By Kerri Williams

Are your gardens looking a little tired lately? Have some of your flowerpots become slightly overgrown or unkept? You may be experiencing the August gardening slump.

It’s natural during a long summer to go through times when your gardens and flowering pots look better than others. Working outside can be hot and tiring, and summer schedules get busy. But there are a few things you can do to keep the gardens looking fresh even during the hottest and busiest of times. Here are some tips from several Westport gardening experts to get you back on track.

Paul Rossi, a UConn master gardener who serves on the board of Wakeman Town Farm, is all too familiar with the “August Slump,” which he calls a universal challenge.

For perennial plants, Rossi recommends regular pruning and deadheading of flowers that have gone by to encourage continuous blooming into the fall. For many perennials, early August is a good time to prune. Just don’t prune too late, he cautions, or you may lose next year’s flowers.

Nathalie Fonteyne, who is also a UConn master gardener and president of the Westport Garden Club, agrees that this is a good time for deadheading certain plants and cutting back others. “Keep your garden neat,” Fonteyne says. “Appearance means a lot.”

Another local gardener reminds us that sprucing up the garden doesn’t have to be difficult. “I always found that fluffing up the matted-down mulch in garden beds helps to perk things up,” says Paula Toi, who is active in the Greens Farms Garden Club.

With the high temperatures and heavy rain we have had this year, powdery mildew and fungus are rampant in many gardens. Rossi deals with these issues using only organic measures. Those include maximizing air flowing through the garden by allowing space between plants, watering at the roots to avoid wet leaves, sanitizing garden tools between uses, and not adding infected plant debris to his recycling pile. 

There are also organic topical sprays, which include neem oil and a homemade baking soda solution that can help with mildew and fungus. But Rossi is mindful in timing applications so as not to harm beneficial insects.

While flowering containers can be beautiful, they sometimes get neglected at this time of year, Rossi says. Container plants are often root-bound and tend to get overgrown, and they require consistent fertilizing as well as regular “haircuts” to keep them looking fresh. 

When the plants in one of my containers started looking unbalanced this season, I was able to move a couple of crowded dusty miller plants to the other side of an urn to give the arrangement a fresh, new look. Another tip is to pop in one or two annuals from the nursery about now, which can easily spruce up a tired-looking pot.

In fact, Rossi has a propagation area where he assembles succession containers. As containers in his yard get tired, he replaces them with others started earlier in the season, keeping a rotation of designs.

Another way of avoiding the August slump comes when you are planning your garden design, according to Fonteyne. Since most plants flower at different times during the summer, gardeners should plan for a succession of blooms and little vignettes within the garden. “It’s like a wave going through your garden,” Fonteyne said.

Gardeners should also remember that blooms are only one part of the beauty of a plant. Mixing variegated foliage of different textures and colors can also add interest to the garden when not as many plants are blooming.

Rossi also has some tips for special flowers, including his favorite one, the dahlia. “They are really coming into their own right now,” he said, and they require regular fertilization and disbudding. For those who want to dry hydrangeas, now is the time to pick them. And if you have a cutting garden of snapdragons, cosmos, zinnias or other flowers, keep cutting them, Rossi advises, as there is still plenty of time for more blooms.

So, during the dog days of August, don’t forget your garden. With a little extra planning and time outside, you can avoid the August slump and keep your gardens blooming well into the fall.

Kerri Williams

^{_{Kerri Williams is an award-winning writer and journalist. She has worked as a reporter at the Norwalk Hour, as Living editor at the Darien News-Review, and managing editor for the Norwalk Citizen-News. For Westport Journal, she is a reporter as well as a gardening columnist, writing “Cultivating with Kerri.” She recently published her first children’s book – “Mabel’s Big Move,” based on her daughter with special needs.}}