compost, ready to plant (and duck waiting for fresh worms).

I've got a few strategies for making room for fall crops: First, I left some beds unplanted after the spring harvests, specifically for my fall veggies. The spinach, lettuce, and kale that were in my big front bed are long gone, and all that's left is a cucumber vine, and a couple of small leeks. It was easy to move he vine over to the far side, to loosen and prepare one end for its fall crop, beets! When that space is filled, I'll start taking out spent or diseased plants, such as my summer squashes.

I try to clear a bed each week now, and prepare it by lifting gently with my fork, then adding compost from my Darth Vader bin, that's been stewing most of the summer. I also add a layer of leaf mulch for the microbes. Ideally try to amend the soil about two weeks before planting to let the soil assimilate the nutrients.

5. Prune my raspberries:

Everbearing first year canes

I have a difficult raspberry bed, because I have two varieties -summer and everbearing - all mashed in together. (And they are overgrown. I need to thin them out before spring.)

All raspberry plants are perennial, their crowns and roots live many years, and the canes are always in different stages. Right now I've got four things going on:

1. Primocane leafy growth of next year's summer berries,
2. Fruiting canes of this year's summer berries that are beginning to wither,  
3. Some everbearing fruit still growing on the tips of first-year canes, 
4. And second year everbearing canes that are totally brown.

How to Prune Raspberries
I'm obviously going to leave all the first year canes: They have easy-to-spot green stems, while second-year canes have a thin, brown bark covering them. This week I do my first pass pruning, taking out any really dead wood, to give everything more room to breath. But I'll leave about a foot of cane, for small pollinators to nest in.

Then I will water and mulch, and finish up later this fall, when the berries have completely stopped. That's when I'll also take a shovel and dig up some plants to give away, leaving only 3-4 young canes per foot of row. And then in the spring I'll prune back dead shoot tips.