Watering the Vegetable Garden

August is an interesting and busy time in a vegetable garden, as many readers will no doubt be well aware. Most of your attention is likely to be on harvesting and tending the summer crops.

Cop hold of these gardeners tips designed for the upcoming Cop26 summit on the climate

While your baskets are filling with long-awaited tomatoes, zucchini and peppers, you might not be thinking about the months to come. But the garden season doesn’t have to end when the weather cools off. Midsummer is the perfect time to start plants for a second harvest. Here are five crops you can grow right now and enjoy in a couple of months. Happy harvesting! You Might Also Like: Best Places to Buy Garden Seeds OnlineCalculate How Many Vegetables to Plant Cool-Season Vegetables to Plant in Fall

A potager in a Devon garden by Dan Pearson

The Elizabethan Tower where Vita had her study. Credit: Shutterstock

 Part of Tom Massey's

Monitor cool-season crops for pests, such as aphids and various caterpillar species (cabbage loopers, cross-striped cabbageworm, and diamondback moth caterpillars). Properly identifying these pests will help in selecting control methods. For aphids, there are many natural predatory insects, such as lady beetle larvae, lacewings, syrphid flies, damsel bugs, and wasps. For more information on predatory insects, see HGIC 2820, Natural Enemies: Predators and Parasitoids. If additional control is needed for aphids, a commercially prepared insecticidal soap may be used. For more detailed information on insecticidal soap, see HGIC 2771, Insecticidal Soaps for Garden Pest Control. A naturally occurring bacterium, B.t. (Bacillus thuringiensis), may be used to control young caterpillars. As with all pesticides, read the label and apply at recommended rates and frequencies. Regardless of what pest you have, it is a good idea to maintain good sanitation in the garden. Always remember to remove any leftover plant debris at the end of the season. This will help reduce many over-wintering pest problems.

There is an old saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” We can apply this saying to gardening as just about every insect pest that plagues our gardens has one or more natural enemies that prey on or parasitize it. These enemies (or friends to us) include ladybugs, praying mantids, assassin bugs, ground beetles, robber flies, parasitic wasps, syrphid flies, and many others. Though often overlooked, these beneficial species can help significantly in managing insect pests in our vegetable gardens.

When I started this series of K.I.S.S. gardening advice, I hoped to inspire those who didn’t know where to begin gardening and those who may have lost joy in their gardening pursuits. After all, there are plenty of things to worry about these days, and gardening should not be one of them. Gardening should provide a respite and an escape from our screen technology culture. So let’s take the advice of Willie Nelson’s boy, Lukas, and “Turn off the news and build a garden.”

Proper soil preparation when growing vegetables is the key to successful and bountiful harvest but if you neglect to do this, it can greatly hinder the cultivation of demanding plants.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that I may receive a commission if you make a purchase using these links. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Discover the secrets to a thriving f

My mathematical equation starts on paper around June, like this:1. Make a list of what you want more of (or a first crop of, if it’s a warm-season thing or if you simply didn’t plant an earlier crop).2. Make a list of things that have gone by or will soon, to assess real estate that you can utilize. In early to mid-June my lists looked like the one below; yours may be very different. My July and August list–for my latest s