Gardening jobs this month: August

From Country Living gardening editor Stephanie Donaldson:

Garden care

■ Take cuttings of tender perennials such as salvias, verbenas and fuchsias.
■ Take cuttings from silver-leaved plants (non-flowering shoots). Trim bushes to restore their shape afterwards.
■ Take cuttings of lavender by pushing 10cm lengths of non-flowering shoos into sandy compost. Keep them well watered in the shade until autumn. Rooted plants can be planted out in spring.
■ To increase numbers of violas or pansies, cut back hard and cover crowns with fine sandy soil to encourage strong, new growth. Once growing well, rooted pieces can be gently loosened from the plant and potted up.
■ When cutting gladioli leave at least four leaves on each plant.
■ Loganberries and tayberries can be increased by tip-layering. To do this, bury the tip of a shoot about 15cm deep and firm earth around it - it will root by spring.
■ Give lavender a haircut once the flowers have faded
■ Keep bird baths and ponds topped up with water
■ Prune rambling and climbing roses after flowering: for ramblers take
out one old stem for each new one; for climbers cut above a strong side shoot, low down on the plant
■ Remove fruited raspberry canes and select 6-8 strong new ones to tie in
■ Sow green manures on any bare ground in the vegetable garden to keep the soil covered and lock in fertility.
■ Watch for brown rot on ripening fruit - pick those affected and dispose of them before it spreads to others.

■ Ensure a good crop of flowers on your agapanthus next year by watering them well and applying a high-potassium tomato feed now to encourage bud formation. 

Tidying
■ Trim lavender as soon as the flowerheads have gone over.
■ Give rockroses a haircut to stop them getting leggy.
■ Tidy the greenhouse and clean out cold frames before you start to bring plants undercover next month.

Feeding
■ Keep up a regular routine of liquid feeding or plants will soon look past their best.
■ Liquid-feed agapanthus with high-potassium organic tomato food to ensure they yield plenty of flowers next year.
■ Give pepper and aubergine plants a potash-rich liquid feed.

Fruit and veg
■ Put bricks or tiles under squashes and pumpkins as they ripen to prevent them rotting.
■ Sow spinach to use as baby leaves in autumn.
■ Plant rooted strawberry runners into ground where strawberries have not previously been grown.
■ Remove raspberry canes that have fruited - leave 6-8 new canes and tie in place.
■ Lift onions and garlic and allow to dry before storing in nets.
■ Cut back on current season's growth on plums after they have fruited.
■ Blackcurrants can be picked and pruned in one action by cutting fruit-bearing stems back to a strong new shoot.
■ Thin out bunches of indoor grapes.
■ Check for potato blight and remove infected leaves. In a bad case, cut and remove all foliage and wait for three weeks before digging the tubers.

Pruning

■ Rambling and climbing roses can be pruned when flowers fade. With rambling roses take out one old stem for each new one that has grown and with climbers cut back to just above a strong side shoot, low down on the plant.
■ Summer-prune trained apples and pears.

Planting and sowing

■ Plant Lilium candidum.
■ Plant colchicums (autumn-flowering crocus) for unusual autumn colour.
■ Sow wallflower and forget-me-not seeds in seed compost and cover with a thin layer of vermiculite.

Weather
■ Water your pumpkins in dry weather.
■ Move container plants to a shady spot before going away. Ask a friend to water and feed plants in return for harvesting flowers and vegetables in your absence.
■ Regularly spray a jet of water (without breaking the hosepipe ban if it applies to you) into ponds that don't have pumped water to aid oxygenation in hot weather.

Plan ahead
■ Order spring bulbs now 
■ Buy Japanese onion sets ready for planting shortly.

From Prima gardening expert Ann-Marie Powell:

■ Feed plants in hanging baskets and pots once a week with liquid fertiliser.
■ Prune wisteria growths back to five or six buds.
■ Put up bird scarers or cover your fruit bushes with netting.
■ Keep the vegetable garden well watered.
■ Deadhead roses, perennials and annuals. Prune rambler roses when they've finished flowering.<
■ Peg down runners from strawberries into pots of compost buried beside the parent plant.
■ Keep cropping runner beans to encourage growth.
■ Cut back the old flower spikes from lavender, taking about one inch of foliage, too, to encourage dense and bushy plants.
■ Pick early apples as they start to ripen.
■ Take cuttings of sage, rosemary and the curry plant, Helichrysum italicum.
■ Ripen onions by bending them over at their neck.
■ Keep ponds topped up with water, ideally rainwater from your water butt.
■ Check compost heaps aren't getting too dry - sprinkle them with water if necessary.
■ Prune rambling roses as soon as they've finished flowering.
■ Give evergreen hedges their last trim.
■ Hoe and hand-weed every day to keep weeds at bay.
■ Lift, divide and replant any overgrown clumps of bearded iris, then water lightly
■ Feed late-flowering border plants.
■ Give evergreen hedges their last trim.
■ Thin out raspberry canes.

■ If you're going on holiday, collect up flowers that are in full bloom and give them to a friend or neighbour as a gift - it may encourage them to keep an eye on your garden while you're away!

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