August 2010 Gardening Checklist

• Going on vacation? Hire someone to water or rig up a timer and sprinkler (or drip-irrigation system) for while you’re away. In-ground plants usually can tolerate a week without water, but your baskets and pots can die with just a few days without water in summer.
• If any patches of annual flowers have petered out in the heat or been eaten by bugs or animals, hide the bare spot by moving a flower pot over the space. This also works in spots where you’ve got plants that go dormant in summer, such as bleeding hearts, Virginia bluebells and spring bulbs.
• Scout for pest problems and treat as needed. August is prime time for bagworms on evergreens, budworms on annual flowers, a second generation of scale on euonymus, webworms on fruit trees, spider mites on spruce and other evergreens, scale on magnolia, and lace bugs on azaleas and pieris.
• Pull any straggler weeds that pop up in beds and lawns. New weeds will become less troublesome from here on out.
• Now’s the time to do one last shearing of the evergreen hedges. Growth will be tapering off soon, and they probably won’t need attention again until next spring. Don’t prune them in fall so you don’t risk encouraging new tip growth that’s susceptible to browning when the temperatures dip below freezing.