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Index : Miscellaneous Gardening Topics
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- 13. August Yard & Garden ‘To-dos’ - Top
- Fertilize citrus to ensure good fruit size that will occur soon after. Tangelos are especially sensitive and respond best. Apply two pounds of ammonium sulfate (21-0-0) fertilizer per tree on mature citrus. Water the fertilizer into the soil, or allow rains to soak the fertilizer in. If citrus trees are not growing properly the problem could be that soil or mulch has washed in and around the trunk. Pull back any soil away from the trunk and keep it away by using a lawn and landscape edging.
Replenish washed out nitrogen in container plants, garden beds and lawns. With the Monsoon rains and frequent irrigation required during July and August, nitrogen in the soil becomes depleted. Plants have little or no new growth and their leaves typically turn light green to yellow.
The quickest way to correct a nitrogen deficiency is to apply a water-soluble plant food high in nitrogen. Plant foods like Miracle- Gro, Peters and Miracid come in powder and liquid forms. Diluted in water and poured into the root zone, these products won’t burn and work in a matter of days . Granular ammonium sulfate can also be applied to quickly correct nitrogen deficiencies, but must be watered into the soil. If you prefer organic sources of nitrogen, I recommend using blood meal, cottonseed meal or poultry manure.
Wash container plant soils with a mild solution of soapy water. Potting soils high in peat often develop a condition called ‘hydrophobic soil’ in which water will not penetrate into the soil but rather runs off of it and down the edges of the container. Even though it would seem your watering your plants adequately, they still wilt within a short period of time. To correct this condition, add a few drops of liquid dish washing detergent to your watering can. This very mild soap solution, when added to the soil slowly, will actually break the bond that prevents water from penetrating into the soil. Your soil will be re-hydrated and once again be able to adsorb
water. Repeat this soil washing of your container plants once a month Spring through Fall.
Remove faded flower blossoms to keep your flowers blooming till Fall. Removing the faded flowers stimulates the plant to produce more blossoms. That’s because the energy of the plant that would have gone into seed production is diverted to produce more flowers. Gardeners refer to the process of removing spent blooms as “dead-heading, and it’s most important for flowers with large blossoms, like roses (roses), geraniums (geraniums), zinnias (zinnias), sunflowers (sunflowers) and cosmos (cosmos).
Faded flowers should “not” be pulled or pinched off the plant. Chances are you’ll just be pulling off petals and not removing the seed forming embryo. It’s best to cut the flower off with a sharp pruning shears or scissors. On plants with a long flower stem, such as geraniums, cut the stem all the way back to the leaves. Roses (roses) should be pruned back to a five-leaf leaflet. This will stimulate new flowering shoots to develop.
Rid your landscape of Desert Broom (Desert Broom). Although it’s actually a native plant, desert broom is also an invasive weed that sprouts up in disturbed soils, including home landscapes. August is an ideal time to treat it with the herbicide ‘glyphosate’ (‘glyphosate’) as the weed is actively growing and most susceptible to control. Simply cut the desert broom off a few inches above the ground and immediately paint the cut stubs with concentrated glyphosate (glyphosate) 18% or greater in strength. The plant will be killed, roots and all, and it won’t grow back!
Written by John Begeman, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the University of Arizona,
520-626-5161.
- Updated: August 6, 2006
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