What to do in the Garden in August

Planning

•    Optimal time for establishing a new lawn is August through mid-September.

Link to article on lawn establishment

•    Dampwood termites begin flying late this month. Make sure your home is free of wet wood or places where wood and soil are in contact.

Maintenance and Clean Up

•    Make compost of lawn clippings and garden plants that are ready to be recycled.  If lawn has been treated with herbicide, including "weed-and-feed" products, don't use clippings near plants that could be damaged by those products. Be aware that composting diseased plants or anything that has gone to seed could spread those diseases or seeds unless you are using the "hot compost" method or thoroughly covering the compost with at least a few inches of soil and/or mulch.

•    Fertilize cucumbers, summer squash, and broccoli to maintain production while you continue harvesting.



•    Clean and fertilize strawberry beds.



•    Use mulch to protect ornamentals and garden plants from hot weather damage. If needed, provide temporary shade, especially for recent plantings.



•    Camellias need deep watering to develop flower buds for next spring.



•    Prune raspberries, boysenberries, and other caneberries after harvest. Check raspberries for holes made by crown borers, near the soil line, at base of plant. Remove infested wood before adults emerge (approximately mid-August).



Link to article on growing Raspberries

•    Prune out dead fruiting canes in trailing blackberry and train new primocanes prior to end of month. Link to article on growing Blackberries





•    Prune cherry trees before fall rains begin to allow callusing in dry weather. This will minimize the spread of bacterial canker.





Planting/Propagation

•    Mid-summer planting of peas (use enation-virus-resistant varieties)

•    Plant winter kale, Brussels sprouts, turnips, parsnips, parsley, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach, and Chinese cabbage.


•    Plant winter cover crops in vacant space in the vegetable garden



Pest Monitoring and Management

•    Remove cankered limbs from fruit and nut trees for control of diseases such as apple anthracnose and bacterial canker of stone fruit. Sterilize tools before each new cut.



•    Check apple maggot traps; spray tree if needed.



•    Control yellowjackets and wasps with traps and lures only as necessary. Keep in mind they are beneficial insects and help control pest insects in the home garden.



•    First week: Only if necessary, spray for walnut husk fly.



•    First week: Only if necessary, second spray for peach tree borer and/or peach twig borer.



•    First week: Only if necessary, second spray of filbert trees for filbertworm.



•    Check for root weevils in ornamental shrubs and flowers; (Link) 

•    Check for codling moth (Link) and spider mite (Link) in apple trees

•    Check for scale insects in camellias, holly and maples. (Link) Treat only as necessary.



•    Watch for corn earworm on early corn. Treat only as needed.



•    For mite control on ornamentals and most vegetables, hose off foliage, spray with approved miticide only if necessary.



•    Check leafy vegetables for caterpillars. Pick off caterpillars as they appear. Use Bt-k, if necessary.



•    Continue monitoring peaches, plums, prunes, figs, fall-bearing raspberries and strawberries, and other plants that produce soft fruits and berries for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD).  If SWD are present, use an integrated and least toxic approach to manage the pests.  Learn how to monitor for SWD flies and larval infestations in fruit.



Sustainable gardening

The Oregon State University Extension Service encourages sustainable gardening practices.

Preventive pest management is emphasized over reactive pest control. Identify and monitor problems before acting and opt for the least toxic approach that will remedy the problem. The conservation of biological control agents (predators, parasitoids) should be favored over chemical controls.

Use chemical controls only when necessary and only after thoroughly reading the pesticide label. First consider cultural, then physical and biological controls. Choose the least-toxic options (insecticidal soaps, horticultural oils, botanical insecticides, and organic pesticides).  Always research your pest to find the optimal ways of controlling them.  Call the Master Gardener hotline if you'd like some help getting started.  541-766-6750.

Updated Description of the NPK Project

For anyone who would like to know more about the NPKs - Neighborhood Planters Kiosks

The NPK project is being pioneered by volunteers from multiple organizations to reach more people with gardening information and build community within neighborhoods.  We hope that it will let more people know about how Benton County Master Gardeners, the Corvallis Evening Garden Club, the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition, and the City of Corvallis Civic Beauty and Urban Forestry Group support our community and gardening efforts.  We also want to encourage neighbors to talk and share not only the information that we are sending out, but their own ideas and enthusiasm.  The gardeners hosting the kiosks will be able to point their neighbors in the right direction to use community resources and to garden more effectively.  The posts and their hosts will become a focal point where people can go to share knowledge, plants, seeds, stories, and extra produce.

The NPK will bring seasonally appropriate, sustainable gardening information and notices about related community events right into our streets in a friendly, colorful venue that we will install in front yards, community gardens, and other areas highly visible to pedestrian traffic.  We’ll put research based information and answers directly into neighborhoods all over town, reaching a slightly different demographic than has been done before.  This information will rotate weekly and be provided by our four collaborators.  We will be able to keep tabs on what garden problems are showing up in our community on a daily basis, by tracking the questions that come in to the Master Gardener Help Desk.  We can then get information about those very current, specific problems and their solutions out to gardeners who may be experiencing the same problem and wondering what to do about it.  

We will also share up to the minute news, gardening articles, photos of community projects, and all of the past posts from the NPK on our blog, a venue that is accessible for anyone near or far from an NPK. 

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!

The first round of NPKs are almost ready to install!  

Field trip to Shady Grove Farm

Loads of great garden ideas were shared by our host, Susi Palmrose, a former Master Gardener.  She's started up a beautiful vegetable garden complete with a small orchard, large raspberry hedge, goat and sheep pasture, bee hives, mason bee house, and plenty of beautiful flowering perennials to keep the pollinators happy.  She showed us her root cellar where she also keeps her freshly made goat cheese.

She grows hops on a trellis that can be easily lowered with a winch for harvest.

There was also a solar dehydrator made from a kit.  That will be very handy come harvest season!

She had planted a strawberry patch on a hugelkultur bed.  This is a great way to put woody debris to work for your garden.  If you're not familiar with the practice, this is the basics of how it is done:  first a trench is dug then logs or other woody debris is laid down.  Compostable materials such as leaves, kitchen scraps, and grass clippings can be added next.  Then cover all of that with the reserved soil from your trench.  Water well and you have a new planting bed!  Plenty of mulch is always a good idea, but especially with taller hugelkultur beds, to prevent erosion of all your hard work.  As the woody debris decomposes, it releases nutrients and moisture, with larger logs releasing it more slowly.  Be aware that initially, all that woody material could encourage soil microbes to tie up bit of nitrogen, so a little composted manure or other fairly high nitrogen amendments would be very helpful for your first planting. Susi says if she were to do it again, she'd dig a deeper trench first, so that she had more soil to put over the top.

 

Get Outdoors Day

Master Gardeners' Booth at Get Outdoors (GO) Day

We had a great time helping kids and parents learn a few new things about the forest with a fun riddle game. It was great to see so many families outside appreciating McDonald Forest and having good clean (well wholesome, at least) fun!  It sure feels good to encourage such a healthy activity.  We also helped them identify poison oak, so they'd want to come back.  Great job Kathi for setting it all up!  Kudos also to Nancy Tovar for helping out.

There was fishing, crafts, games, and even several beautiful horses to see.

Garden Activities for June

~ What to do in the Garden in June ~

Planning

•   Construct trellises for tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, and vining ornamentals.

  This can be as simple as stapling a scrap of welded wire fence to an existing post as in this case.

Maintenance and Clean Up

•   Prune lilacs, forsythia, rhododendrons, and azaleas after blooming.



•   Fertilize vegetable garden 1 month after plants emerge by side dressing alongside rows.



•   Harvest thinnings from new plantings of lettuce, onion, and chard.



•   Pick ripe strawberries regularly to avoid fruit-rotting diseases.



•   Use organic mulches to conserve soil moisture in ornamental beds. An inch or two of sawdust, barkdust, or composted leaves will minimize loss of water through evaporation.


•   After normal fruit drop of apples, pears and peaches in June, consider thinning the remainder to produce a larger crop of fruit.



•   Make sure raised beds receive enough water for plants to avoid drought stress.



•   Mid-June: If green lawns are being maintained through the summer, apply 1 pound nitrogen per 1,000 square feet to lawns.



•   Measure your water use by placing an empty tuna can where your irrigation water lands and prevent wasted water.



Planting/Propagation

•   Plant dahlias and gladioli.

•   Most plants that are put in the ground during summer will need extra water and possibly shade.  Potting media dries out faster than soil and necessitates more frequent watering until roots have time to spread into native soil.



Pest Monitoring and Management

•   First week: Spray cherry trees for cherry fruit fly, as necessary, if fruit is ripening.



•   First week: Spray for codling moth in apple and pear trees, as necessary. Continue use of pheromone traps for insect pest detection.



•   Learn to identify beneficial insects and plant some insectary plants (e.g. Alyssum, Phacelia, coriander, candytuft, sunflower, yarrow, dill) to attract them to your garden. Check with local nurseries for best selections. For more information, see Encouraging Beneficial Insects in Your Garden (PNW 550).



•   Blossoms on squash and cucumbers begin to drop; this is nothing to worry about. Cherries may also drop fruit; this is not a major concern.



•   Monitor azaleas, primroses and other broadleaf ornamentals for adult root weevils. Look for fresh evidence of feeding (notching at leaf edges). Try sticky trap products on plant trunks to trap adult weevils. Protect against damaging the bark by applying the sticky material on a 4-inch wide band of poly sheeting or burlap wrapped around the trunk. Mark plants now and manage root weevils with beneficial nematodes when soil temperatures are above 55 degrees Farenheit. If root weevils are a consistent problem, consider removing plants and choosing resistant varieties.



•   Control garden weeds by pulling, hoeing, or mulching.  Laying down cardboard first and then a more attractive mulch can eliminate most established weeds.  Always plan to do some follow up weeding though.



•   Control aphids on vegetables as needed by hosing off with water or by using insecticidal soap.



•   Watch for 12-spotted beetles on beans and lettuce and cabbage worms or flea beetles in cole crops (cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts). Remove the pests by hand or treat with registered pesticides.



•   Spray peas as first pods form, if necessary, to control weevils.



•   Birch trees dripping a sticky fluid from their leaves means that aphids are present.

•   Use yellow sticky traps to monitor for cherry fruit fly. About 1 week after the first fly is caught, spray cherries at appropriate intervals.



•   Last week: Second spray for codling moth in apple and pear trees, as necessary.



Continue monitoring blueberry, strawberry, cherry and other plants that produce soft fruits and berries for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD). If SWD are present, use an integrated and least toxic approach to manage the pests. To learn how to monitor and manage SWD.