Early August Garden

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. Freezing and roasting onions

3. August garden tasks

4. Prepare for the winter garden

5. August planting

6. 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 it spoils.

My harvests aren't big yet - soon I'll be picking beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers almost every day. This week, though, I'm contending with pounds of onions that have bolted and need to be either used or frozen, because they will not keep.

2. Freezing and roasting onions:

Here's how I freeze onions - 

1. Peel dry onions and wipe off any dirt. If your onions have bolted, you may need to peel pretty far to reach onion that isn't rubbery.

2. Chop off the ends, cut in half, and remove the core that has begun to get solid and woody.

3. Cut into quarters or slices and put into a plastic bag to freeze.

And here's how I roast onions:

1. Preheat oven to 400°F. Prepare a pan with parchment paper.

2. Prepare 2-3 onions as for freezing, and lay them on the pan in a single layer.

3. Pour about 1 Tbsp. olive oil over the onions, and mix with your fingers to coat. Sprinkle with salt.

4. Roast the onions 20 minutes, then turn to the other side and bake them until golden brown, about 20 more minutes.

5. Remove them from the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes. Serve as part of a salad or in a quiche, or chill and use within a few days.

3. August garden tasks:

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 tomatoes, plum tree, little ponderosa pine, and clarkia. 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'."

I'm using the Second Breakfast Garden monthly guides this year to update my checklists, because they are in zone 8b.

1. 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.
2. Mulch: Top up mulch in perennials and garden beds to keep soil moist and cool during the dog days of summer. If you use drip irrigation, drop mulch on top of your lines to retain more water. Use untreated straw, leaf mold, compost, or green mulch.
3. Weed: Weeds are an essential part of my ecosystem. I have stopped pulling weeds in some beds, and instead I tear them off at the ground and use them as mulch. This method leaves the soil untilled; tilling exposes new seeds, and you just get more weeds. But I still pull weeds that are close to my veggie plants.
4. Pick off cucumber beetles: They are striped yellow and black bugs that feed on leaves and stems, and a large infestation can defoliate plants. They also spread the deadly bacterial wilt disease.
5. Aphids: Wherever I see aphids, I can look also for little golden clutches of ladybugs eggs. (cabbage moth eggs look similar but maybe not in a cutch?)
6. Deadhead herbs and flowers often.
7. Prune raspberries: (See below)
8. Prepare space for the winter garden.

4. Prepare for the winter garden:

August is my last chance to prepare for the winter garden. It's really too hot to plant outdoors right now, until the temperature is consistently below 90º, but I've got plenty of garden cleaning, composting and amending to prepare the beds.

I try to clear one bed each week now, starting with a bed for fall beets, 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, I try to amend the soil about two weeks before planting to let the soil assimilate the nutrients.

5. August planting:

When planting anything for the fall, make sure you plant early enough to mature before the first frost date (FFD), which for us is on October 20th. 

Starting indoors:

I begin to start seeds now indoors where I can control the water and heat, to set out later, when the temperature is consistently below 90º.

• Leeks - I should have started these in mid-July, 13 weeks before FFD, to transplant outside by September 7; will need to buy some transplants this year.
• Kale - start indoors 12 weeks before FFD - July 27. Set out 6 weeks later, September 1.
• Pok choy - start seed indoors 10 weeks before FFD - August 10 (or direct sow later).

6. 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.