Summer Garden Clean up
Summer is far from over but we do need a summer garden clean up. Because a prepared gardener is a more successful gardener and a good clean-up takes some time. And it helps to deal with the hot temperatures when you can think of end of summer. Summer's end can be a challenging time for gardens. Some plants may not have fared so well, yet we still have a couple more months of this growing season. A good cleanup at the end of the season gets your garden off to a good start moving forward into fall. Remove any dead or diseased plant from your garden. Dead plants go into the compost pile, while diseased plants go into a bag in the trashcan. Save seeds from the plants that performed well for you this year. Put them into an envelope, label the contents and add a date. Eat up your veggie garden harvest. For excess harvest, plan ahead for canning, preserving , and freezing. Dry herbs to be used over the winter. good choices are thyme, rosemary, basil, lavender, and chives. Clean out your garden pots. Old soil can go into the compost pile. Organize, clean, and sharpen your garden tools. Weed the garden. Make notes of what went right and what went wrong in this year's garden. That variety of cauliflower that didn't do so well to those plants you planted next to each other and it went so well. Clean up your patio furniture. Resist buying and planting cool weather veggies, flowers, and herbs too soon. The end of summer is still too hot to plant them. Wait a bit to give these beauties the best chance of thriving. Good plants for the Gulf Coast Region in August include basil, beans, beets, carrots, cilantro, collard greens, cucumber, dill, lettuce mustard greens, potatoes, radishes, spinach, and summer squash.
