With summer memories fast fading, you'd be forgiven for not having next year's strawberry harvest uppermost in your mind. However, this is an important month for our favorite berries. The payback is healthier plants with sweeter, juicer and more plentiful fruits for longer.

It's worth mentioning early on that there are three main groups of strawberry plants: summer fruiting; perpetual fruiting or everbearing; and all-season or day-neutral varieties. As the names suggest, summer fruiting plants ripen in midsummer (or earlier in warmer regions of the US) in one flush, while everbearing strawberries will produce sporadic bursts of berries all summer until the first frosts. All-season varieties have been bred to grow and fruit at any time of year, as long as the temperature is at least 50°F (10°C), although it must be said they're not the tastiest of the three groups.

How you grow strawberries will depend a little on which one of these three types you have in your backyard, although most of the basic principles remain the same. It'll be a while before you see results, so if you need a little something to motivate you, pop this cute pink harvest basket set in your cart at Amazon and just imagine them overflowing with juicy strawberries next summer. Here are the five jobs you need to be getting on with now for that dream harvest.

1. Tidy Up Your Strawberry Beds And Pots

It's time to weed your strawberry beds, making sure you remove any long tap roots such as dandelions entirely or they'll pop up again next spring – here I find a simple weed puller like this one from Lowes really handy. At the same time I get out any debris and rotting mulch that's built up over the year, as this can harbor diseases.

Next up, remove any runners you don't want to keep (see below), cutting them away at the crown with a sharp pair of pruners. I like to use a small pair like these 2in Digz Garden Snips from Home Depot, designed for precision cutting. Of course, keep any plantlets that look good and healthy and come away with their roots intact.

While I'm doing my general tidy, I thin out my plants to 6-12in (30-60cm) apart.

Both of these jobs mean you're reducing competition for the plants that remain, which will give you bigger and better fruit.

Tidying up will help with diseases too. Strawberry plants can be susceptible to a few different viral infections, spread either by insects or by pests such as eelworms in the soil.

If you see yellow-blotched or crumpled foliage, and poor growth, it's best to dig up and dispose of those infected plants, then replant with fresh stock. If you're growing in pots, refresh the compost to reduce the risk of diseases spreading.

I get rid of dead or dying leaves next, to let in light and minimise hiding places for pests like slugs and snails. If you're growing summer-fruiting strawberries, you can take off most of the older leaves too, to reinvigorate the plant and encourage new growth. I like to be fairly brutal here, cutting each summer-fruiting plant back to a small palm-sized mound containing just a couple of leaves of new growth.

I also refresh the top few inches of compost in any containers – it's an important step when growing strawberries in pots and hanging baskets, and keeps nutrients at optimal levels.

2. Propagate New Strawberry Plants From Runners

This is a fun job to being doing in September. Making new plants from old always seems like performing magic, and strawberry plants are very obliging when it comes to giving you something for nothing. Here's how to grow strawberries from runners.

First, take a look at your strawberry plants and, whether they're in the ground or in pots, you'll notice many will have sent out long runners by now. To make these into new plants, choose four or five strong ones from each plant and cut off and discard the rest.

Next, I fill a bunch of small pots with moist potting compost and sink them into the soil around my strawberry plants (or pop them next to my pots). Then it's simply a question of setting those runners down into the pots and pegging them down so they have a chance to root. I use pieces of gardening wire bent into an upside-down U shape, but you can get special strawberry anchor clips like these from Amazon.

If there's room in the beds around my plants I just peg them directly into the soil. You can always move them later if you like.

Once rooted (I give them a month or two at least and water if the weather's dry), it's time to cut off the long runners and replant your new plants wherever you want them to grow.

If you found ready-rooted baby plantlets during your strawberry bed tidy-up, these can be planted straight into pots or beds.

3. Plant New Strawberry Plants

This snippet is for those gardening in USDA Zones 8-11, where the climate is reliably warm. The rest of us should generally wait until early spring to put in new bare-root plants. If you haven't already, do research some of the best strawberry varieties to grow.

Where the weather is warm enough and winters mild, it's worth planting bare-root strawberries in fall, especially summer-fruiting varieties (ever-bearing varieties can wait until spring, although you can buy everbearing strawberry bushes now at Trees.com (formerly Fast Growing Trees), which gives the plants time to establish over winter and then produce a spring harvest.

If you're buying bare roots, they may look a little worse for wear, but don't worry. I soak mine for half an hour or so in a bucket before I plant. Then I space them around 12in (60cm) apart, making sure that the crown of the plant sits exactly at the surface of the soil. Any lower and they can rot; higher and they can dry out. I'm also careful to gently spread out those roots into the planting hole.

When planting into pots, I use a rich compost like Wakefield Biochar from Lowes, mixed with a little vermiculite – Viagrow from Lowes is ideal – for extra drainage.

The final step, of course, is to water your new plants in well.

4. Feed Your Strawberry Plants

September is a good time to top-dress your summer-fruiting strawberry beds with a couple of inches of garden compost, or a good store-bought option. A few handfuls of bone meal sprinkled over the top of that is a good idea too.

You can buy bone meal at Home Depot. You can also add a Nitrogen-rich fertiliser such as Espoma Citrus Tone from Home Depot to promote leafy growth.

Any fertilising needs to be done at least 4-6 weeks before the first frosts to give your plants the chance to grow and make use of that boost before the cold weather sets in. So bear this in mind if you garden where there are early frosts.

5. Keep Plants Watered

Although rains tend to arrive in early fall, September can still be relatively dry, so keep an eye on the weather and don't presume that just because you've had a couple of showers your strawberry plants can be left to their own devices.

Strawberries in pots (if you're short on space you can't go wrong with this stackable Vertical Planter Tower from Amazon) are especially vulnerable to drying out. Check with your finger and if the soil feels dry about in inch down, it's time to water.

New plants and runners need particular care and attention now, or all your work pegging them down and planting them out will be in vain.

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Summer-fruiting strawberry plants in particular need a good dose of TLC in September to fruit well next year.

Trust me, all your attention clearing beds, cutting back and fertilising will make all the difference, giving you better harvests next summer, and juicier berries too.

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Homegrown vegetables are undoubtedly tastier than any store-bought ones, which is why gardeners around the world enjoy ‘growing their own’. On top of this, there are also beautiful ornamental specimens which can bring color and texture to fall decor. You can grow and show this month, before you enjoy those homegrown flavors.

Growing your own crops opens up a world of veg in different colors and shapes than you normally see on shelves. Rainbow carrots, purple cabbages and cauliflowers, bright green romanesco, vivid Swiss chard, dazzling peppers, and ornate squash and gourds can be arranged together for rustic displays.

Think of your vegetable garden as an artistic palette as well as a place for ingredients for seasonal dishes. You can make stunning displays in this vintage willow wicker basket on Wayfair to place on a porch, side table, or make a centerpiece for fall gatherings. Here are our picks of seven ornamental vegetables to harvest in September for breathtaking seasonal displays.

1. Pumpkin

Pumpkins are potentially the vegetable most associated with fall decorations. There are many ways to decorate with pumpkins, from placing them on your porch to making a table centerpiece out of them. And you don’t need to go mad with pumpkin carving to make an eye-catching display.

How you display your crops will depend on the pumpkins you are growing. Larger pumpkins can adorn porch steps to create a spectacular entrance, or miniature pumpkins can line baskets or wooden trays on a table.

In September, pick pumpkins off the vine once they have a bright orange color, the skin is hard and can’t be pierced with a fingernail, and it sounds hollow if you tap them. The stem should also be dried.

You can get a variety pack of pumpkin seeds on Amazon for fruits in different colors, sizes, and textures. If you want to grow mini pumpkins, these Wee B Little pumpkin seeds from True Leaf Market are ideal and can even be grown in raised beds or containers.

2. Squash

I have always enjoyed growing squash, and one of the reasons is due to the wide range of shapes and colors there are to pick from. There is such a diversity of both summer and winter squash you can add to any vegetable garden.

From teardrop-shaped butternut squashes to ridged acorn squashes, through to scalloped pattypan squashes. There are smooth, ribbed, or warty skin textures that can add character if you add them to fall displays. Once you’ve enjoyed their unique decorative characteristics, you can bake or roast the squash and add them to a variety of comforting seasonal dishes.

In September, the window for harvesting winter squash is well and truly open. As with pumpkins, the rind should be hard, the stem woody and dry, and color deep and solid when the squash is ready to pick.

I always adore butternut squash (seeds available at Burpee) and Blue Hubbard (seeds available at True Leaf Market), both of which offer ornamental value on top of sweet flavor.

3. Gourds

Gourds are a quirky addition to any vegetable garden. They are ancient vegetables that have had many uses over the years – from water carriers to musical instruments – but nowadays they are grown for unique decorations. Gourds are easy to grow and feature an array of different shapes, colors, stripes, warts, and ridges.

You can create a kaleidoscope display of gourds in a basket or tray, or simply dot individual ones around a table or on a mantelpiece for a novel show that is sure to spark questions from guests.

Harvest your gourds and place them somewhere warm and dry to cure for a few weeks. You can wash them with soapy water to remove any soil, and, once dried, spray them with a mix of 10 parts water to one part vinegar to toughen the skin and preserve them for longer.

This packet of decorative mix small gourd seeds at Amazon is perfect for growing a fun mix of different gourds to display on porches, mantels, or tablescapes.

4. Rainbow Carrots

Mention carrots and the overwhelming majority of people will undoubtedly picture the iconic orange roots. It is understandable, as that is all you see in stores.

There are, however, many different varieties that offer a rainbow of colors. Historically, carrots were purple, yellow, or white before breeding in the 16th and 17th centuries created the bright orange carrots we all know today.

If you want to grow carrots at home, it offers an ideal opportunity to look outside of the norm. You can still get scarlet red, vivid yellow, bright white, or deep purple carrots (seeds available at True Leaf Market) to sow and grow in your vegetable garden.

When you harvest these carrots in early fall, they make a vibrant display in baskets alongside other seasonal produce. Keep the leafy tops on and don’t think of peeling them.

Carrots won’t make a long-lasting display, but they can be a talking point at a dinner before being stored as normal in a refrigerator to be used in dishes.

This Kaleidoscope Blend of carrot seeds at Burpee has mixed seeds of five different types. Gardeners can sow them and crop red, purple, white, yellow, and orange carrots.

5. Purple Cabbage

The deep purple heads of these fall and winter cabbages provide dramatic, deep shades for displays.

These cabbages, commonly known as red cabbages despite their darker color, look good either on their own or mixed with other crops in lighter colors. As an alternative, the ruffled leaves of savoy cabbages can add textural interest to any vegetable display.

September marks the end of the window for summer cabbages and the start of the season to harvest winter cabbages. Different varieties of red cabbages can be planted to pick from August into winter.

If you squeeze the cabbage head and it feels firm, that means it is ready to harvest. Waiting too long to harvest cabbages can cause the heads to crack, which isn’t ideal if you want to utilize their vibrant colors in any displays.

‘Red Acre’ is a popular purple cabbage variety to grow. This heirloom vegetable has deep purple heads and goes from sowing to harvesting in under 100 days. You can get ‘Red Acre’ cabbage seeds at True Leaf Market.

6. Romanesco

Romanesco is a very unique vegetable. A cultivar of cauliflower, though often referred to as romanesco broccoli, it has a lime-green head that displays buds in a distinctive spiral Fibonacci sequence.

Whether in a basket of its own or surrounded by other seasonal veg, it is likely that not everyone will be aware of romanesco, so the surreal heads can make a real talking point. If you have included it in dishes at a dinner party (romanesco has a texture like cauliflower and a nutty flavor), save a head or two for the table so guests can be enamoured by the beauty of this lesser-known veg.

Romanesco is really structural and capable of bringing something to displays that no other vegetable can. Even in a fall garden, it stands out and remains one of the prettiest vegetables to grow in a flower border or kitchen garden.

Romanesco is grown from seed in late spring and harvested from September onwards. Once its buds are compact and firm, the entire head can be cut with a sharp knife. Just like when you harvest cauliflower, make sure to pick before the heads begin to separate.

You can get romanesco seeds at True Leaf Market. Or, for a breathtaking display of cauliflowers, this cauliflower seed variety pack on Amazon contains seeds to grow purple, dark green, and lime green heads, along with the classic white cauliflower.

7. Leeks

You can grow leeks from late summer through to early spring if you plant different early, mid, and late varieties. As leeks are one of the best vegetables to overwinter, cold-hardy varieties will happily sit in the vegetable garden throughout the colder months to be harvested as needed.

Different types of leeks can have deep green or blue-green tops above the bright white base. If you harvest leeks this month, lay them out in baskets or lean them against larger vegetables, such as pumpkins or squashes, in an artistic manner. Their blue or green stems and white portions will contrast nicely with a deep orange pumpkin.

I would wipe down the stem and snip the roots back to the base with pruning snips or garden scissors before putting them on display. This quick job will neaten the leek. If the outer foliage is very dirty, consider removing the top layer.

These Giant Leek seeds on Amazon can be sown to grow large leeks with tall white stems.

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If you want to grow a unique, decorative twist on a homegrown favorite, look no further than heirloom tomatoes. If you opt to grow heirloom tomatoes, there is a wide variety of these old-fashioned cultivars that come in colors and shapes you never see on supermarket shelves.

With heirloom tomato varieties coming in shades of pink, yellow, green, purple, and black, as well as classic red and sometimes striped, there is a whole spectrum to discover. For example, this colorful heirloom tomato seed variety pack on Amazon offers a chance to grow black, white, green, pink, and bi-color tomatoes.

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Tomato season may be ending, but that doesn't mean our veg patch now has to turn barren for the rest of the year – there's still time to plant radishes in their place and get a good harvest before frost arrives.

Growing radishes is easy and hugely satisfying if you're looking for a quick win in the garden. In as little as three weeks after sowing radish seeds (see the selection on Burpee), you can harvest these salad crops. The reason they work so well after tomatoes is that they're compact, filling gaps in your kitchen garden and making the most of your space.

It's the one crop to plant after pulling out tomatoes that experts always recommend. Here, they share why.

Why Grow Radishes After Tomatoes?

With tomato plants finishing up in late summer, there are only so many weeks before frost makes it tricky to grow anything else. But at the top of the list of fast-growing vegetables to plant in their place is radish.

'Radishes are a good crop to grow after tomatoes because they can easily handle fall temperatures and grow so very quickly. They only take around three to four weeks before they're ready to harvest, depending on the variety you're growing,' says Annette Hird, expert gardener at Easy Urban Gardens.

'This should be plenty of time to get at least one more crop of radishes before the ground freezes, once again, depending on your growing region,' she adds.

This cool-season crop is hardy across USDA zones 2-11, with lots of varieties to choose from – True Leaf Market has a wide range of radish seeds to shop.

Not only is the speed of radishes a reason to grow them after tomatoes, but also their size.

'They are perfect gap fillers in the veg garden in between larger plants that take longer to grow like Swiss chard, broccoli, kale, and cabbage,' says Corinne Beirne, kitchen gardener from The Nourishes Garden.

They're compact crops, so it's easy to grow radishes in pots, use space-saving vegetable garden ideas, and you can even grow radishes indoors on a sunny windowsill.

'Being a root crop, they also help to break up the soil a little around those old tomato plant roots. Radishes are also not heavy feeders, so you won't need to replenish the soil with fertilizer before planting them,' says Annette. 'And, of course, growing radishes after tomatoes is a great way to practice crop rotation, which helps to keep pests and diseases under control.'

September Radish Growing Tips

To successfully grow radishes in early fall after tomatoes, it's best to choose the fastest-growing varieties.

'My favorite is 'French Breakfast' (which you can find on Amazon); they can be harvested in just about 25 days or so. This variety also happens to look especially pretty for a kitchen garden,' says Corinne.

'They have an elongated shape with white tips, and are a great crunchy addition for fall salads,' she adds.

'I recommend 'Cherry Belle' (you can find seeds at Burpee), early 'Scarlet Globe,' and 'Crimson Giant' (also available at Burpee). For something a little different and possibly a winter harvest, you could try the daikon radishes, which are larger and usually white. These take up to 10 weeks to mature but will also store well in the ground. They can also be cooked and eaten much like carrots,' Annette advises.

'My top tip would be to sow the seeds as soon as the tomatoes are coming to an end and seed another crop after harvesting the first radishes if you still have ambient weather conditions,' she adds.

After clearing your tomato plants, you may want to loosen any compacted soil to make seed sowing easier and give the roots room to breathe. Likewise, if soil volume is depleted in pots, top up with some fresh compost – though, as mentioned, fertilizer won't be necessary for these crops.

Provide a sunny position and an inch of water weekly and you'll soon spot sprouts. Harvest your radishes when their 'shoulders' poke out at surface level and are around one inch in diameter.

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Radishes aren't the only crop to plant this month; there are plenty of vegetables to plant in September for winter harvests, including kale, spinach, and corn salad. This pack of winter vegetable seeds from Amazon has a wide range to work with.

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The end of the road is in sight for pumpkin growers come early fall. To end on a flourish, a few key tasks need doing in September to help your pumpkins finish ripening and give you the best crop this year.

Maintenance shifts in September into helping the fruits mature properly. That means adjusting your watering and fertilizing habits from the summer routine and taking important steps to give the fruits the best conditions to ripen. In colder climates, September is also a month to keep one eye on the weather forecasts, as they need lifting before frost.

If you have been growing pumpkins all summer, it won’t be long before you are harvesting the fruits of your labor. Here we look at what to do with pumpkin plants in September to ensure the fruits ripen and cure properly. A good set of pruning shears (like these strong steel Corona pruners at The Home Depot) will be handy for completing some of these tasks and cutting the pumpkins from the vine come harvest time.

1. Reduce Watering

When your pumpkins reach their full size and the color starts to turn as the fruit matures, the plants no longer need as much water as they did in summer. You may have gotten into a good habit of watering plants regularly during the hotter months, but you can dial back the routine come September.

When you see the color starting to change and the foliage drying back, don’t keep deep watering as often as you have been. You should keep a close eye and stop the soil from completely drying out (a soil moisture meter from Amazon can help), but the plants don’t want a regular soaking.

Cutting back on watering pumpkins at this stage helps the skin to toughen and improves the flavor. If you overwater, the skin can split, or the pumpkin won’t store as long if the skin hasn’t hardened fully. Finally, stop watering about 2-3 weeks before you expect to be picking your pumpkins off the vine.

2. Stop Feeding

Pumpkins need a lot of feeding during the summer to develop those long vines and large fruits. Once we get into September, continuing to feed will encourage the plant to carry on growing. Instead, the impetus should be letting the fruits mature and start to cure on the vine.

The window to fertilize pumpkins ends four weeks before harvest time. If you have been diligently using a high-potassium liquid fertilizer every few weeks, you’ll have given plants all the nutrients they need to be successful. But now leave the bottle of feed in the shed and don’t give the plants any more.

Continuing to fertilize into fall stops the fruits from developing the tough skin that is essential if you want to store pumpkins for long. Stopping feeding lets the fruits mature and cure naturally.

3. Boost Sunlight

Direct sunlight plays a pivotal role in helping the pumpkins ripen on the vine. Now is the time to maximize that potential and give your fruits a helping hand by moving or removing any of the large leaves casting shade over the ripening pumpkins.

Look over your plants for any foliage blocking sunlight from reaching the top or the sides of the pumpkins. Remove them with sharp pruning shears (or garden scissors, like these on Walmart) to increase how much direct sunlight reaches the fruits, which will help speed up ripening.

To help plants remain healthy, gardeners can also remove dying, damaged, or diseased leaves (powdery mildew is a common issue in late summer and early fall). However, don’t get too carried away and remove lots of healthy leaves. The pumpkin plant still needs a good stock of these to photosynthesize and ripen the fruits.

4. Trim Long Stems

To truly focus the plant’s energy on ripening the existing fruits, keen growers can also prune the pumpkin vines this month. While not essential for pumpkins in September, if you are against the clock to make sure the fruits ripen before the temperatures drop, it could make a difference.

By cutting back the pumpkin stems, the plant’s energy is diverted away from growing the vines and focused on ripening the fruits. Helping the fruits get a little extra dose of essential nutrients can reap rewards as we approach the business end of the season.

If you want to try this, cut the vines off around three feet past the ripening pumpkin. Any shoots that aren’t carrying fruit are also surplus and can be trimmed off to ensure they are not robbing nutrients from your pumpkins.

5. Lift Pumpkins

A quick two-minute job for pumpkins in September is to lift the fruits off the soil, if you haven’t already.

Pumpkins sitting on damp soil – which is very common in September – can rot. Don’t let this happen to yours by placing a piece of slate, tile, brick, or wood under the fruits to raise them off the ground. This reduces the risk of the base of your fruits rotting before you pick them, which would be a devastating find come harvest time.

This also raises the fruit away from slugs, which are known to nibble developing pumpkins, but they shouldn’t do any serious damage once the skin has hardened.

6. Check for Frosts

When gardeners need to pick their pumpkins varies by US hardiness zone. In milder climates, gardeners can leave the fruits to ripen on the vine through September without worry.

In colder climates, like US hardiness zones six and below, the pumpkins may need to be harvested if a hard frost is on the cards. Check forecasts if you grow in zones 3-6 and harvest pumpkins before a predicted hard frost. The fruits can survive a light frost but will be damaged by a hard frost, so pick them if they are mature or almost mature.

In September, if your pumpkins show all the signs of being fully ripe (including a full color, a hard rind, and a dry stem), you can harvest them.

Leave a few inches of stem attached when you pick them and cure the pumpkins for a few weeks somewhere dry and warm. This can be outdoors or in a greenhouse, sunroom, or on a sunny windowsill if you have cold or frosty nights.

Many pumpkins do end up getting discarded after Halloween. Personally, I grow pumpkins to eat rather than for display, but if you use yours for decorations, there are ways to utilize them around the garden after the seasonal celebration.

You can compost pumpkins to make nutrient-rich organic matter for plants to benefit from in future years, or you can use leftover pumpkins as fertilizer by breaking them up and burying them in the soil. However, if you do the latter, you may want to remove any seeds to avoid rogue pumpkins popping up around the garden.

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Your tomato plants may be starting to look a little tatty by September, but don't be tempted to forget about them entirely. In all likelihood, they're still fruiting and ripening, and a few easy jobs could keep them healthy and productive to the end of the month, or even beyond.

If you're growing tomatoes in the US, there's a huge range of stages you might be at with your crops: in southern states, you're likely in full harvest mode with fruits looking good for weeks to come, or further north productivity will be tapering sharply off this month with frosts very much on the horizon. Either way, there are jobs to do in September to get the most from your tomato plants.

One of the most important things to know about growing tomatoes is when to harvest, and we'll cover that here, as well as how to make the most of the early-fall sunshine for ripening, and how best to support those last harvests on the plant. What I always enjoy at this time of year is a pretty harvest basket like this wooden one from Amazon. It brings so much joy to the season.

1. Adjust Your Watering Regime

After a hot summer, and likely a week or two of neglect when you may not have been able to care for your tomatoes while on vacation, your tomato plants will be in need of a good drink, with added water-soluble fertilizer. Miracle-Gro from Home Depot is ideal. Feeding tomatoes is one of the essentials when learning to grow these crops.

I give them this boost to provide the energy for a final harvest, and then begin to reduce watering. This tip is for outdoor tomatoes especially. And regions where you're starting to get the first September showers. Wherever you are, the days will be starting to shorten and that fierce sunlight is beginning to mellow. Naturally, your tomato plants will need less water. I then cut back gradually to help concentrate the sugars in those last harvests, making for sweeter tomatoes.

Exactly how much water do tomato plants need? Before I reach for the watering can (I love this Bloem EZ Pour from Ace Hardware), it'll get water direct to the roots where it's needed), I always check the top inch or two of soil (you can use this soil moisture meter from Amazon). It's best to wait until the top of the soil has dried out before watering or you risk causing root rot, a fungal infection caused by over-saturated soil and that can quickly set in and kill the entire plant.

Consistency is important too, as too much (as well as too little) water can cause your ripening tomatoes to split.

2. Tidy Up Your Tomato Plants

As the heat of summer fades, tomato plants will need all the energy they can muster to ripen those remaining fruits. If you haven't done this already, it's time to give your tomato plants a little trim, which will help to redirect the plant's energy into ripening rather than maintaining stems and foliage.

First of all, I cut out the main growing tip of each plant (also known as topping tomato plants) to leave 2-3 leaves above the top truss of tomatoes. This stops the plants growing upwards, which is pointless at this time of year. These micro-tip Vivosun pruners from Amazon are a great no-nonsense tool here.

Next, I take out the old lower leaves of my tomato plants and thin out any foliage that is shading trusses of green tomatoes. It's one of the key ways to get tomatoes to ripen on the vine as it speeds up the ripening process by letting in more sunlight.

You'll have been doing this all summer, but don't forget to keep pinching out those side shoots too – the ones that develop between the main stem and each side stem. They'll only cause bushy growth at the expense of fruits.

Then, and this one is for the majority of gardeners (if you're in the southern US states you might get away with ignoring this one for another few weeks), I snip out any new flower clusters as these won't have time to mature, and will just waste the plants' precious energy.

Finally, if your plants are flopping all over the place, like mine, I tie wayward growth back into its supports where fruits will ripen more quickly and healthily. I use a system of easy to adapt supports like these from Home Depot. A decent gap of around 12in (30cm) between the lowest leaves and the soil helps to keep plants healthy.

3. Remove Spent Plants

Early September is the time to take a tour of your tomato plants and assess. There may be some that are looking healthy, with ripening trusses of fruits. Others will be beaten up an weather worn – it's the end of the season after all and all good things come to an end.

It's wise to be realistic at this stage in the year, so I earmark anything that's diseased or overly shabby for the compost heap. Then you can concentrate on your best, most productive plants.

Removing old, underproductive plants will also slow down the spread of common tomato diseases, which can be particularly rife among tomato plants at this time of year. A quick note here: if you're taking out heavily diseased plants, it's best to keep these out of your home compost bin or heap. I find a rolling garden cart like this one from Amazon a great fuss-free help with jobs like these.

4. Harvest Your Tomatoes

Most tomato plants ripen from midsummer onwards, almost until the first frosts. Smaller fruits ripen more quickly while large beefsteak types can take a lot longer to color and sweeten up.

Knowing when to harvest your tomatoes is an art, and will depend on the type of tomatoes you're growing and the predicted weather for your area. In general, of course, USDA Zones 1-3 will have a lot longer for ripening, while those further north will need to think about cut-off times in a matter of weeks.

For the best flavor, you're looking for fruits that are evenly colored and ripened with a good amount of sun. After a few weeks of dull weather and rain, your tomatoes will begin to taste insipid.

Once I get to the point that tomato ripening is stalling, I bring them indoors to ripen off the vine. Full sized tomatoes are best here, and even better if they have a hint of colour. I take them off the stems, wash them carefully, dry them then keep them in a single layer in paper bags on a warm windowsill (popping a ripe banana in with them to speed up the process) and they soon take on more color and flavor. A tiered organizer like this one from Amazon can be helpful here.

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Your tomato plants don't need a great deal of care in September, but those little tweaks you do get round to will make all the difference, giving you better harvests for longer, into mid-fall if you're lucky and you're growing in one of the warmer regions.

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As the garden starts to slow down in late summer, there are plenty of opportunities to continue growing plants indoors – including herbs. In fact, September is a great time to start some herbs on your windowsill, as lingering warm temps and long daylight hours support early growth.

Establish an indoor herb garden now and you can keep a fresh supply going through fall and winter – though you may need the help of tools like this grow light from Amazon as fall settles in. There are a few easy, fast-growing herbs to start from seed this month, or many established potted herbs that will appreciate retreating indoors before frost arrives.

Either way, you can create a mini indoor kitchen garden to set you up for tasty pickings through the cozier seasons. Here, I talk through five herbs to grow indoors in September.

1. Basil

Basil is always one of the first herbs I recommend to anyone wanting to attempt to grow this delicious group of plants from seed. That's because basil is fast-growing and can easily be grown on a warm, sunny windowsill.

Sow basil seeds (like these from Burpee) thinly in a pot of well-draining potting mix, place it on a sun-filled window, and keep the soil lightly watered to aid germination.

Ideally, give the seeds temperatures of 68-77°F to encourage sprouting. If room temperatures have dropped, you can use this seedling mat from Walmart to keep your pots warm.

Alternatively, September is a good time to move your outdoor basil inside, before night-time temperatures drop below 50°F. Check for pests first and trim away any damaged foliage before finding it a bright windowsill to live on.

This is a great way to extend your basil's growing season, especially if you keep harvesting basil to make it bigger – I like to use herb harvesting scissors (which you can find on Amazon) to make clean cuts when taking fresh basil leaves.

You can also simply pot up a basil plant from Walmart to grow in your kitchen through fall.

2. Chives

Chives are another great option for herbs to grow indoors in September, especially if you love having a fresh garnish to hand for fall cooking.

As another fast-growing herb, it is possible to sow chive seeds (like these from True Leaf Market) in September.

Scatter a pinch of seeds on the surface of well-draining potting mix, then cover with a light layer of soil. With warmer late-summer temps, consistently moist soil, and a bright spot, you should see sprouts in just a couple of weeks.

Of course, you can also opt for an established chives plant from Walmart if you want more immediate harvests. Potting it up in this herb garden planter from Amazon, alongside a couple of other plants, will give you an instant mini garden to enjoy.

To keep your chives growing, ensure they receive 4-6 hours of sunlight daily, supplemented by a grow light from Amazon if needed.

3. Mint

Although many mint varieties are frost-hardy, you can bring potted plants indoors to add to your kitchen herb garden. Or, you can grow mint from cuttings this month to get brand new plants for free.

If you do want to propagate mint from cuttings, use a sharp pair of gardening snips (these Fiskars ones from Lowe's are a top choice) to take a stem cutting around 4-6 inches long, remove the lower leaves, and pop it in a glass of water. Keep it somewhere bright and warm, change the water regularly, and you should spot roots in a couple of weeks.

Whether you grow cuttings or order a mint plant from Amazon, growing mint indoors requires regular rotation to stop the plant becoming lop-sided.

You should also harvest mint regularly to encourage bushier growth and extend the growing season, snipping stems just above a pair of leaf nodes.

4. Cilantro

As a cool-season herb, cilantro is ideal to grow later in summer as temperatures cool down. It doesn't cope well with the heat of peak summer, when it bolts quickly. This means you can sow cilantro seeds outdoors in September and likewise can sow them indoors quite easily.

You can gently crush cilantro seeds (available at Burpee) to help seed germination before pressing them into the surface of soil. These seeds need a temperature around 60-70°F, so avoid a particularly warm spot.

Make sure to harvest cilantro regularly, but keep in mind it's a short-lived herb. Successional sowing every few weeks can give you a longer harvest.

It's best not to let the cilantro soil dry out completely, so use this soil moisture meter from Amazon to check regularly and top up as needed.

5. Oregano

To grow oregano indoors in September, it's best to either bring a potted plant indoors or purchase an oregano plant from the supermarket (like this from Walmart), as the seeds tend to perform better in the warmth and daylight of spring.

As a Mediterranean herb, it's best to place your oregano on a sunny and warm windowsill for a constant harvest through fall and winter. A grow light with a timer (like this from Walmart) can help you provide 6-8 hours of light when daylight depletes in fall.

Make sure to use a well-draining potting mix for these plants, as they are susceptible to root rot and actually prefer a bit of drought. This indoor herb potting mix from Walmart is a good option.

Don't forget to harvest oregano regularly so it keeps growing by cutting stems just above a leaf node.

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There are lots of herb gardening mistakes to avoid when growing herbs indoors this fall and winter. This includes packing herbs too closely together and not harvesting regularly, which can cause leggy growth.

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It is time to show your tomatoes some tough love, as September is the month to start topping tomato plants to guarantee your late-season harvest. Stopping plants in their tracks is never the most enjoyable task of the season, but it comes with tangible rewards.

The priority when growing tomatoes shifts come September. You don’t want to encourage lots of new growth; instead, the focus is on ensuring plants can ripen all the fruit they already have before the end of the season. This is done by topping tomato plants and removing the growing tips.

It is a quick, simple task for a pair of sharp pruning tools (I will top my tomato plants in the coming days with my Felco pruning snips, available at Amazon). It always feels a bit harsh to top plants you have lovingly nurtured for months, so I want to show the benefits of topping tomato plants and when you should do it.

Should You Top Tomato Plants?

Yes, I am convinced that gardeners should top tomato plants at the latter end of the tomato season. I have grown lots of tomato plants over the years, from a greenhouse with 80+ plants that we cropped for a restaurant, to a few tomato plants in pots on a patio at home. This has always been in US hardiness zone 8 in the UK, where the season is relatively short, especially when my tomato plants were outdoors.

Come September, the season starts winding down from the summer peak. Healthy, prosperous tomato plants may have produced a lot of fruits so far, and still have lots of young tomatoes developing. This is where topping tomato plants is hugely beneficial in helping those existing tomatoes to ripen.

Without any intervention, indeterminate (or vining) tomato varieties will continue growing until the plant is naturally killed by frost. The plant will grow taller and develop more flowers and little fruits. Unless you are in the warmest climates, or have the luxury of a heated greenhouse that can provide warmth and year-round artificial light, any new fruits won’t have time to ripen.

Topping tomato plants focuses the energy. The plant puts all its energy into swelling and ripening the fruit it is carrying, rather than relentlessly growing new stems and charging upwards. At the end of the season, this helps guarantee that your fruits ripen before the cold weather arrives and growth stops.

Another reason to top tomato plants is to keep plants under control. I have not always had the luxury of super-tall greenhouses. I have topped plants once they reached the roof of smaller greenhouses, especially when using plastic DIY greenhouses on a patio or in a courtyard garden. For example, I have had great success using a plastic walk-in greenhouse like this at Wayfair at home in the past.

After topping tomato plants, they will likely continue producing side shoots in response to being pinched back. Continue to monitor plants and prune tomato plants regularly, as removing these side shoots keeps the energy focused on developing fruits.

When to Top Tomato Plants

The ideal time to plan for topping tomato plants is around 4-6 weeks before your first anticipated frost. This leaves enough time in the growing season for the last of your fruits to ripen (hopefully).

For growers in many US hardiness zones, September is the month to do this. It may be early in the month in zones 5, 6, and 7, and more towards the middle for zones 8 and 9. Check your weather predictions and make sure to top plants at least four weeks before the first frost.

Also, I have had years when tomato plants have been slow, and the fruits simply didn’t ripen as quickly as I’d hoped. When this has happened, I have topped plants a bit earlier to revive my tired tomato plants and focus the energy they do have on giving me a decent harvest of tomatoes.

How to Top Tomato Plants

Topping tomato plants is super quick and easy. It is better to use a pair of clean, sharp pruning tools – pruning shears (you can get lightweight, sharp pruners at Burpee), pruning snips, or garden scissors – rather than snapping or tearing the stem by hand, which risks damaging any trusses further down the plant.

Take your pruners and cut the growing tip a couple of leaves above a fruit truss. A healthy plant should develop between four and six fruit trusses in a season. If you grow tomatoes in colder areas with a shorter season, it is sensible to expect fewer trusses, around three or four.

Topping plants is only necessary with indeterminate plants, not with determinate (bush) tomatoes. Vining tomatoes continue to grow and produce flowers and fruits over the season. Bush tomatoes grow to a fixed size and fruit over one period – they don’t need pruning over their lifespan.

What to Shop

Topping plants always helps tomatoes ripen on the vine. However, there may always be some tomatoes for which there isn’t time to redden up before the season ends. If the tomato has started showing a faint blush of pink or red, you can ripen it indoors. Place any fruits like this in a paper bag along with a ripe banana. The banana produces ethylene and helps the tomato turn red.

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Summer may be winding down, but a productive vegetable garden keeps on providing. As you create gaps in beds, take advantage of this space and think of hardy vegetables to plant in September that can provide harvests throughout winter.

Cool-season crops like spinach, kale, Asian greens, collard greens, and mustards can mature quickly in early fall and are tolerant enough to handle the early frosts. These hardy crops can remain in the vegetable garden into winter and provide rich pickings late in the year.

Your climate makes a difference, as gardeners in US hardiness zones 7+ can keep sowing later than those in colder zones. For me, September has always been an opportune window to fill gaps in the garden, and I often add organic chicken manure pellets (available at Walmart) to the soil before planting to add a vital source of nutrients. Here are my picks of seven hardy vegetables to plant in September that you can pick well into winter and beyond.

1. Spinach

Spinach is a perfect crop for planting in early fall, as it’s a fast-growing cool-season vegetable that prefers lower temperatures rather than hot summers.

Warm temperatures usually cause spinach to bolt, while it thrives in milder 60–70°F days of September. Spinach is a fast-growing vegetable that can fill gaps created by summer harvests, or you can grow spinach in pots if you have any going free.

The easiest way to start growing spinach this month is to buy young plants. A slightly longer, but very satisfying route, is to sow the seeds directly outdoors into their growing position. Sow the seeds thinly into inch-long drills and keep them moist for good germination.

As the seedlings appear, thin them to 6-10 inches apart, and you can start to harvest spinach once the leaves are large enough to use. This could be 30-40 days for baby leaves, or a few weeks longer if you want mature ones.

Get live Okinawa spinach plants at Amazon

Get spinach seeds at Walmart

Get spinach seeds at Burpee

2. Kale

Kale is a very underrated crop, in my opinion. I have grown kale in kitchen gardens I worked in and on my home plots for many years, as it is a perfect winter crop that tolerates cold and can be harvested as a cut-and-come-again vegetable for many months.

The leaves are rich in nutrients and fiber and taste even sweeter in winter after a few frosts, which convert the starches into sugars. Once the temperature drops, cover them with frost cloth (you can get row covers at Walmart) to protect the plants from frost, and you can keep harvesting kale well into winter.

In September, gardeners can usually source young plants at garden centers or online to plant kale in the ground or pots. Or you can sow seeds directly into the growing site, sowing them a half-inch deep and a few inches apart, spacing them a foot apart as they develop.

I have grown red and green curly kale and red Russian kale, but always come back to cavolo nero (or lacinato kale, dinosaur kale, or Tuscan kale) as my favorite. You can get two live dinosaur kale plants at Amazon to add to your veg garden this month, or get curly-leaved Prizm kale plants and seeds at Burpee.

3. Collard Greens

Collard greens are hugely popular in Southern cooking. If you want to harvest these super-nutritious leaves for stews, stir-fries, soups, or sautéed dishes this winter, you can start growing collard greens this month. As a fast-growing crop, you can potentially begin harvesting baby leaves within 30 days.

You can plant young plants in September. For example, these ready-to-plant collard seedlings on Amazon can go straight into a sunny spot and be spaced 18-24 inches apart. Or you can get seeds (like these Top Chop collard greens seeds at Burpee) and sow them directly into the soil a half-inch deep in rows three feet apart.

Collard greens are hardy down to 15°F and can overwinter with ease in milder climates. A light frost sweetens their flavor, making them even more delectable for winter dishes.

I grew these in one kitchen garden and was picking the leaves throughout December and January for chefs. We covered the plants with a hoop tunnel (you can get strong greenhouse hoops at Amazon) and frost cloth to protect them from extreme temperatures and winter damage.

4. Corn Salad

Corn salad, which is also known as lamb's lettuce and mache, is a marvel of a winter crop. The small-leaved, low-growing plant may not look much, but it is incredibly winter hardy and can provide lots of leaves for salads throughout the winter.

If you want a vegetable to harvest in December to add a nutty flavor to winter salads, grow corn salad as it’ll reliably crop. I even picked it through a layer of snow in one kitchen garden I worked in.

Sowing corn salad seeds in late summer and early fall means you will have invaluable harvests throughout winter, potentially even through to mid-spring. If you cover plants with row covers or cloches (get PVC garden cloches at The Home Depot) through the harshest winter weather, you’ll guarantee the best leaves to pick.

Sow corn salad seeds in shallow drills spaced four inches apart and cover them lightly with soil. You can get Dutch broad-leaved corn salad seeds at True Leaf Market to plant in September.

Keep the soil moist by using a watering can with a fine rose attached (this steel watering can at Wayfair comes with a removable rose for fine watering) to avoid disturbing the seeds, and thin seedlings to 4-6 inches apart. You can start harvesting small leaves as a cut-and-come-again crop within 4-6 weeks.

5. Winter Radish

There is still time to start growing radishes in September. But I am not talking about the typical summer salad radishes. September is a window for sowing their winter cousins, such as Black Spanish radishes or daikon radishes (also known as mooli).

Winter radishes are larger and slower-growing than their speedy summer counterparts. They are also very hardy and can be left in the ground to develop right up until the soil freezes. Even then, winter radishes can be lifted and stored for many months to eat raw, add to soups or stir-fries, or roast.

I annually sow Black Spanish Round radish seeds (available at True Leaf Market) in September. I plant this radish because it is reliable and easy to grow, plus it looks good with black skin and white flesh. Sow the seeds an inch deep in rows 12 inches apart, then thin the seedlings to six inches apart.

You should be able to start harvesting radishes in 8-10 weeks from sowing.

6. Mustard Greens

Mustard greens tick all the right boxes if you want a cool-season crop to add some peppery flavors to winter dishes.

I have grown Golden Frills, Red Giant and Southern Giant, among others, over the years, for bountiful harvests of leaves that come in bright colors and flavors from mild to fiery. The leaves can be eaten raw or cooked and go from sowing to harvesting in around four weeks.

You can sow the seeds of a wide variety of mustard greens directly into the soil in early fall. They will germinate quickly in the warm, moist September soil and require little attention, aside from watering during dry spells in early fall. Regular watering is important, as hot, dry weather often makes the leaves turn bitter and tough.

Sow the seeds a half-inch deep in rows 12 inches apart. Check the seed packet for the exact spacing required for full-grown plants, which can vary depending on the plant and the desired leaves, from 3-4 inches for baby leaves to 12 inches for larger plants.

Get Southern Giant Curled mustard seeds at True Leaf Market

Get Red Giant mustard seeds at Amazon

7. Asian Greens

Another often-overlooked range of hardy vegetables to plant in September is Asian greens. These low-maintenance cool-season crops include mizuna, komatsuna, pak choi, and tatsoi, and the leaves can be added raw to salads or cooked in many Asian dishes.

Asian greens don’t take up much space in the vegetable garden and can easily fill gaps you have created by harvesting summer crops. They can be harvested as cut-and-come-again crops by removing a few of the largest outer leaves at a time with a pair of pruning snips (like these at Amazon), or cut the entire head and the plant should resprout. It can take just 4-6 weeks from sowing to harvesting.

Sow the seeds into a sunny or partially shaded spot in the vegetable garden, or directly into raised beds or containers. Plant the seeds an inch deep and two inches apart – for multiple rows, space each 12 inches apart. Keep the plants well watered, and watch out for slugs who may try to nibble your precious seedlings.

Get Mizuna seeds at Burpee

Get Komatsuna seeds at True Leaf Market

Get White Pak Choi seeds at Burpee

Get Black Knight Tatsoi seeds at Amazon

Knowing the right timings for sowing and planting is vital for growing vegetables successfully. With a bit of planning, gardeners can plant crops year-round. To inspire you, our guide to when to plant vegetables shows what you can sow and grow each month, from January to December.

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With the temperatures beginning to drop and the fall colors deepening, September is a great month to take stock of your garden. From what thrived to what struggled, now is an ideal time to note any gaps and plant up, ready for next year.

Furthermore, at this time of year, the soil is workable and still warm, making digging easier and encouraging plants to get their roots down before winter sets in.

From spring bulbs to perennials and shrubs, I share some of my tried-and-tested favorites from my nearly 20-year horticultural career to help you decide what to plant in September for color and interest next year. But before you start planting, check your gardening tools and, if necessary, consider investing in a border spade (available on Amazon) to help you prepare your borders.

What to Plant in September

With growth slowing and the time to start planting for the fall and next year beginning, it is no wonder that gardeners often think of September as the start of the gardening calendar.

Additionally, with the heat waves almost all behind us, fall rain the norm, and soil still invitingly warm, September is a perfect month for planting almost everything except tender species.

1. Daffodil

One of the most dependable spring-flowering bulbs, daffodils (Narcissus) certainly deserve their popularity. Thriving in borders, containers and even lawns, daffodils are always a welcome sight come early spring. Available with yellow or white petals, daffodils range in size and can also be scented.

Daffodils can be planted as late as November or December, but should ideally be planted from September to October to allow root systems to develop before winter dormancy.

One of the earliest-flowering varieties to grow and herald spring, Dutch Master, available to purchase from Walmart, develops large golden-yellow blooms on stems 16-18 inches tall from March to April.

Wear gloves when handling toxic daffodil bulbs. You can purchase cowhide leather gardening gloves from Amazon.

2. Crocus

Adored for their colorful, yet delicate flowers, spring-flowering crocuses are a welcome sign that winter is coming to an end. They can be planted in containers, at the front of a border, or in a lawn where they can naturalize.

Typically flowering from February to March, spring-flowering crocuses are planted from September to October and are an important early source of nectar for pollinators. Consisting of two main types, you can choose between large-flowering, vibrantly colored Dutch crocuses and smaller pastel-hued species crocuses.

Cold-hardy down to USDA Hardiness Zone 4, Tricolor Crocus Sieberi, available from Burpee, with its violet, white, and yellow flowers, brings color to a garden when little else does.

3. Hardy Geranium

Hardy geraniums, or cranesbills, can be planted at any time of year, just as long as the ground is not frozen. However, September is an ideal time to plant them, as the warm soil helps them establish before the colder months.

Whether purchased or as a free clump from a divided plant, hardy geraniums are a great investment as they can flower for months on end and, as perennials, reliably return every year.

Suitable for growing in USDA zones 5-8 and hugely popular for its long flowering season and violet-blue flowers with white eyes, hardy geranium ‘Rozanne’ is available to purchase from Nature Hills.

4. Hellebore

Another spring-flowering plant that you can plant in September is the perennial hellebore. Blooming during some of the darkest months of the year, hellebores generally prefer partial shade and are perfect for brightening up a dull corner.

With a wide range of hellebore varieties to choose from, you can decide between cream, lime-green, pink and even sumptuous dark purple flowers.

As well as being a great time to plant hellebores, September is also an ideal month to lift and divide any you may already have.

Using the right gardening tool for the job can mean the difference between a pleasant task and a laborious one. A comfortable trowel is an essential tool for small digging jobs. Designed with an ergonomic handle to reduce fatigue, you can purchase the Fiskars ergo flower bed trowel from Walmart.

5. Bay Laurel

With cooler weather and fall rains to come, September is an ideal time to plant shrubs and trees.

Bay laurel, or Laurus nobilis, is a commonly grown herb native to the Mediterranean. An evergreen shrub or tree, bay can grow 40 feet tall if left to its own devices, but is also one of the best trees to grow in a container.

Water well on planting and until established, but avoid saturating the soil, especially over winter. Tolerating USDA zone 8 and above when grown in the ground, bay trees are available to purchase from Nature Hills.

To protect against low temperatures and insulate the roots, add a layer of mulch 2-3 inches deep in the fall. You can use garden compost as mulch or purchase Timberline natural cedar mulch blend, available from Walmart.

6. Camellia

Spring-flowering camellias (Camellia japonica, Camellia × williamsii) are a great choice for adding color and interest over the colder months.

Available with white, pink, red, or yellow flowers, which contrast strongly with their glossy green foliage, camellias are easy to grow when planted in acidic soil and irrigated with rainwater.

Best planted directly in the ground or in a container in the fall to allow their roots to establish, camellias generally grow best in USDA Hardiness Zones 7 through 9 and in partial or dappled shade.

For classical white blooms with a golden centre, Camellia japonica 'Victory White' is available to purchase from Garden Goods Direct.

7. Corn Salad

With the summer coming to an end, there is still time to plant some vegetables in September.

As a hardy, cool-weather crop, lamb’s lettuce or corn salad (Valerianella locusta) thrives through fall, winter, and spring.

Forming rosettes of low-growing green leaves, with a nutty flavor, corn salad is ideal for sowing in September and can be harvested in as little as six weeks.

It is hardy enough to withstand winter frosts and even snow cover, meaning that you can look forward to picking it early next year.

If you do not have a vegetable patch, you can still grow corn salad in a container or a raised bed. You can purchase galvanized steel raised beds from Amazon.

8. Fava Bean

Growing well both directly in the ground and in containers, fava beans (Vicia faba) are ideal for sowing in the fall or spring.

However, when little else is growing, why not sow some fava beans from late September to October for a harvest of nutty-tasting beans next May?

Hardy and easy to grow, fava bean 'Aquadulce', available from True Leaf Market, tolerates light frosts and develops attractive purple-black and white flowers that later turn into pods.

Fall can be a busy time for gardeners, with gardening checklists to get through before the temperatures plummet. From bulb planting to mulching and leaf collecting, there is lots to do, but these fall gardening tools will help make these tasks feel less like a chore and maybe even enjoyable.

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I've grown strawberries for the first time this year and it's now one of the most rewarding plants in my garden. Sweet homegrown harvests have been a joy through summer, but my plant is now starting to slow down and it's left me wondering to do with strawberry plants after fruiting.

If you're also new to growing strawberries, it's important to give your plant a bit of TLC after it's finished producing its red juicy berries. Some light pruning tidies it up, while potting up runners will give you brand new plants and guarantee great harvests for years to come.

Essentially, after fruiting, late-summer strawberry care is all about rejuvenating your plant and getting it ready for fall. Here's exactly what to do – you'll want some sharp gardening snips to hand (I like these Fiskars ones from Amazon).

1. Identify It's Finished Fruiting

Strawberries typically product fruit through summer, stopping in fall. There are a few signs you can look for to identify it's time to give them post-fruiting care.

It will be quite obvious as the plant won't put out anymore of its white or pink flowers that turn into berries once pollinated. But, this isn't the only sign.

New growth will predominantly go to runners (i.e. the long stems coming off the plant, which eventually produce new plants). Plus, older foliage will be looking tired, yellow and brown.

If your strawberries have experienced disease, excessive pest damage, or look worse for wear, it might be time to pick up some new plants. You can find strawberry starter plants at Walmart.

2. Tidy Up the Plant

After fruiting, the first thing you should do is prune your strawberry plant to tidy it up and rejuvenate it after a tiring, productive summer. Though, you should be wary not to fully cut your strawberry plants back.

'After the plants have finished fruiting, they benefit from a tidy. Work through the plants and remove any dead, diseased, or dying foliage with sharp pruning snips,' advises Drew Swainston, Gardens Content Editor at Homes & Gardens.

'Removing old, yellow or brown growth not only tidies up the patch but it gives new leaves the chance to come through impeded and keeps the strawberry plant healthy over winter,' he explains.

As Drew notes, it's important to use sharp pruning tools for this. This hori hori knife from Amazon is a good choice, offering multipurpose use around the yard.

When removing foliage, cut two inches above the plant's crown, as this is where new growth will emerge.

3. Pot Up Runners

Although strawberry plants are perennial, Drew notes, 'Strawberry plants peak in years two and three, then the yield drops.' For this reason, you should use this year's runners to propagate your strawberry plant.

'During summer, the plants create lots of new runners. After fruiting, you should pot up some of these runners to create a new generation of plants,' Drew says.

The runners are the long, horizontal stems that grow out of the main plant. They produce plantlets that root into soil.

'Potting up runners each year helps you have a succession of plants at their peak productivity each season. You can either cut free runners and pot them up, or keep the runner connected to the mother plant and pin it into a pot of soil. Once the runner roots, then cut it from the plant,' Drew advises.

You'll want to use a pot of nutrient-rich, well-draining compost and pin the plantlet in place with a U-shaped garden staple (like these from Walmart). Keep the compost consistently watered and in a bright spot to encourage rooting, before using garden snips to cut off the stem once rooted.

If your strawberry plant has produced excess runners you don't want, you can also remove them now to redirect energy to the parent plant and encourage a greater yield next year.

What to Shop

FAQs

Do Strawberries Need Winter Protection?

Yes, strawberry plants benefit from winter protection in the coldest climes (USDA zone 7 and below). You can winterize strawberry plants before frost by mulching and bringing potted plants indoors to overwinter.

If you want to grow bigger strawberries next year, don't forget to fertilize your strawberry plants. You can use a high-potash feed like a tomato fertilizer, or use a specific strawberry plant fertilizer (which you can find on Amazon).

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Pumpkins are well on their way in August. The fruits are developing and are around 6-8 weeks away from being ready for picking. At this time of year, some key tasks help keep plants healthy and ensure pumpkins mature as well as possible.

Any gardener growing pumpkins will undoubtedly notice plants growing quickly in late summer. It makes watering and regular feeding crucial this month. For quality pumpkins to pick, it also pays to focus the plant’s energy and raise the fruit to stop it from rotting – a devastating sight for any pumpkin grower.

The focus this month is encouraging the healthy development of what you’ve got, and a liquid pumpkin food like this one on Amazon is a key tool for helping fruits develop and ripen. What you do not want to do is encourage a mass of vines and new fruits. For a great end to the season, these five tasks ensure your pumpkins swell and are ready to pick before the frosts.

1. Water Deeply in Hot Weather

There is no denying that pumpkins need a lot of moisture. Straight from planting pumpkins, they need around an inch of water a week to get off to a good start. Once the fruits start developing, that need doubles. Combine that thirst with the regular loss of moisture during a hot summer – it means you need to water plants in hot weather very often indeed.

The issue is that pumpkins have shallow roots. If you let the soil dry out and the plants get stressed, it affects the fruits, and you get small or misshapen pumpkins – which is not ideal – and also increases the risk of powdery mildew (more about that later).

To water pumpkins in hot weather, over the years I have started planting a pot in the soil next to the plant. The nifty trick is that you fill that pot with water and it sinks directly to the root zone where the plant needs it. This technique also ensures you are watering at soil level, not soaking the foliage, which is another factor often causing plants to succumb to powdery mildew.

Whether you use that method or not, the take-home point here is that pumpkins do best with regular deep watering that sees the moisture soak down into the soil, and not a light sprinkle from overhead.

If you can get out in the morning, it is the best time to water your garden, as it gives plants hours to rehydrate before the warmest part of the day and also allows the foliage to dry if some moisture is splashed onto the leaves.

Check the moisture levels a few inches under the surface (a soil moisture meter, available at Amazon, is a valuable resource for this) and water the plants deeply when it feels dry. It can mean daily watering to keep the soil moist in summer, especially if you are growing pumpkins in pots.

2. Feed Regularly

As well as being thirsty, pumpkins are hungry feeders. It pays to fertilize them regularly throughout the season, especially if you have aspirations of growing a giant pumpkin or your plants are in containers.

At this final stage of the campaign, there are still opportunities to fertilize pumpkins with a high-phosphorus and potassium feed to keep the fruit developing at pace. Those two nutrients help the fruits to swell in size and build strong walls.

Use a liquid fertilizer, such as this fruit and bloom booster at Walmart, and feed plants every week or two. A tomato feed makes a good alternative fertilizer, as do comfrey fertilizer or nettle teas.

Avoid high-nitrogen fertilizers that encourage soft growth and prevent the pumpkin skin from curing properly.

There may be time for another couple of feeds to give plants a quick dose of nutrients for the last stretch. But you should stop giving pumpkins any extra fertilizer around four weeks before picking the fruits.

3. Remove Excess Fruits

As late summer is the time to focus on what you’ve got, it is beneficial to assess your plants and pick a select number of fruits to concentrate on.

While it may look great to have sprawling vines and lots of pumpkins all over the patch, the plant is unlikely to have the time and resources to ripen all of them. Once your plant has a good number of healthy fruits developing, it is better to prune the pumpkin vines and remove smaller fruits.

If you want to grow a show-stopping large pumpkin, this can go as far as leaving just one fruit per vine. For any growers not harboring aspirations of monster pumpkins, removing smaller fruits and focusing the energy on a selected 2-3 fruits per vine guarantees these chosen ones will still develop to an impressive size and ripen in time.

It also helps to cut off the tip of the vine around 2-3 feet past the last pumpkin (use a pair of clean, sharp pruning tools like these bypass pruning shears at Burpee), which focuses the plant’s energy into the fruits rather than growing more stem and foliage.

4. Raise Good Pumpkins

Once you’ve selected the best pumpkins to keep, do whatever you can to protect them. You don’t want to spend all this time growing them, only for them not to come to fruition (pun intended).

It is good practice to raise the fruits off the soil to stop the pumpkins from rotting. This can be done by placing the chosen pumpkins on tiles, bricks, or wooden boards.

Raising them off the soil reduces the risk of the fruits decaying by sitting on damp ground for long periods of time. It also lifts them away from ground-level pests that can nibble on the fruits.

Some growers also like to gently turn their pumpkins over the summer months to get good sun exposure across the entire fruit. But this has risks of damaging the stem as you move the fruit – so it needs to be done extremely carefully.

To ensure your pumpkins get the maximum amount of sun to ripen, an easier and less risky task is to snip off any leaves that may be blocking sunlight from getting to the fruits.

5. Cut Off Diseased Leaves

I mentioned powdery mildew a couple of times earlier. It routinely affects the crop, causing pumpkin leaves to turn white. The discoloration is due to the foliage being covered in white, powdery mold. Powdery mildew affects photosynthesis and can spread quickly across the plant.

You’ll first see the distinguishable white leaves, then pumpkin leaves turning yellow as they die back. If enough of the plant is infected, it can affect the ripening of the fruits.

Powdery mildew is commonly caused by overhead watering, but the spores do travel far and wide. They prosper in hot, humid weather conditions, and often target plants stressed by a lack of moisture. Keep your plants well-hydrated in summer, and be careful to water the soil rather than the leaves.

If you see the signs of powdery mildew, remove any infected leaves so the mold doesn’t spread across the plant. When your plants are battling a serious infection, you can get a fungicide spray like this at Walmart to apply to the plants. Just make sure any product is suitable for edible plants, as this one is.

Alternatively, there are homemade sprays you can use to battle powdery mildew. That includes a milk spray to stop powdery mildew, made by mixing one part milk to nine parts water in a spray bottle (get a sprayer at Amazon) and applying it onto affected plants.

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An important part of growing the crop is knowing when to pick a pumpkin off the vine. There are a few telltale signs that a pumpkin is ready to harvest. They include the fruit being bright orange in color, the skin being firm, the stem that attaches it to the vine being dry, and the pumpkin having a hollow sound when tapped.

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Blueberries are an all-round super crop. Not only are they super-easy to grow, but they are also a tasty superfood, packed with vitamins and antioxidants. August is a key time in the blueberry season, and a few important jobs will keep your plants healthy and preserve your harvests.

When you grow blueberries, August is prime picking season, so get out and harvest regularly, being sure to place your fruits carefully into a basket or this garden hod from Burpee. This way, you get the fruit at its best and avoid losing many of your berries to birds. If birds are an issue, as they often are, it is wise to net the plants this month to protect your harvest.

Another important thing this month is watering; you need to water plants during hot spells so they don’t dry out. And there are preferable ways to go about it. Here we look at what to do with a blueberry bush in August, plus a few tasks not to do.

Harvest Blueberries Often

This is the fun part – picking. I have a happy blueberry bush in a large container in my garden. It has taken a few years to get to this stage, but it is covered in fruit at the moment. When you have a bush like this, regular harvesting is crucial.

The blueberry harvesting season will vary depending on your climate and the type of plant. But, in general, July to September are the prime picking months. During this time, check every few days, as blueberries across the bush will ripen at different times. If you don’t get to the fruit quickly, a bird will likely come and steal it.

To test if a blueberry is ripe, check the color. It should be completely purple-blue. If any pink or red blush remains near the stem, it is not ready. A ripe blueberry should easily detach from the bush; if you feel resistance, leave the fruit for another few days.

You can get a berry picker like this on Amazon to comb over blueberry bushes and harvest ripe fruit with ease.

Net Fruits Against Birds

I mentioned that my blueberry bush is covered in fruit. Unfortunately, it is not only me who revels in that sight. I have seen local birds coming down and stealing fruit from the bush – sometimes brazenly in front of me. If you also have this issue, it may be time to net the plant to keep the fruit to yourself.

Nets are the easiest way to protect soft fruit in your yard from birds. You can get large fruit cages to install over your fruit bushes permanently, and these are large enough for you to access for maintenance and picking – like this crop cage at Wayfair.

However, protection doesn’t always need to be so fortress-like. You can simply install bird-proof netting over the plants once they become an issue, using material like this bird netting at Amazon.

For the best protection, I have always found it is best to use posts or hoops around the bush and put the netting over these. Otherwise, clever birds can just reach through the netting and get to the fruits if you just place it on the plant – and that kind of defeats the object.

Be sure to secure the nets to the ground with landscape staples (available at Lowe’s), bricks or stones. This prevents birds from getting under the netting and getting stuck.

Water Deeply in Dry Spells

Blueberry plants have shallow roots. To get a blueberry bush to fruit to its full potential, you need to water plants during hot, dry spells in summer. This is especially true when you grow blueberries in pots, as the soil can dry out very quickly as temperatures rise.

Established blueberries need extra watering while the berries are forming and ripening. Check plants every few days during hot spells and water the garden when the top few inches of soil feel dry. You can check the levels with your fingers or a soil moisture meter (you can get a soil moisture meter at Amazon for instant results about when to water plants).

When you water, water deeply in the morning. This ensures the roots are soaked, and the moisture isn’t lost to evaporation at the surface during the hottest parts of the day.

Topping up any mulching materials around your blueberry bushes will help to retain moisture in the soil. The best types of mulch for blueberries are acidic, such as pine bark or pine needles. You can get a bag of pine bark mulch at Lowe’s.

Where you can, water blueberries with rainwater. Natural rainwater from a rain barrel is better for blueberries than tap water, as it is naturally acidic.

Fertilize Blueberries in Pots

Anytime you grow berries in containers, they need more fertilizer than bushes growing in the ground. Early to mid-August can be a good time to fertilize blueberries in pots for a boost of nutrients to finish ripening the last of the crop.

The best fertilizers for blueberries are special ericaceous feeds. This month, use a liquid fertilizer like this TPS blueberry fertilizer on Amazon. Mix the product at the recommended rate with water and use it to feed plants.

What you don’t want to do this month is give blueberries any high-nitrogen fertilizers. Doing this would be a fertilizing mistake, because it would encourage a late flush of new foliage and stems rather than ripen the remaining fruit.

This soft, new growth runs the risk of being damaged when the temperatures drop, leaving the bush more susceptible to pests and diseases.

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Another no-no for the month is pruning a blueberry bush. You should prune in late winter or early spring, as this is the perfect time to establish a good mix of productive branches on the bush and set it up for a bumper summer crop.

If you see dead or damaged stems this month, yes, they can be cut out with clean, sharp pruning tools to keep the bush healthy. But any major trimming could see you miss out on fruit and would also encourage a late flush of new growth that can be damaged by frost.

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Consistent and focused watering is crucial for the best tomato crop. The hungry plants need lots of regular moisture; otherwise, you can end up with struggling plants and disappointing fruit. If you can direct water where it is needed most, your plants will thrive, and there are solutions available to make your watering more efficient.

Poor watering causes many issues. Your tomato plants can droop, curl leaves, or drop blooms if they get too thirsty. Inconsistent or not enough moisture also leads to splitting fruits or blossom-end rot. No one wants to see any of these when growing tomatoes. To prevent this, these tomato crater root-zone watering rings, available at Amazon, can work wonders.

The easy-to-install watering rings help water reach the roots, rather than sit on the soil, run off, or evaporate, and stop weeds from popping up. And you can use them for both watering and fertilizing tomatoes. I have grown tomatoes for many years, and I think these can be a game-changer for home gardeners. Many purchasers agree and have used these root-zone watering rings for many seasons.

How a Tomato Crater Root-Zone Watering Ring Helps You Have Strong Plants

The tomato crater root-zone watering rings are super-simple to use and can be installed in seconds. Each ring has a 12-inch diameter and is made of two interlocking pieces.

You can snap them together in place when you plant tomatoes. However, due to the design, there is no reason you can’t easily install them at a later date – perfect if you don’t have them when transplanting tomato seedlings.

They are also strong and UV-resistant for use season after season. And they are suitable for more than just tomatoes. The root-zone watering rings can also be used on other hungry crops, such as peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, and zucchini.

The main selling point of the tomato crater root-zone watering rings is that watering is more efficient. You can use less water, but what you do use is directed exactly where the plant needs it most. You essentially get more from less.

Ensuring your tomato plants receive plenty of regular moisture during the growing season is essential. When plants become too thirsty, they often fail to reach their peak, resulting in a disappointing tomato harvest. Problems like poor fruit production, splitting tomatoes, or blossom-end rot are typically down to inconsistent watering habits.

The tomato crater root-zone watering rings sit on the surface around the plants. You water plants by filling the ring, and that water is delivered efficiently directly to the roots through the slots in the base. The water doesn’t run off away from the plants, sit on the soil and never reach the roots, or quickly evaporate away from the top inches of the soil.

The water is directed to the root zone, and the ring keeps it locked in. You need to water less to get the same benefits. The ring also ensures liquid fertilizer (like this Espoma liquid tomato plant food at Walmart) is efficiently delivered and absorbed by the roots. Your tomato plants will be stronger and can grow more tomatoes.

Your location or setup doesn’t restrict their use. You can use the tomato crater root-zone watering rings wherever your plants are. They can be used for plants both indoors and outdoors. You can also use them if you grow tomatoes in pots or raised beds.

What Shoppers Say About It

Shoppers praise the tomato crater root-zone watering rings for being solid and long-lasting. Indeed, several reviewers have had them for many seasons. This includes one who claims to have had them for a decade and added more to their collection over the years, along with other shoppers who admit to repurchasing extra as they love the results.

‘I've used these for years. Every year I buy more,’ says one positive reviewer. ‘I use them not just for tomatoes, but also for peppers and eggplant.’

They add: ‘When I think my plants need a boost, I use Miracle-Gro, and these craters target the solution at the roots so it slowly drains into the soil. Now when I water or feed, I don't have to worry about washing the soil away from the roots.’

Another happy shopper claims that the product ‘solves almost all’ of their tomato problems, and the watering rings are ‘worth it’. They urge others: ‘Don't grow tomato plants without one of these! Works great!’

The rings are designed to help with watering, and one purchaser admits how they have made a difference to their tomato experience – with positive results.

‘I wanted to try these out since I’m not very diligent at keeping up with the weeding and watering,’ they say. ‘This helps so much that I don’t have to be so attentive. Also, because of the trickle watering system, I think my three tomato plants that have this around them seem healthier and are growing more quickly than the ones I don’t yet have one for.’

Some reviews claim they would have preferred the rings to be deeper and hold more water. Another shopper admits that the watering rings don’t work with his setup. They use drip irrigation and granular fertilizers, and admit they ‘would make a difference’ if he hand-watered plants and used water-soluble fertilizers.

It is worth considering whether your methods are suitable for the tomato crater root-zone watering rings. If you prefer to use granular feeds (like this tomato and vegetable granular plant food at Burpee) through the summer and don’t want to water plants manually, they may not prove practical.

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Late summer is a pivotal time for tomato plants. They will have expended lots of energy to grow tall stems and develop early flowers and fruits – it takes a toll on them.

If you need to revive tired tomato plants in late summer, it is crucial to continue watering deeply and fertilizing them with tomato feed or homemade tomato fertilizer every week or two. You also need to pick ripe tomatoes regularly, as leaving them on the plant diverts energy from the development of younger fruits.

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Early August is often a time when tomato hornworms are at their worst. These destructive pests can decimate tomato plants as they munch through foliage, even defoliating them in extreme cases. Once you spot adult hornworms or their hungry larvae on your plants, act fast to save your tomato crop.

Tomato hornworms may be hard to spot. Their pale green bodies blend in with the leaves but are distinguishable thanks to their distinctive markings and horn. When growing tomatoes, if you see lots of holes or damage to leaves or fruits, the quickest tactic is to handpick the pests or use organic sprays, particularly Bacillus thuringiensis (available at Amazon).

Tomato hornworms are capable of decimating plants and wrecking crops. To help you preserve your harvest of tomatoes, I spoke to two experts about the signs to look for and the best ways to combat tomato hornworms. The pests don’t just target tomatoes either; they also affect other crops in the nightshade family, so heed this advice if you are also growing eggplants, peppers, potatoes, and tomatillos.

What Are Tomato Hornworms?

Tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) are the larvae of the five-spotted hawk moth. They are large caterpillars found in vegetable gardens, measuring 4-5 inches long, and have pale green bodies.

Unfortunately, that color helps them blend in with the tomato foliage, but there are a couple of distinctive markings to look for. Tomato hornworms have white V-shaped chevrons along each side, black spots, and a distinctive black horn on the rear of their body.

The life cycle of a tomato hornworm is quick. This means gardeners can face two generations of these tomato pests each growing season.

There is one in early summer, after the adult moths emerge in spring and lay oval, light-green eggs on the underside of leaves. These hatch within a week and feed ferociously as they quickly develop into caterpillars.

After 3-4 weeks of feeding, mature caterpillars then burrow into the soil to enter the pupae stage, emerging as moths and starting the cycle again. This turns into a second generation, which strikes in late July and August and causes the most damage.

The Signs of Tomato Hornworm Damage

Tomato hornworms can cause severe damage in a short time. As Emily Jones, tomato expert and founder of Tomato Mentor, warns: ‘These large green caterpillars can devour tomato leaves and fruit, causing extensive damage.’

The pests strip leaves, chew stems, and nibble on tomatoes. Tomato plants are left stressed, and damaged leaves limit their ability to photosynthesize. This affects vigor and the ability to produce and ripen fruits.

While the caterpillars themselves may be difficult to spot, the signs that they are on your tomato plants are much easier to identify. Susan Mulvihill, author of The Vegetable Garden Pest Handbook, highlights three key things to keep your eyes peeled for:

• The leaves will show signs of chewing damage. Branches may be stripped to the point of being defoliated.
• You’ll notice fruits with large bites out of them.
• The hornworms blend in with their surroundings, so look below the damage for dark frass (the droppings produced by the larvae)

Regularly checking plants for signs of infestation means you can act quickly if anything is spotted. Tomato hornworms start feeding at the top of the plant, and the frass will be found underneath.

It may be tricky to spot these pests that destroy plants due to their camouflage, but Susan recommends: ‘If you go out to your garden at night with a UV flashlight, it’s easier to spot the caterpillars.’

How to Get Rid of Tomato Hornworms

There are a few tools at your disposal to help fight against tomato hornworms. Emily Jones recommends: ‘For larger pests – such as hornworms, caterpillars and snails – a simple method to deal with them is handpicking them and removing them from the garden.’

Handpicking is an effective but time-consuming method to remove adult hornworms. It is most effective in small gardens and a small number of tomato plants. Scour plants to pick off the tomato hornworms and place them in a container filled with soapy water.

There are products you can spray that can help to control the pest. Susan Mulvihill highlights one particular organic pesticide that can be successful. ‘Apply Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) to the foliage,’ she says. ‘Bt has beneficial bacteria that can target the caterpillar stage of insects.’

Bt is a quick and effective way to combat young caterpillars, as they need to eat sprayed leaves for it to be effective. Neem oil (get neem oil for plants at Walmart) and insecticidal soap (get ready-to-use insecticidal soap at Amazon) can also be effective against young caterpillars.

For a longer-term approach to preventing tomato hornworm issues, gardeners can try companion planting.

Companion planting tomatoes attracts predatory insects like lacewings and ladybugs that will feed on the eggs and young caterpillars. Plants such as marigolds, geraniums, nasturtiums (get double dwarf jewel mix nasturtium seeds at Burpee), and herbs like dill (you can get mammoth dill seeds at True Leaf Market) and fennel are great options for attracting ladybugs and lacewings.

Tomato hornworms are targeted by parasitic wasps that lay their eggs in the caterpillar and feed on it as they hatch. It is an excellent form of natural pest control. You can purchase parasitic wasps to release or attract them with companion planting of flowers and herbs.

As adult moths emerge in spring after spending winter in the soil, tilling the soil at the start of the year before planting tomatoes and at the end of the season can eradicate pupae overwintering in the ground and stop them from emerging as moths to start the life cycle of a tomato hornworm.

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FAQs

Can Tomato Hornworms Bite?

Tomato hornworms do not bite or sting with the little horn on their posterior, and the pests are harmless to humans.

As well as pests like tomato hornworms and others, there are also diseases, such as blight, powdery mildew, and blossom-end rot, that may strike.

Thankfully, ensuring good air circulation, correct watering, and properly fertilizing tomatoes can help avoid many of these troublesome tomato diseases.

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Lots of glorious fruits are ready for harvesting in August. Plums, cherries, apricots, peaches, and more are ripe for picking. It is also time to prune these fruit trees to keep them healthy and productive for next year.

Stone fruits are pruned in summer rather than winter to avoid fungal and bacterial diseases that can ravage them. August is a prime time to prune these fruit trees after harvesting the fruits. This month is also when you need to give any trained fruits in your garden their summer prune.

Knowing when to prune fruit trees ensures they stay strong and give you great yields year after year. It is also vital to use sharp, clean pruning tools for any work; this four-piece pruning set at Walmart includes pruning shears, loppers, and a pruning saw for fruit tree trimming. Here, we look at some of the best fruit trees to prune in August, along with professional trimming tips to help your trees thrive.

1. Cherry

Understanding when and how to prune a cherry tree keeps it physically fit. Many fruit trees are pruned in winter, but both sweet and sour cherry trees are pruned after harvesting. This is to prevent silver leaf and canker.

The troublesome fungi are more prevalent in fall and winter and get into the wood through wounds. Trimming cherries (and other stone fruits) in summer ensures fewer spores are around and the pruning wounds seal quickly.

When you grow a cherry tree, regular pruning helps maintain a compact shape and a good balance of fruiting wood and younger branches. Always start by removing dead, diseased, and damaged branches, as well as crossing stems or shoots growing inwards.

Sweet cherries fruit on older wood, so prune out some of the oldest branches (you may need a pruning saw, like this one at Amazon, for larger wood) and shorten any new shoots.

Sour cherries fruit on the previous year’s growth. Here, it is beneficial to cut back shoots to stimulate new growth and prevent fruit appearing at the end of long branches.

2. Apricot

Established trees should be pruned in summer after you harvest the apricots. It can make August an ideal time in many regions. As apricots are highly susceptible to silver leaf and canker, summer pruning prevents disease and encourages a good crop next year.

Apricots fruit and flower best on one- to three-year-old wood. When you grow an apricot tree, a summer prune gives it good time to produce new wood to carry buds for next year.

When pruning an apricot tree, start by removing dead, diseased, and damaged wood with pruning shears or loppers. Then remove unproductive branches over four years old to have a productive mix of one-, two, and three-year-old wood.

Pruning out any congested areas or branches growing towards the center of the tree helps to open the canopy and improve light and air circulation – key factors for good fruit. A set of extendable loppers (like these at The Home Depot) can help you get into trickier spots higher in the canopy.

But don’t get carried away; it would be a tree pruning mistake to remove more than 25% of the branches in one go.

3. Peach

After you harvest peaches each summer, there is a window for pruning a peach tree to keep it healthy and productive. Peaches (and nectarines) fruit on the previous season’s wood. It makes replacement pruning in summer valuable to get a supply of new wood to replace old fruited branches.

A summer prune when you grow and care for a peach helps control the size and shape of the tree. It also encourages the peach tree to flower and fruit lower down, rather than just high up in the canopy – which is what happens if they aren’t regularly pruned.

Focus on removing dead, diseased, or damaged branches, any crossing or inward-facing stems, and vertical water shoots. A sharp pair of pruning shears, like these Felco F2 pruners at Amazon, are ideal for smaller stems and water shoots.

Also look to open up congested growth in the center of the canopy to boost air circulation and light penetration. Light needs to reach lower branches to ripen the fruit, and a lack of airflow puts the tree at risk of fungal disease.

4. Plum

As with others on this list, summer is recommended for pruning established plum trees to reduce the risk of silver leaf or bacterial canker infection.

It is better to prune plum trees lightly each year, rather than cutting heavily. This keeps them healthy and productive season after season. If you want a plum tree to fruit well, it can usually be done with a few selective pruning cuts each summer.

Start by removing dead, diseased, or damaged wood. Then look at pruning out branches that didn’t fruit this year and ones growing inward or crossing. Removing those and thinning branches in dense areas to open up a congested canopy is often enough each summer.

However, if you need to control the tree's size, the remaining branches can be reduced by up to 20 per cent. Aim to create an open, goblet shape.

Also remove any suckers growing from the base of the tree to prevent them diverting energy away from the main trunk. Use a pair of pruning shears or loppers, like these PowerGear bypass loppers at Walmart.

5. Trained Fruit

Trained fruit trees, such as espaliers, fans, or cordons, need a summer prune to cut back growth, help the fruits to ripen, and encourage the development of future buds. If you grow espalier apple or pear trees or fan-trained fruit trees, put trimming on your summer gardening checklist.

Pome fruits (apples and pears) simply need any side shoots growing from the main arms to be cut back to three or four leaves. This lets in light and encourages fruiting spurs for future years. Trim further shoots coming off the side shoots back to one leaf.

Stone fruits (peaches, apricots, cherries, or plums) need new shoots cut back to six or seven leaves in summer. After the fruits are picked, these are pruned again to two or three leaves to encourage new wood to carry fruit.

Always use sharp pruning tools to make clean cuts. A small handheld blade sharpener like this on Amazon can be an important tool in your bag to sharpen pruning shears or other tools with straight blades.

Shop Pruning Tools for Fruit Trees:

Another summer job with fruit trees is thinning the fruit. Lots have a natural drop in June, but sometimes need additional help. Thinning fruit trees makes a difference, as it ensures the tree can ripen all the fruit fully and prevents branches snapping under the weight of the crop.

It also helps ensure you have a crop next year, as some fruit trees (especially apples and pears) will often have a small or no crop after a high-yielding season.

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Midsummer is a time when rich bounties are coming from the vegetable garden. August is also a perfect time to sow vegetables that will provide glorious harvests through fall and potentially into winter. Here we look at some fantastic vegetables to sow in August.

Crops like lettuce, carrots, turnips, arugula, kohlrabi, and oriental leaves germinate and grow quickly in the late-summer sunshine. They can easily fill empty spaces left by crops you have already picked and keep your plot productive late into the year.

When planting a second crop in vegetable garden beds or raised beds, it is important to supplement the soil with additional nutrients. Add some compost, balanced fertilizer, or chicken manure pellets (like these on Amazon) to ensure your new crops have the nutrients they need to thrive. Add some of our vegetables to sow in August to be enjoying homegrown harvests within weeks.

Carrots

August is the last window to plant carrots for a homegrown crop of succulent roots. Sowing carrots in August can give you a fall crop from October.

When growing carrots outside, pick smaller, fast-growing varieties, such as ‘Early Nantes’, ‘Short n Sweet’, or ‘Parisian’. These speedier carrots produce shorter or round roots, but they go from sowing to harvesting in 12-18 weeks.

Weed, prepare, and rake the soil to a fine tilth beforehand. Sow carrot seeds thinly in shallow drills. I water the drills before sowing the seeds to help get them off to a strong start. Keep the soil consistently moist after sowing, as carrot seeds won’t germinate if the soil dries out fully.

Be careful thinning seedlings to avoid carrot fly (you can cover the crop with insect netting to stop the pests, such as this mesh netting at Walmart). Come late fall, you can cover the crop with fleece or straw to protect them against the early frosts.

Get ‘Short n Sweet’ carrot seeds at Burpee

Get ‘Parisian’ carrot seeds at True Leaf Market

Turnips

Turnips are never seen as the most glamorous root crops, but they have always been a staple in my plots. They are fast-growing vegetables ready in 6-10 weeks from sowing and a great choice for filling gaps in the kitchen garden. Or, you can get a quick crop of baby turnips between other slower-growing vegetables.

You can get yellow, white, or purple-topped varieties of turnips. I always tend to pick the white-skinned varieties, such as these silky sweet turnip seeds at Burpee, at home, but grew lots of purple-topped turnips (usually these purple top white globe seeds at True Leaf Market) for chefs during my time as a specialist kitchen gardener.

Always directly sow seeds outdoors when growing turnips. They don’t like root disturbance, so won’t react well to being started indoors and transplanted. Sow the seeds thinly into a half-inch deep drill, cover them, and keep moist. Thin the seedlings to six inches apart.

Kohlrabi

This unique vegetable may look like a spaceship from a sci-fi movie, but it is a delicious, versatile crop becoming increasingly popular in modern vegetable gardens. Kohlrabi is a brassica that comes in purple or white forms and produces a swollen base. It can be eaten raw or roasted, steamed, or sautéed.

Sow kohlrabi seeds into half-inch deep drills and keep the ground moist. The seeds tend to germinate quickly and need to be thinned to six inches apart. It is recommended to cover the crop with netting to protect against pests such as cabbage white butterflies, caterpillars, and loppers.

Kohlrabi takes 50-70 days to develop and is ready when the swollen stems are 3-4 inches in diameter. The best size for texture and flavor is to harvest kohlrabi when the crop is larger than a golf ball but not as big as a tennis ball. When kohlrabi gets too large, it turns woody and loses the sweet flavor.

Get White Vienna kohlrabi seeds at Amazon

Get Purple Vienna kohlrabi seeds at Burpee

Lettuce

A wide variety of lettuce seeds can be sown in August to provide you with harvests into fall and early winter.

After the summer peak begins to wind down, cool-weather crops can thrive, especially when you plant lettuce in a shady spot or cover it with shade cloth (you can get 55% shade cloth at Walmart) to protect it during hot periods.

Sow seeds a few inches apart in half-inch drills, keep them moist, and then thin the seedlings to 6-12 inches apart. Any exact distance will depend on the variety, so refer to the seed packets for guidance.

Slugs and snails are notorious for nibbling on lettuce seedlings as they germinate, so cover plants with cloches or place rough surfaces or beer traps (get beer traps for snails and slugs at Amazon) around your crops.

You can start harvesting cut-and-come-again lettuces once the leaves are large enough to use. And they will continue to provide pickings well into fall.

This lettuce seed collection at Amazon features 10 different varieties of lettuce, many of which can be planted in August for fall harvests.

Swiss Chard

Swiss chard is a hardy thoroughbred for the vegetable garden. A sowing in August first provides you with harvests of tasty baby leaves in fall. Plus the vegetable can overwinter outdoors with ease. It means you can enjoy harvests of Swiss chard leaves throughout winter and into spring.

I really enjoy growing Swiss chard. I always love the ‘Bright Lights’ variety as it adds a rainbow of colorful leaves to the vegetable garden. And this year I am also growing ‘Fordhook Giant’ and am impressed by the size of the leaves (I know, the giant in the name should’ve given it away).

Get Bright Light Swiss chard seeds at Burpee

Get Fordhook Giant Swiss chard seeds at Burpee

Plant Swiss chard seeds thinly (at least four inches apart) in drills that are an inch deep. Keep them consistently moist, and thin seedlings to 18 inches apart so the plants have room to reach full size and don’t suffer from fungal issues caused by poor air circulation.

Oriental Greens

Oriental greens are great vegetables to sow in August as they can provide flavorful harvests to perk up plates in fall.

Whether it is mizuna or mustard greens for peppery leaves or bok choy (get baby choi bok choy seeds at Botanical Interests) and tatsoi for sweet, earthy tones, these crops can be eaten raw or cooked in a wide variety of dishes.

I have always found mizuna a reliable performer, and these Mizuna Red Streaks seeds at True Leaf Market can go from sowing to cropping in 45 days. And I’ve always enjoyed the darker, textured leaves of some mustards, which stand out in the garden. A good example is these Red Giant mustard seeds at Burpee.

Not only are they easy-growing and attractive, but you can pick these two above as cut-and-come-again vegetables.

Oriental greens are cool-weather crops suited to sowing in late summer or early fall. They can successfully grow in raised beds or containers, making them perfect for fall harvests in smaller spaces.

Fill any pot, planter, or windowbox with a well-draining potting mix, like this organic potting mix at Walmart, and sow the seeds directly into the soil.

Radish

August is a great time for growing radishes, primarily as there are three different types you can sow this month.

Many gardeners often stick to planting salad radishes. But August is an opportunity to broaden your horizons, as it is also time for both oriental varieties, known as daikon or mooli, and winter radishes.

The classic salad radishes, such as ‘Cherry Belle’, ‘Early Scarlet Globe’ and ‘French Breakfast ’ (get French Breakfast seeds at Burpee), can be sown and will be ready to harvest in less than a month. Sow them into drills and thin the seedlings to 4-6 inches apart.

Asian radishes are also fast-growing and take 7-8 weeks from sowing to harvesting. Sow the seeds thinly and thin the seedlings to 6-8 inches apart. You can get Daikon radish seeds at Amazon.

Finally, winter radishes are larger than the salad types and take longer to grow. Sow them into drills in August and thin them to 6-8 inches apart. These types will be ready to harvest in late fall or winter.

This collection of radish seeds at Amazon has five varieties of summer radishes, plus Black Spanish round winter radish.

It is also not too late to plant flowers this month to add color and interest to the garden later in the fall. Our guide to flowers to sow in August includes fast-growing blooms, such as calendula, sweet alyssum, and viola, that will give you beautiful flowers this year.

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Tomato leaf curl is a common problem during the growing season and a sign that your plants are not happy. It is typically a physiological response to a lack of moisture, nutrients, or temperature, but sometimes can be caused by pests.

Gardeners want a smooth process when growing tomatoes, from sowing or planting to picking the ripe fruits at harvest time. Tomato leaves curling may send a shiver down the spine, but it does not mean it is time to panic. There are quick, simple changes you can make to keep your tomato plants happy.

Tomato leaf curl typically affects the oldest foliage first, and these affected leaves are best removed with sharp pruning tools (such as these Felco F2 pruning shears at Amazon) to keep the plant healthy. At the first sign of curling, consider it a call to action. Here we look at the four most common causes of tomato leaf curl, along with easy fixes to address the issue and preserve your tomato crop.

1. Watering

Tomatoes prefer consistently moist soil throughout the season. A lack of water can cause plants to curl their foliage as they try to conserve moisture, especially during warmer periods. Drying out is especially risky when you grow tomatoes in pots.

At the other end of the scale, overwatering can also cause leaf curl. In addition to curling, yellowing tomato leaves is another tell-tale sign of excess moisture in the soil.

Consistency is key when watering tomatoes. This includes regularly checking the moisture levels and deep watering rather than a little-and-often approach.

One effective way to achieve this consistency is to use a soil moisture meter to check the moisture levels beneath the surface. A meter like this soil moisture meter on Amazon can provide quick readings to help you confidently determine when to water plants.

Such an approach ensures evenness and can help alleviate blossom-end rot affecting the fruits.

Mulching around plants is also a recommended method for retaining moisture in the soil and preventing it from drying out too quickly. The best materials for mulching tomato plants include bark, compost, or straw. You can get bags of pine bark mulch at Lowe's.

2. Temperature

Tomatoes are known to thrive in warmth and sun. However, there can be too much of a good thing.

The plants get stressed when temperatures go over 90°F. This causes them to curl their leaves to conserve water. Reducing the surface area means less transpiration, as the plant tries to hold onto the moisture it has.

It can be an issue if you are growing tomatoes in warmer climates or plant them in a greenhouse that can heat up over summer.

In hotter climates, it can be beneficial to plant tomatoes in a spot that gets afternoon shade to protect them from the scorching temperatures. Or you can cover plants from intense sunlight with shade cloth, such as this 50% shade cloth at Amazon.

If you grow tomatoes in buckets, pots, or grow bags, move them out of direct sunlight during a heatwave to prevent leaves from curling.

Tomato leaf curl can also be caused by cold, too. If temperatures drop below 54°F, the leaves can curl inwards as a protective measure. To prevent this, don’t plant tomatoes outdoors too early. And always harden off plants to get them accustomed to outdoor temperatures.

If you are growing tomatoes in windy sites, giving them a protected spot is beneficial, as cold winds can scorch the edges of leaves and cause them to curl.

3. Nutrition

Tomatoes are hungry plants that require lots of nutrients to grow and produce fruit throughout the season. If they don’t get the essential nutrients they need, the leaves start to curl as a result.

Fertilizing tomatoes is a vital task for healthy plants and bumper yields. The trick is to start with a balanced fertilizer (such as this organic all-purpose plant food at Burpee) and switch to a feed higher in phosphorus and potassium (like this tomato booster at Walmart) once the plants start flowering.

You don’t want to give tomato plants too much nitrogen. Plants with an excess of nitrogen produce too much foliage, making it unsustainable for the plant to support all this lush growth. So the leaves curl.

Regular feeding avoids issues linked to a lack of certain nutrients. For example, a deficiency of potassium or phosphorus can result in stunted growth or curling leaves.

Use a liquid tomato feed once flowering begins and feed plants every two or three weeks until late summer. Such products are fast-acting and deliver nutrients quickly to plants, but need to be applied often to be most effective.

There are also opportunities to make your own tomato fertilizer, such as a comfrey tea or nettle feed.

4. Pest or Disease

Tomato leaf curl is often the result of environmental stress, but not always. Tomato pests can cause the issue, particularly aphids, whiteflies, thrips, spider mites, and broad mites, which all suck sap from leaves and stems.

Small sap-sucking summer pests like these can be squashed between your finger and thumb, removed from the plant with a jet of water, or sprayed with insecticidal soap (like this ready-to-use insecticidal soap at Walmart).

A way to avoid pest problems is to use tomato companion plants, which can repel pests or attract beneficial natural predators. The likes of marigolds or chives can deter many pests, while sweet alyssum and dill can draw in predators to feast on pests and protect your plants.

Pests also bring the risk of spreading tomato diseases. And leaf spot, mosaic virus, and tomato yellow leaf curl virus all have leaf curl among their symptoms. Unfortunately, such viral diseases need plants to be removed to prevent any spread.

It is advisable to look for disease-resistant tomato varieties when planning which types to grow to mitigate the potential risks during the season. For example, these ‘Bodacious’ tomato seeds from Burpee are disease-resistant and produce large, round fruits.

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FAQs

How Do You Tell if Tomatoes Are Overwatered?

When it comes to how much water tomato plants need, they generally need about an inch or two of water weekly. However, this can vary depending on the weather, rainfall, and whether the plants are in the ground, raised beds, or containers.

Overwatered tomato plants can wilt, droop, and have yellow leaves. In addition, the fruit can crack or split, and there may be green mold on the soil surface due to excess moisture.

Tomato leaves curling is frustrating, but so is a plant that flowers but doesn’t fruit. If your tomato plants are not fruiting, it is usually due to blossom drop, where the flowers fall before being pollinated.

Blossom-end drop can be caused by temperatures too high or too low. Or it can be due to a lack of pollinators. If you want to hand-pollinate plants to get fruit, you can move pollen with cotton swabs or a toothbrush, or try the tomato tapping trick and shake plants to distribute pollen from flower to flower

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I’ll start by admitting that 2026 has not been a great year for my eggplant plants so far. I sowed them indoors in spring, as usual, but progress has been really slow. I still have high hopes for them, though, and I will pinch the eggplants to encourage (hopefully) bushier growth and more fruits.

When you pinch eggplant plants, it encourages side branches rather than a straight, upright plant. A bushier plant will be stronger and can grow more fruits. As the plant develops, it is also beneficial to pinch eggplant side shoots and flowers.

If you know how to grow eggplant, you may already know the benefits of pinching. But not all growers do. So here I look at the reasons to pinch eggplant and how to do it for robust and productive plants. If you haven’t planted yours yet, you can get a four-pack of ‘Black Beauty’ eggplant seedlings at Amazon to add to your vegetable garden and pinch them for bushier plants.

How to Pinch Eggplant for More Fruits

If you pinch eggplant, you’ll get lots of side shoots, which helps make the plant more productive. Pinching out the main growing tip encourages branching, rather than upright growth. The reward is a bushier plant, rather than a straight-up one, with more stems that give you lots of eggplant to pick.

A bushy plant will also be sturdier and better at supporting fruits. You’ll still need to support plants with a strong bamboo cane or vegetable garden trellis, but there will be less risk of upright stems snapping under the weight of the fruits.

The ideal time to pinch eggplant is when it is at least one foot tall and has six or more sets of healthy leaves. Don’t be tempted to pinch when transplanting seedlings, as you need the plant to settle and develop strong roots in its new home before you pinch. It wants to be actively growing, so it responds well to being pinched rather than getting stressed.

To pinch eggplant, simply remove the top growing point. This can be done with your fingers or with sharp pruning tools, such as pruning shears or snips, like these Fiskars micro-tip pruning snips from Walmart.

You don’t want to pinch eggplant if you are growing naturally compact or dwarf varieties. These types, such as this Patio Baby eggplant from Burpee, don’t need encouraging to produce a more branching structure; that is their natural growth habit.

How to Pinch Eggplant Suckers

Pinching the tip encourages lots of branching, but ultimately you don’t want too many stems all competing for water and nutrients. A good ballpark figure is to aim for four or five fruiting stems to focus on.

Once you have identified your main stems, prune eggplant suckers throughout the season to focus the energy onto your fruiting branches.

Just like when growing tomatoes, suckers grow between the main stem and the leaf axis and divert energy away from the rest of the plant. I tend to check plants weekly to spot these unwanted shoots and pinch them off when they are small.

For a healthy, productive plant, also remove any weaker or inward-growing branches and trim off the lowest sets of leaves to protect against soil-borne diseases.

Always use clean, sharp pruning shears to remove foliage. I use a pair of Felco F2 pruners, available from Amazon, to prune the eggplant, tomato, cucumber, and melon plants in my greenhouse.

FAQs

Should I Pinch off Eggplant Flowers?

It is beneficial to pinch eggplant flowers to limit the number of fruits. More than six to eight fruits on any plant risks the stems getting too stressed under the weight and snapping. Once you have enough fruits developing, pinch off the extra flowers that appear.

It is also best to pinch eggplant flowers that appear in the last four weeks of the season, as there isn’t time for the fruits to mature. This keeps the plant’s energy focused on developing the fruits that are much further ahead.

At the start of the season, pinch off the first flowers that appear. In the early stages, it is better to allow the plant time to produce stems and roots. It may seem cruel, but remove the first flowers – it won’t be long until more appear and the plant will be more prepared to carry flowers and fruit.

An ideal way to help have healthy eggplant plants and avoid pest problems is to companion plant your crop with beneficial neighbors. Some of the best picks for eggplant companion planting include legumes to add nitrogen to the soil, dill to attract predators to kill armyworms, and marigolds or onions to deter a wide variety of pests.

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Do you see friends and growers on social media with tomato plants well ahead of yours? Are you concerned yours are being left behind? If so, there is one product you can use to spark new life into your plants. Discover how using fish emulsion on tomato plants gives them a real boost during their early growth.

Fish emulsion, or fish fertilizer, is a product made from the by-products of the fishing industry. It is not glamorous, made from the likes of ground-up carcasses, bones, and scales, but it is high in nitrogen and encourages vital, strong growth when used at the right time.

If you are growing tomatoes and your plants are still small, fish emulsion can give them a much-needed dose of nutrients. However, you only want to use it on young plants and not once they start flowering. The window to use it is closing and may be shut for some gardeners, but if your tomato plants need a much-needed boost, it could be the solution you’re looking for.

This Alaska Fish Fertilizer from Amazon is certified for organic gardening and comes in concentrated form to mix with water and feed your tomato plants.

Why Use Fish Emulsion on Tomato Plants

Understanding how to fertilize tomatoes ensures you use any products at the right time, for the desired results – healthy plants and bumper crops. When it comes to using fish emulsion on tomato plants, there is a right and wrong time to use it. It boils down to what the fertilizer does for the plants.

Fish emulsion (like this liquid salmon feed, available on Amazon) is primarily rich in nitrogen (it also includes phosphorus, potassium, and many other trace elements), and it releases it quickly, encouraging the development of stems and foliage.

If your plants are a bit stunted or behind where you’d ideally like them this month, an application of fish emulsion can be a vital pick-me-up to get them back on track. It makes a perfect organic feed for the early stages of growth; you want strong stems and leaves at this time.

However, don’t use fish emulsion once the plants have started flowering. At this stage, you use a tomato feed with more phosphorus and potassium. Giving tomato plants too much nitrogen will encourage more leaves and stems, rather than flowers and fruit.

How to Use Fish Emulsion on Tomato Plants

Fish emulsion is a simple product to use, but there are a few recommendations to follow and fertilizing mistakes to avoid when using it:

• Fish emulsion must be applied to damp soil to avoid shocking the roots. Before using the product, water the tomato plants lightly to ensure the soil is moist and the plants aren’t badly affected by the feed.
• Always use the product at the recommended rate. It is a concentrated liquid fertilizer, and each product will state the dilution rates. Don’t be tempted to add a bit more, as too much will over-fertilize the plants and potentially burn their roots.
• The best results will come from a set routine. Mix the product with water and feed plants every 2-3 weeks from transplanting tomato seedlings until they start flowering.
• Apply the feed to the soil, rather than the tomato plant’s leaves. Watering the soil ensures no product is wasted and it efficiently reaches the roots.
• The product does have a strong odor, and watering the soil limits the spread and also the likelihood of attracting pests. If you worry about the smell, rest assured it disappears within a day or two of using the product.
• As mentioned above, stop using fish emulsion on tomato plants once the first flowers appear. Switch to a tomato feed, which includes organic solutions such as seaweed extract, comfrey feed, or a certified organic tomato fertilizer.

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It is not just tomatoes that can benefit from fish emulsion. Its high nitrogen levels make it a perfect solution for any seedlings and young plants – both flowers and vegetables – that need a punch of essential nutrients in the early stages. It offers a strong, natural way to add nitrogen to your soil, along with adding homemade compost, manure, or blood meal, like this organic blood meal, available at Burpee.

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I currently have a watermelon plant growing in my greenhouse. Am I crazy, trying to grow a watermelon in a container in zone 8 (the north-west of the UK)? Maybe I am, but god loves a trier. It may be difficult, but you can grow watermelon in pots, provided you make the right choices.

Those decisions include picking the right variety, container, and soil. Then there is the need to give the plants the right amount of sun, water, and nutrients. It is tricky, but not impossible if you are willing to put in the effort.

Here I take a look at some vital factors you must consider if you want to grow watermelon in a container, whether indoors or outdoors. Who knows if I will get a crop of juicy, sweet fruits from my watermelon, but I am up for the challenge.

1. Pick the Right Type

Watermelon plants can grow up to 10 feet. In reality, that is too big for containers. If you want to grow watermelon in pots, don’t complicate things. You can make life easier on yourself by growing compact and bush varieties.

These types are more manageable, and the fruit is just as tasty and juicy as that of the larger types. The vines grow shorter – often reaching 2 or 3 feet rather than 10 – and you can end up with a few good-sized watermelons per plant to pick.

The likes of ‘Sugar Baby’, ‘Bush Sugar Baby’ or ‘Golden Midget’ are perfect compact varieties of watermelon that thrive in containers.

Get ‘Sugar Baby’ watermelon seeds at True Leaf Market

Get ‘Bush Sugar Baby’ watermelon seeds at Burpee

Get ‘Golden Midget’ watermelon seeds at True Leaf Market

2. Use a Large Pot

When you decide to grow watermelon in pots, you need to pick a large container to have any chance of success. This is crucial as watermelons have extensive root systems and need room to develop. Pick a pot that is too small and the plant will get root-bound and stressed, plus you’ll end up watering more.

For the best chances of success, a dwarf or compact watermelon variety needs at least a 10-gallon pot. But to be safe, aim for 15 to 20 gallons. It should ideally be 18 to 24 inches deep and wide. This gives the roots ample space to grow and helps make maintenance easier.

The other non-negotiable is drainage holes. The pot needs to drain excess water. Otherwise, the plant will sulk and can succumb to root rot sitting in sodden soil for long periods.

Most pots should come with drainage holes, but it is best practise to check. Thankfully, it is not difficult to add drainage holes to planters to give watermelons the drainage they need.

You can use large pots (like these 15-gallon nursery pots at Amazon) or grow bags (you can also get 15-gallon grow bags at Amazon).

3. Fill the Pot With Fertile, Well-Draining Soil

Watermelons are heavy feeders, making it important to use the right soil in the containers. For a rich mix, combine a quality potting soil with compost at an 80:20 ratio.

This blend will drain well. It will also provide essential nutrients so the watermelon grows healthily in the container.

This organic potting mix at Walmart is a great option. If you don’t have any homemade compost to mix with it, you can buy bags. For example, you can get a 10lb bag of organic compost at Amazon.

4. Plant Your Watermelon

There are two options for planting the watermelon into the soil. You can sow seeds or buy transplants.

If you opt for the former, it is best to sow seeds directly into the container to reduce any potential risk of transplant shock. Sow two or three seeds an inch deep in the soil and keep it moist. Once the seedlings emerge, thin them to keep the strongest one.

You can buy transplants from a garden center, nursery, or online – which is what I did. Dig a large hole in the soil and carefully transplant the seedlings ASAP into the large pot to avoid them getting pot-bound or shocked.

Watermelon plants can be left to trail across the ground, or be trained up a strong trellis. Growing watermelons vertically is perfect for smaller spaces, and it is recommended to have the supports in place when you plant them.

5. Give Them Sun

To grow watermelon in pots successfully, you need to put them somewhere where they can bask in lots of sunlight over the summer.

Watermelon plants need heat and sunshine to grow and develop the sweet fruits. Place the container somewhere that gets 8 to 10 hours of sunlight each day and temperatures over 70°F.

Gardeners in cooler climates may need to grow watermelon in pots in a greenhouse or cold frame to guarantee the temperatures required for optimum growth.

This four-foot-tall portable greenhouse at Wayfair could house a compact watermelon plant (it has removable shelves) and provide a warm, protected place to grow.

6. Water Regularly and Consistently

The name gives it away – watermelons need a lot of watering throughout the season. This is especially true when you grow watermelons in pots, as the soil can dry out really quickly. And you never want to let the soil dry out completely.

The key is to keep the soil consistently moist, which can mean watering once or twice a day during the season. Check the moisture a few inches under the soil surface every day – and water if it feels dry. When you do water plants, water deeply, until it starts to flow out of the drainage holes.

As the season progresses, reduce the watering when the fruits are nearly ripe.

If you aren’t confident and worry about overwatering plants, a soil moisture meter is an essential tool. You can place it into the soil to get instant information about when to water plants in hot weather.

Get a soil moisture meter at Amazon.

7. Fertilize Every 2 Weeks

Watermelons are hungry plants and need lots of nutrients throughout the season to develop their vines and ripen fruit. If you grow watermelon in pots, committing to a regular fertilizing schedule is crucial to have any chance of a good harvest.

If you added compost at planting, there will be nutrients to get plants off to a good start. In the absence of compost, add some balanced, slow-release fertilizer at planting, such as this all-purpose plant food at Burpee.

Once the plant starts flowering, start feeding it with a product higher in phosphorus and potassium, which encourages the development of fruits and flowers. An ideal fertilizer is a tomato feed, such as this tomato booster at Amazon.

Alternatively, you can use seaweed fertilizer or make your own comfrey fertilizer. Apply this fertilizer every two weeks during the summer.

8. Harvest the Watermelons

Watermelons take 70-90 days from planting to harvesting. You may need to hand-pollinate plants if they are growing indoors to guarantee fruit.

The signs to look for to know a watermelon is ready to be picked are that the curly tendril near the fruit turns brown, the rind is hard and matte rather than shiny, and the watermelon gives a deep, hollow sound when tapped.

If a fruit ticks all these boxes, cut the melon from the vine with a sharp knife, like this Fiskars harvesting knife on Amazon.

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Other sprawling vegetables you can grow in pots include pumpkins and squash. As with watermelons, growing squash in containers means using compact varieties, a large pot, and remembering to water and feed regularly.

The good news is that it is not as tricky as watermelons, and you can get good harvests of squash in smaller, urban gardens or on a deck or patio.

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July has a reputation for being the month when gardeners wilt faster than their plants, but it is still an excellent time to establish many drought-tolerant perennials. Choose the right species, water them carefully while they settle in, and they will reward you with years of color, texture, and resilience while demanding remarkably little once established.

Planting in midsummer does require a slightly different approach. Timing, soil preparation, and consistent watering during the first few weeks make all the difference, particularly across the warmer parts of the US in USDA Zones 6 to 10.

If you are planning a resilient border, these drought-tolerant planting schemes demonstrate just how beautiful low-water gardening can be without sacrificing abundance or drama.

1. Russian Sage (Salvia yangii)

If there were ever a plant that looked as though it positively enjoyed hardship, Russian sage would be somewhere near the top of the list. Silvery stems carry airy lavender-blue flowers that seem to shimmer in afternoon sunshine, creating movement long after many summer perennials have begun to tire.

Despite the common name, it is no longer classified as Perovskia atriplicifolia, having been reassigned to Salvia yangii. Thankfully, its easy-going nature remains unchanged.

Once established, it thrives in lean, sharply drained soils and positively resents overwatering. In fact, I have seen it perform far better in neglected municipal plantings than in lovingly fussed-over borders.

Give it full sun and avoid rich soil, which produces floppy growth instead of the elegant haze for which it is treasured. Young Russian sage plants available from Nature Hills, establish remarkably quickly when planted into warm summer soil.

Its silver foliage also combines beautifully with ornamental grasses if you are creating one of the increasingly popular naturalistic prairie minimalism plantings.

2. Sea Holly (Eryngium giganteum)

Sea holly looks more like an exotic sea creature than a flowering perennial, with metallic blue flower heads surrounded by dramatic spiny bracts. It is one of those plants visitors inevitably ask about, usually while wondering whether it might stab them.

It flourishes in hot, exposed positions where many supposedly glamorous perennials quietly give up. Once established, it develops a deep taproot that allows it to tolerate lengthy dry spells with remarkable ease.

Plant it somewhere permanent because mature specimens dislike being moved. Fortunately, they rarely need any encouragement after settling in.

Pairing sea holly, available from Plant Addicts, with ornamental grasses creates the sort of dry garden that feels entirely at home across the western US, particularly in Mediterranean or temperate climates.

3. Catmint (Nepeta × faassenii)

Lavender is great, we all love it. Catmint probably suffers most from its popularity. But like an eager understudy waiting in the wings, this is it's time to shine.

Soft gray foliage releases a pleasant fragrance whenever brushed, while clouds of violet-blue flowers continue for months with minimal intervention.

One reason I return to catmint repeatedly is its astonishing generosity. Give it a quick haircut after its first flush of bloom and it often flowers all over again, particularly in cooler temperate regions. It also attracts bees in astonishing numbers without requiring endless watering.

Whether edging a pathway or softening the front of a sunny border, it earns its place every single year. Giant catmint is available from Plant Addicts for gardens that need more hight in their borders or in gardens trying to adopt a cottage garden style.

4. Blanket Flower (Gaillardia aristata)

Blanket flower possesses the optimism of someone wearing bright colors during a heatwave. Fiery reds, oranges, and yellows continue flowering through blazing temperatures while many neighboring plants begin contemplating retirement.

Native to North America, it is naturally adapted to dry, open conditions and poor soils, making it an obvious choice for gardeners seeking resilient beauty.

I particularly appreciate its honesty. It never pretends to be delicate or refined. Instead, it flowers enthusiastically, attracts pollinators, and asks for remarkably little in return.

Deadheading extends the display considerably, although even neglected plants continue blooming surprisingly well throughout summer. If your soil drains freely and receives uninterrupted sunshine, blanket flower from Nature Hills will likely become one of your most reliable July plantings.

5. Globe Thistle (Echinops ritro)

Every border benefits from contrast, and globe thistle provides it in abundance. Perfect steel-blue spheres hover above architectural foliage, introducing bold geometry into softer perennial plantings. Florists adore them fresh or dried, while pollinators descend upon them with spectacular enthusiasm.

Despite its dramatic appearance, globe thistle is wonderfully uncomplicated. Hot weather scarcely troubles it once roots are established, and deer generally leave it well alone.

I often recommend it for gardeners who believe drought-tolerant planting must somehow appear sparse or minimalist. Globe thistle from Plant Addicts proves precisely the opposite.

Allow sufficient spacing when planting in July because mature clumps become surprisingly substantial after only a couple of seasons.

6. Lavender Cotton (Santolina chamaecyparissus)

Not every perennial earns its place through flowers alone. Lavender cotton offers finely divided silver foliage that forms neat evergreen mounds, bringing structure throughout the year before producing cheerful yellow button flowers in summer.

Its Mediterranean origins explain its remarkable drought tolerance. Warm sunshine, sharply drained soil, and a certain degree of neglect suit it perfectly. I have always admired plants that improve by being left largely alone, and lavender cotton from Plant Addicts certainly falls into that category.

Trim lightly after flowering to maintain its rounded form, but otherwise resist the temptation to overcare for it. It also makes an excellent companion for gravel gardens, dry slopes, and sunny pathways where irrigation is limited.

7. Beardtongue (Penstemon digitalis)

To finish, a perennial that quietly deserves far greater recognition. Beardtongue sends elegant white, purple or pink flower spikes above glossy green foliage in late spring and early summer before continuing to provide handsome structure long afterward.

Native across much of eastern North America, it copes impressively with periods of drought once established, particularly in well-drained soils.

What I admire most is its adaptability. It looks equally comfortable in formal borders, cottage gardens, wildlife plantings, or contemporary landscapes.

Hummingbirds adore the tubular blooms, while the sturdy seedheads continue providing interest well into fall if left standing. Beardtongue from Nature Hills establish readily during July, provided they receive regular deep watering for the first month.

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The phrase drought tolerant sometimes creates unrealistic expectations. No perennial, however resilient, enjoys being planted into baking soil and immediately abandoned to its fate.

For the first four to six weeks after planting, monitor soil moisture carefully. Water deeply whenever the soil begins drying several inches below the surface, then replenish mulch to reduce evaporation and suppress weeds.

After that initial establishment period, these seven perennials begin demonstrating why they have earned such loyal followings. Their roots travel deeper, their watering needs diminish dramatically, and they continue providing flowers, foliage, texture, and wildlife value through some of the hottest weather of the gardening year.

There is enormous satisfaction in creating a border that remains beautiful while demanding less from both the gardener and increasingly precious water supplies. In my experience, those are often the gardens that continue looking their best when summer is at its most unforgiving and, perhaps not coincidentally, when everyone else is busy dragging hoses around the yard.

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If your tomato plants are like mine at the moment, they’ll be growing strongly, producing flowers, and maybe even showing the first fruits. It is a crucial time in the season, and there are certain things you need to do with tomato plants in July to keep them healthy; the most important is watering.

As the focus shifts from producing foliage to developing and ripening fruit, it is pivotal to keep the plants well-watered, especially when the temperatures soar. If they dry out, they will drop flowers, and inconsistent watering can lead to split fruits and blossom-end rot. Tomato plants also need to be fed and pruned this month to ensure no energy is wasted and to help your plants avoid succumbing to disease.

When growing tomatoes, July is an exciting month as you see the first glimpses of those tantalizing harvests to come. A few crucial maintenance tasks this month ensure your plants remain in perfect health and you can enjoy rich pickings in the weeks to come. With watering a key concern, expandable hose like the Flexzilla one on Amazon is perfect for the job and stores super easily.

Stay on Top of Watering

Tomatoes are thirsty plants. They usually need one or two inches of water a week, but this requirement increases during a heatwave, especially when the plants are flowering and fruiting. If yours, like mine, are now just starting to bloom and showing the first fruits, it is a crucial time to keep up regular watering.

Use your fingers or a soil moisture meter (available at Amazon) to measure the water levels an inch or two under the surface of the soil. If it is dry, then water plants deeply. This may need to be done daily, or more often if the tomatoes are in containers.

Another useful tip is to always water the soil, and not the foliage. Soaking the leaves puts the plant at risk of common fungal tomato diseases, such as powdery mildew.

It is hard to be exact about how much water tomato plants need; it can vary depending on your climate, where the plants are growing, and whether they are in the ground or in containers – tomatoes in pots are going to dry out much faster than those in the ground.

Staying on top of watering is important. If the soil dries out completely, plants can drop their flowers. And consistency is key, as inconsistent watering causes tomatoes to split or the fruits to suffer from blossom-end rot.

Feed Plants Regularly

The best plants and harvests always come from fertilizing tomatoes at least weekly during the summer with a fertilizer that is rich in phosphorus and potassium.

All advice for growing tomatoes will tell you to feed plants regularly with tomato feed once they start flowering, which mine are now doing, as will many gardeners’ at this point in the season.

I am using a seaweed-based fertilizer this year, but you can use any liquid tomato feed for the task. This tomato booster at Walmart, for example, is a great liquid feed and has an NPK of 3:8:7.

It is up to you how often you wish to feed them, but my preference is every week or two, depending on where the plants are growing.

If you grow tomatoes in pots or grow bags, like I am in my greenhouse at home and did for many years as a professional gardener, I always think it is important to have a regular weekly feeding regime. I have steadfastly stuck by this routine for years and got big harvests from plants in greenhouses when I was growing for restaurants – and I still do it at home.

You can opt to feed tomatoes growing in the ground weekly, or stretch it to every two weeks as the soil doesn’t leach nutrients as quickly as potting soil in containers.

Prune to Focus the Plants Energy

Tomatoes grow vigorously when they get the sun and warmth they desire. Sometimes it can be too vigorous, and they need controlling.

Check your plants at least weekly in July to prune tomato plants and remove suckers. These shoots form between the main stem and the leaves on vining or indeterminate tomato varieties, and they do grow quickly. But they take energy away from the rest of the plant.

Snip away these side shoots before they get too large, so the plant’s energy is focused on forming flowers and developing fruits rather than unnecessary extra shoots.

Side shoots can be nipped off with your fingers if they are small. Otherwise, you want to use pruning snips or pruning shears to remove shoots and leaves. I use a pair of these Felco pruning snips, available at Amazon, and they are ideal for precise pruning tasks like these.

Too many stems also impair airflow and increase the risk of disease, as fungal diseases can take hold if plants are congested.

Talking of disease, you should also prune away the lowest leaves this month, as well as any yellow tomato leaves. Removing the bottom foliage stops soil-borne fungal and bacterial spores from splashing up onto the plant, and helps with airflow, too.

Provide Support and Shade

When a heatwave strikes, it may be important to shade plants, especially if they are growing in a greenhouse. Tomatoes love heat, but not too much. They get stressed when the temperatures exceed 90°F, and this can cause them to drop flowers.

If it looks like your temperatures may be hitting those dangerous levels, cover plants with shade cloth. A 30-50% shade cloth (such as this shade cloth at Amazon) can provide sufficient protection from the excessive heat and sun scorch.

Tomato plants will be growing quickly at this stage of the season. You should already have supports in place for them, as ideally you put them in place when you transplant tomato seedlings.

However, if yours are not yet supported, remember to do this quickly. The plants get tall and top-heavy, and not supporting them leads to flopping stems and, in a worst-case scenario, snapping.

Use a stake or bamboo pole and tie the plants in with soft ties to prevent damaging the stems. Or you can use tomato cages to surround the plants and keep them upright.

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FAQs

Can You Plant Tomatoes in July?

July is late to plant tomatoes, but you can still plant fast-growing determinate or bush varieties of tomatoes and get a crop before the end of the season. You can get a four-pack of live patio tomato plants at Amazon that are determinate varieties and fruit quickly.

Any list of what to do with tomato plants in July may include picking for those gardeners who started their plants off early in the year. The harvesting season starts in July, so keep a close eye on when to harvest tomatoes so you get those first fruits at the right time. Once the color deepens and the fruits have a little give when squeezed, they are ready to pick.

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Rhubarb season is relatively short, at around 8-10 weeks, and the window for picking is winding down. You need to know when to stop picking rhubarb each year to have strong crops next year. And that cutoff should be to stop in early July.

You can theoretically harvest rhubarb throughout the growing season. This is not advisable, though, as the plants need some time to recover from harvesting and replenish their energy reserves for the following year.

When you grow rhubarb, the end of June or early July is usually the end of the picking season. There may be time for one more harvest if you act quickly, but don’t push your luck and keep picking well into summer.

I used to work in the walled garden at a large, historic public garden. We harvested some rhubarb for the on-site café, but the vast majority of the stalks were sold to the public on a donation stall in the garden. There was a lot of rhubarb in this vegetable garden, and the stalks sold like hot cakes.

Year after year, I had to tell our enthusiastic volunteers when to stop harvesting rhubarb. It made sense to keep picking as long as stalks were available. But the risk of continuing harvesting for too long outweighed the benefits of making some extra cash.

In truth, my head gardener always wanted the picking to stop at the end of June, but we may have pushed it an extra week or 10 days into July.

When to Stop Picking Rhubarb

Knowing how to harvest rhubarb means you have the technique to pick flavorful stems without damaging your plants, but carrying on picking too long will affect the long-term health of your clumps.

While you do need to wait a few years after planting rhubarb to get a crop (you can get a live Rhubarb 'Victoria' plant at Plant Addicts), the temptation may be to pick as many stems for as long as possible in future years. That is a rhubarb growing mistake to avoid, or your plants won’t have the lifespan they may otherwise.

If cared for correctly, rhubarb plants can be productive for decades. And a key part of proper maintenance is understanding when to stop picking rhubarb.

The last harvests should be in early July. The window should last 8-10 weeks in late spring and early summer, when you can pick lots of stalks. However, stopping picking in early July gives plants lots of time to replenish their energy for the future.

Your rhubarb can spend the rest of summer photosynthesizing and building up energy supplies in its roots. This guarantees the plant has the reserves needed to burst into growth again next spring.

If you continued harvesting into summer, the stalks would get thinner as the plant lacked the energy to produce thick, flavorful stems. And you certainly wouldn’t get a good crop of stems to pick next year.

The sight of thin, spindly stalks on your plants is definitely a sign you need to stop picking if you haven’t already. A weakened rhubarb plant won’t have the energy to keep providing you with stems for years to come.

Rhubarb needs lots of nutrients to produce the large stalks and leaves. To ensure your plants have the essential nutrients they need, stop picking in early summer to store energy and fertilize with a phosphorus-rich fertilizer (like this tomato and vegetable fertilizer at Burpee) in fall and a nitrogen-rich fertilizer in spring.

For the best long-term harvests, it is also important to divide rhubarb plants every five years. The clumps get congested over the years, and produce weaker, thinner stems as a result. Lifting and dividing them reinvigorates the clumps and gives you new ones to add to the garden.

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There are so many different ways to grow tomatoes. But, the latest idea I've found is ingenious if your tomatoes are looking tall, thin and floppy: you can grow tomatoes sideways to make them stronger.

It may sound a little strange at first because this method of growing tomatoes requires burying the tomato stem in a trench. Roots then grow from the buried leaf nodes, resulting in a stronger root system. It's the perfect solution to saving leggy or weak tomatoes, so you can still have a good harvest.

But, this method will only work if you use it in the right circumstances and manage it correctly. Here, we talk through how this tomato growing hack works.

Why Grow Tomatoes Sideways?

It's not uncommon for tomato plants to grow a little bit leggy and weak, either due to tomato growing mistakes or unpredictable weather. But, you can still save your harvest by using the method to grow tomatoes sideways.

'Planting tomatoes in a trench is an ideal solution if your plants have gotten a bit leggy, which happens regularly due to high temperatures or a lack of sunlight,' says Drew Swainston, Gardens Content Editor at Homes & Gardens.

'Planting them sideways into a trench takes advantage of a clever trait tomatoes have: growing extra roots along the stem. A stronger overall root system means the plant can take in more water and nutrients, and you’ll get a sturdier and more drought-tolerant plant,' he explains.

But, it isn't as simple as burying your tomato plant. There is some careful preparation and management required to ensure you still harvest tomatoes this summer.

How to Grow Tomatoes Sideways

To grow tomatoes sideways you first need to clean the stem by removing all the leaves, except those at the very top.

You should use clean and sharp pruning tools when doing this to ensure the plant stays healthy. These Fiskars pruning snips from Amazon are a reliable choice.

To actually plant the stem sideways, create a trench in your planting bed. You want it to be just 4-6" deep in nutrient-rich compost, accommodating the length of the stem.

Then, lay the stem down sideways and bury it, gently bending the top of the stem upwards so the leaves stick out above surface level. Make sure the existing root ball is covered.

'Don’t worry about the stem curving or bending; the plant will quickly find its way and start growing upwards towards the sun after planting,' says Drew.

Putting a support in place to help train the exposed part of the stem will encourage it to climb upwards. These bamboo stakes from Amazon work well, or you can use the tomato string method.

Water well to help it settle. In as little as 1-2 weeks, the buried leaf nodes will develop new roots.

'Sideways planting buries a large portion of the stem, and the tomato plant will respond to that by growing lots of roots along the buried section,' Drew explains.

As the bigger root system develops, your tomato plant will become more drought-tolerant, cope better with hot summer days, and will be less likely to become leggy.

Don't forget to continue pruning tomato plants when growing them like this. Removing side shoots (or 'suckers' which appear between the main stem and branches) helps redirect the plant's energy to fruiting, resulting in a bigger harvest.

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This is just one way to increase tomato yields if your tomato plant is struggling. Fertilizing your tomatoes with a high-potash feed (like this tomato fertilizer from Amazon) also supports flowering and fruit production.

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If your spring planting plans were flattened by torrential rain, scorched by an early heatwave, or simply forgotten in the chaos of life, June is not too late. In fact, some of the best fast-growing annuals positively relish warm soil and long bright days, racing from seed to flower in a matter of weeks while shrugging off difficult weather with admirable cheerfulness.

The trick with fast-growing annuals to sow in June is choosing varieties that can cope with modern summers: sudden drought, humid storms, baking patios, and the occasional cold snap that arrives purely out of spite. Fortunately, there are plenty of annual flowers that germinate quickly, flower generously, and keep going until frost with very little handholding.

If you are also thinking about vegetables and edible planting this month, there is plenty of inspiration in Homes & Gardens’ guide to what to plant in June, which covers flowers, salads, and productive crops for the season ahead.

1. Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus)

There is something wonderfully optimistic about cosmos. You scatter a few seeds into warm soil and within weeks they are dancing about like guests who have arrived early to the party and started on the cocktails before anyone else.

Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) are among the very best annuals to sow in June because they germinate rapidly in warm conditions and thrive in USDA zones 3-10. More importantly for modern American summers, they are surprisingly resilient once established.

I grew them through a brutal dry spell last year where the lawn crisped into something resembling old cereal, yet the cosmos continued flowering as if nothing had happened.

The secret is not to pamper them. Rich soil and constant watering simply produce floppy stems and fewer flowers. Sow directly into a sunny border, rake lightly, and water until seedlings emerge. After that, they prefer a slightly neglectful gardener.

For smaller yards or patios, compact varieties like ‘Sonata’ from Burpee work beautifully in containers. Pair them with ornamental grasses for the kind of planting combination that looks suspiciously expensive despite costing less than lunch. If you are rethinking drought-tolerant planting schemes altogether, this combination is a winner.

2. Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus)

Every gardener should grow nasturtiums at least once because they teach an important lesson: some plants perform best when left entirely alone.

Nasturtiums (Tropaeolum majus) germinate quickly in June’s warm soil and flower at alarming speed, often within six to eight weeks. They are remarkably tolerant of poor soil, sporadic watering, and wild temperature swings. During a wet summer in England some years ago, mine climbed over a compost heap and flowered with the triumphant vigor of pirates storming a ship.

In hot American climates, especially across zones 8-10, they appreciate a little afternoon shade. Elsewhere, full sun is ideal. Sow seeds directly where they are to grow because they dislike root disturbance with all the melodrama of a Victorian thespian.

The flowers are edible too, peppery and vivid in summer salads. The leaves work beautifully in cottage-style yards where they tumble informally between vegetables and flowers. I often tuck them among tomatoes because they soften the entire scene and attract pollinators in generous numbers. If you are planning a productive kitchen garden, there simply must be a space for nasturtiums.

For reliable seed, you can't go wrong with Nasturtium 'Supernova' from Burpee for an excellent heat-tolerant variety, while an organic flower fertilizer from Amazon helps container-grown plants keep blooming through summer.

3. Calendula (Calendula officinalis)

May weather has a deeply unreliable streak. One day feels like midsummer in Tuscany; the next resembles a damp afternoon in Seattle. Calendula (Calendula officinalis) has the sort of cheerful resilience one normally associates with Labradors. Heatwave? Fine. Sudden downpour? Also fine. Forgotten watering schedule? It barely notices.

This is one of the fastest annual flowers to sow in June, often germinating in under a week when temperatures are warm. It is especially useful for gardeners in temperate regions where spring planting windows were delayed by wet weather.

I am particularly fond of the apricot and pale buff shades that soften planting schemes beautifully. The old bright orange forms have charm too, though they can occasionally look as though someone has dropped traffic cones among the petunias.

Calendula flowers quickly from seed and deadheading prolongs blooming into fall. Pollinators adore it and it works brilliantly in wildlife-friendly gardens. Better still, the petals are edible and traditionally used in herbal preparations.

For supplies, raised bed soil from Ace Hardware creates ideal conditions for rapid germination, and 'Solar Flashback' calendula seeds from True Leaf Market are a particularly elegant pastel selection.

4. Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus)

There is a moment every summer when sunflowers stop being seedlings and suddenly become architecture. Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) are classic fast-growing annuals to sow in June because warm soil speeds germination dramatically. Within days, thick green shoots appear, and before long they are towering overhead like overenthusiastic triffids.

Modern varieties are far more versatile than the enormous single-stem giants most people remember from childhood. There are compact patio forms, branching types for cutting gardens, and deep red cultivars that look unexpectedly sophisticated.

Sunflowers cope surprisingly well with difficult weather once established. Their deep roots help them tolerate dry conditions, though newly sown seed does need consistent moisture. In windy areas, sturdier branching varieties are usually more reliable than colossal single stems which can topple dramatically after summer storms.

I grow them partly for wildlife. Goldfinches descend on the seed heads in late summer with the delighted chaos of children at a birthday party.

Attracting birds and pollinators is even possible in the smallest of balcony wildlife gardens with dwarf sunflowers. Burpee’s "Sunny Bunch' sunflower seeds are one of my favorite dwarf varieties, and sturdy bamboo garden supports from Lowes are helpful for taller cultivars in storm-prone regions.

5. Zinnias (Zinnia elegans)

If ever there were a flower designed for contemporary American summers, it is the zinnia.

Zinnias (Zinnia elegans) positively revel in heat and humidity, flowering tirelessly through conditions that send other annuals into theatrical collapse. They are ideal for zones 3-10 and particularly valuable in southern states where summer arrives with the subtlety of a flamethrower.

June sowings catch up astonishingly fast because warm nights accelerate growth. I have often found late-sown zinnias outperforming carefully cosseted spring seedlings simply because conditions suit them better.

Choose mildew-resistant varieties if humidity is high. Good airflow matters too. Crowded zinnias tend to sulk and develop fungal issues faster than commuters trapped on delayed trains.

What I particularly love about zinnias is their unapologetic exuberance. They are not subtle flowers. They arrive in impossible colors and flower with relentless determination until frost finally intervenes.

For cutting gardens, they are unbeatable. The more you cut, the more they bloom, which feels wonderfully generous. If you are planning flowers specifically for bouquets, cut flower garden ideas are full of inspiration for long-lasting summer color.

Zinnia 'Queeny Lemon Peach' from Burpee is a particularly good heat-tolerant mix, while a soaker hose irrigation kit from Amazon helps maintain even moisture during prolonged heatwaves.

There is a curious assumption among gardeners that earlier is always better. It is not. Cold spring soil slows germination, encourages rot, and leaves seedlings vulnerable to every slug and weather tantrum nature can devise.

June is different. The soil is warm, daylight is abundant, and seeds germinate with startling speed. Fast-growing annual flowers to sow in June often establish more reliably than earlier sowings because conditions are finally working with you rather than against you.

And perhaps that is the real joy of June gardening. The season still stretches ahead in glorious possibility. There is time yet for flowers, for pollinators, for armfuls of color, and for sitting in the evening sun wondering why one ever worried in the first place.

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July is a significant month for growing okra. The heat-loving crop, also known as ladies’ fingers, is highly productive in summer, and a few crucial tasks this month will bring you a bumper harvest of pods to pick.

Regular harvesting is the most important job for July if you are growing okra in your vegetable garden. Along with picking, take time to water, feed, support, and keep plants pest-free to ensure the harvests keep coming. If you garden in the hottest climates, though, there is an extra task you can do that will reward you with extra crops.

Okra does need regular attention this month, and keeping on top of these tasks is important for the best yield throughout the summer and onwards. Here’s what to do with okra in July to pick the finest pods and to have healthy plants that will keep on producing new ones to pick in the future.

1. Harvest Pods Every Few Days

July is a peak time for harvesting okra pods, and you want to get them at their prime. Good timing is imperative, as young pods are tender and a delicacy, while older ones are tough and woody.

Regular harvesting is an important part of what to do with okra in July. It is advisable to pick them little and often every few days rather than opting for more infrequent, larger harvests.

The perfect pods are 2-3 inches long. Picking them often encourages the plant to keep producing new ones, whereas leaving mature pods slows down the development.

Use small pruners (like these Fiskars pruning snips at Walmart) or a sharp knife to harvest okra pods. Don’t pull the pods, as okra plants have very shallow roots, and you risk damaging the entire plant.

It is also advisable to wear gloves and long sleeves (you can get gardening sleeves at Amazon to stay protected) when working with okra plants. The stems, leaves, and pods have fine hairs that can irritate the skin.

2. Keep the Soil Moist

Okra is a fairly drought-tolerant vegetable once established in its planting spot, but this doesn’t mean it doesn’t need to be kept hydrated during July.

When okra is flowering and fruiting, it is a key time to keep the soil consistently moist to guarantee the best harvests. For the best yield, give okra at least one inch of water per week, though this amount can increase in hotter climates.

Keep a close eye on when to water plants, checking at least once a day during the summer months. Check the moisture levels a few inches under the surface, and water plants deeply to soak the root zone.

Always water the soil around the plants, rather than soaking them from above. Watering the foliage increases the risk of fungal diseases, such as powdery mildew. A soaker hose (such as this 25 ft flat soaker hose, available at Amazon) or drip irrigation is an efficient way to direct water into the soil and to the roots of the plants.

3. Feed Okra Plants in Pots

Okra plants benefit from balanced fertilizer at the time of planting. Those growing in the ground don’t tend to need extra feeding during the season, unless they show signs of struggling, such as slow growth or yellowing foliage. In this case, use a balanced liquid fertilizer, like this all-purpose plant food from Amazon.

If you are growing okra in pots in a vegetable container garden, these plants will need regular feeding throughout July and the rest of summer. The best fertilizers for these plants are higher in potassium, such as this Farmer’s Secret fruit and bloom booster fertilizer, also at Amazon. Apply this fertilizer every two or three weeks once the okra starts flowering.

The big fertilizing mistake to avoid is giving okra plants too much nitrogen this month. Using high-nitrogen feeds will result in a mass of foliage and leafy growth, but few flowers or pods.

4. Support Plants if Needed

Okra can reach four to six feet tall, depending on the variety, so they ideally need to be staked, especially in windy gardens. The plants are often self-supporting, thanks to their woody stems, but taller varieties do need staking to keep them secure during the season, especially when they are top-heavy.

The easiest type of plant support for okra is a sturdy bamboo cane (like these eight-foot bamboo plant stakes at Home Depot) or landscape stake.

A single support is required per plant, as they are not the types of plants that will climb a vegetable garden trellis. Alternatively, you can construct a tall tomato cage around plants to contain and stop them from falling over when laden with pods.

Use thin plant ties when attaching the okra stem to the support, such as twine, cloth, or Velcro straps, and don’t tie it too tightly.

5. Check for Pests

July is a time when okra can be under attack from many different summer garden pests, whether the crop is growing indoors or outdoors. Aphids, spider mites, flea beetles, stink bugs, and caterpillars are all known to trouble okra and can feed on leaves, stems, and pods.

Look out for signs of pest issues and take prompt action to stop populations from increasing quickly. It is recommended to pay particular close attention to the underside of foliage.

Smaller pests can be knocked off the plant with a strong blast of water from a garden hose, and insecticidal soap can combat populations (you can get ready-to-use insecticidal soap at Walmart, but use it with care as it can also kill beneficial insects). Larger pests can be manually picked off by hand and placed into a container filled with soapy water.

To reduce pest populations, try companion planting okra with aromatic herbs like chives, dill, and chamomile to repel insects or beneficial flowers such as marigolds or nasturtiums, which both deter pests from okra and attract natural predators.

6. Cut Okra Plants Back

In the hottest US hardiness zones, okra plants tend to slow down and stop producing flowers and pods. This can happen in late July or early August in the warmest southern climates, and growers often prune plants as a result.

It may sound brutal, but cutting okra plants back to around one or two feet from the ground in midsummer encourages the plants to produce a smaller, second crop of pods. If you do this technique, fertilize the plants with a balanced feed after pruning, and keep on top of watering to encourage healthy new growth.

A granular, balanced feed, such as this organic, all-purpose plant food from Burpee, is the best product. It offers plants all the essential nutrients they need to regrow and provide a second round of pods from late summer into fall.

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If you enjoy collecting seeds to regrow your own vegetables next year, you can do this with okra. However, wait until later in the season to start. To harvest okra seeds, leave some pods to develop later in the fall. If you leave them in the summer, the plant will stop producing new ones to harvest.

So wait until the picking is winding down for the season; only then leave some pods to grow large, brown, and brittle. You can snip these from the plants and collect the seeds to sow again.

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Plucking homegrown fruit from your backyard is one of the summer joys many of us gardeners look forward to. By the time July comes around, our peach trees are producing delicious, juicy fruits, so they require a bit of attention.

If you're growing a peach tree in your garden, then you'll need to do some light pruning, keep on top of watering during hot spells, and check the fruit to see if it's ready to harvest this month, as well as remove any diseased fruit.

Neglecting these tasks now could hinder your harvest and the overall health of your tree. So, grab your harvest basket (I love the look of this wooden garden hod from Burpee) and head out to the yard. Here's what to do with a peach tree in July.

1. Prune Lightly

Knowing when to prune a peach tree is very important. Do it at the wrong time and you could remove flower buds, meaning no fruit.

Likewise, heavy pruning in summer can stress your tree and lead to its decline. That's why arborist Levi Williams advises only doing some light maintenance in July.

'As a rule of thumb, diseased or dead branches can be removed at any time and that includes July. Do not heavily prune trees during the summer months,' he says.

You should focus on removing the damaged branches and also thinning out any overcrowded, crossing branches. This will improve airflow and reduce the likelihood of disease, including peach leaf curl which distorts the leaves from excess moisture and causes them to drop off.

These Fiskars bypass loppers from Amazon can help you reach higher up your peach tree, and they'll make clean cuts.

2. Water Deeply

Watering is key when it comes to growing any fruit tree, but it's even more important to keep on top of during the hot summer months.

Letting a peach tree dry out in July can result in heat stress, stunting growth, dropping fruit and flowers, and even death in prolonged drought.

'Make sure to water trees heavily 1-2 inches of water per week,' Levi advises.

At the same time, you want to avoid excessive moisture when your peach tree is fruiting. This can cause the fruit to split and rot before you get the chance to harvest.

If in doubt, you can use this soil moisture meter from Amazon to check how wet your peach tree's soil is.

And if you're growing a peach tree in a pot (like this 'Elberta' peach tree from Plant Addicts), remember it will dry out much more quickly than those planted in the ground.

3. Check the Fruit

July to September is the typical harvest time for peaches, which means it's time to check your fruit for ripeness.

Peaches are ready to pick when there is no trace of green on the fruit and it has a creamy yellow or white hue, starting to blush. You can leave peaches attached until they fully blush for the sweetest taste, but because they're climacteric, they will carry on ripening off the branch.

They should also give a little when gently squeezed. Hard fruit is not yet ready to pick. Likewise, the peaches should come away from the stems with a gentle twist, and have a sweet aroma.

'Don't forget to also remove any fallen or rotten fruit to avoid pests,' Levi advises.

'And if a branch is full of fruit and causing them to bend, it is recommended to provide support for branches with props,' he adds.

You can use these fruit tree crutches from Amazon or create your own natural plant support by repurposing tree branches.

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FAQs

Do You Fertilize Peach Trees While They're Fruiting?

No, there isn't a need to fertilize peach trees while they're fruiting, unless it is nutrient deficient (which can be spotted by pale leaves and poor shoot growth). Instead, you should fertilize your peach tree in early spring to give it a boost of nutrients ahead of fruit production.

If you're struggling to get your peach tree to fruit, there are a few things you can do. This includes providing full sun exposure by pruning branches.

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July is not the end of the vegetable-growing season; in many regions it is the beginning of a second act. While tomatoes are swelling, beans are climbing, and zucchini are plotting world domination, there is still time to sow a surprising range of crops that will keep producing through fall and, in some climates, well into winter. The best vegetables to plant in July include quick-growing roots, leafy greens, brassicas, and cool-season favorites that often taste even better after a touch of frost.

Timing is everything. Warm soil temperatures help seeds germinate rapidly, while the gradually shortening days of late summer create ideal conditions for many crops that struggle in spring heat. For gardeners in temperate zones across the US, July offers a valuable opportunity to extend the harvest season and make the most of every square foot of growing space.

And while you are planning productive beds, it is also worth thinking about sowing perennials and biennials in July that will return year after year, helping to keep borders colorful while your vegetable patch continues earning its keep.

1. Turnips (Brassica rapa)

Poor turnips suffer from an image problem. Mention them at a dinner party and people react as though you have suggested boiled wallpaper. Yet grow your own young turnips, and the story changes completely.

July-sown turnips mature quickly in warm soil and develop sweet, crisp roots as temperatures cool. Small roots harvested young are worlds apart from the oversized specimens that haunt childhood memories.

Many varieties mature in as little as 40 to 60 days, making them perfect for gardeners racing against the first frost. The greens are equally valuable. In southern states, especially, turnip greens remain a cherished cool-season crop.

When planning late-season vegetables, it is worth considering how to prepare veg beds properly between crops, particularly after harvesting hungry summer vegetables that may have depleted nutrients.

For a reliable harvest, the top-rated Purple Top Turnip Seeds for Planting from Amazon are an excellent choice, offering strong germination rates and sweet, flavorful roots.

2. Kale (Brassica oleracea var. sabellica)

Personally, I think kale is a heroic vegetable. While lesser vegetables collapse dramatically at the first hint of frost, kale merely straightens its collar and carries on.

July is an ideal time to sow kale for fall and winter harvests. Plants establish in warm conditions before maturing as cooler weather arrives. Frost actually improves flavor by converting starches into sugars.

I often find that the finest kale harvests come from summer sowings rather than spring ones. The leaves are cleaner, sweeter, and less prone to bolting. In Zones 6 and above, many varieties continue producing through winter. In colder regions, simple row covers can extend the season significantly.

Gardeners interested in year-round productivity may also enjoy exploring cold-frame growing methods, which pair beautifully with kale and other hardy greens.

The Lacinato kale seeds from Amazon are a favorite of mine, producing elegant, dark, textured leaves with excellent cold tolerance. I love tossing freshly picked kale into salads alongside homegrown microgreens, which is exactly why I've been using this Organic Self-Watering Microgreens Growing Kit from Amazon to keep a steady supply growing on my kitchen counter.

3. Bush Beans (Phaseolus vulgaris)

Many gardeners assume bean season ends in spring, but bush beans are wonderfully accommodating. Quick-maturing varieties sown in early July often produce generous harvests before frost arrives. Because the soil is warm, seeds germinate rapidly and plants grow with astonishing speed.

I regularly sow a second crop after harvesting garlic. It feels slightly mischievous to harvest beans from space that sat empty just a few weeks earlier.

Bush beans also help improve soil by fixing nitrogen, making them useful participants in crop rotations. If summer heat is intense in your region, consistent watering is crucial during flowering and pod formation.

For succession sowing, Provider bush bean seeds from Burpee remain one of the most dependable varieties available.

4. Carrots (Daucus carota)

Carrots are among the finest vegetables to plant in July. In fact, I often prefer sowing them now rather than in spring. The soil is warm, germination is faster, and there are fewer interruptions from cold snaps and prolonged wet weather.

For gardeners in USDA Zones 4-8, many varieties can be sown throughout July for harvesting in the fall. In milder regions, late sowings may even overwinter beneath mulch for exceptionally sweet roots.

Choose shorter or mid-season varieties if your first frost arrives early. Keep seedbeds consistently moist during germination, as carrot seeds can be frustratingly slow if allowed to dry out.

If carrot fly is a problem where you garden, consider growing under insect mesh or in raised beds. You might also find inspiration from companion planting approaches often used in vegetable gardens, particularly when planning succession crops in smaller spaces.

My favorite Sweet Treat Carrot Plant from Plant Addicts is a fantastic option for an easy start. If you’d prefer to grow from seed, The Old Farmer's Almanac Heirloom Carrot Seeds from Amazon are a reliable choice, while Scarlet Nantes carrot seeds from True Leaf Market remain a classic favorite, prized for their sweet flavor, crisp texture, and dependable harvests.

5. Beets (Beta vulgaris)

Beets seem to possess a cheerful confidence. They never complain about warm weather, they germinate enthusiastically, and they offer two harvests in one: roots below and edible leaves above.

July sowings generally mature during fall, producing tender roots ideal for roasting, pickling, or slicing into salads. The cooling temperatures of autumn improve flavor considerably.

I particularly enjoy growing beets after harvesting early potatoes. The soil has already been cultivated and enriched, making it an ideal spot for a quick second crop. Detroit Dark Red beet seeds from Burpee are an excellent choice for dependable fall harvests.

Keep seedlings well watered while establishing. Once growing strongly, they are remarkably resilient. You may have to net them until they establish, as I found out the hard way this year.

If you are looking to maximize yields in smaller yards, techniques often used in raised bed vegetable gardening work beautifully with beets, allowing close spacing and efficient succession planting.

6. Swiss Chard (Beta vulgaris var. cicla)

Swiss chard is one of the most underrated vegetables to plant in July. It tolerates summer heat far better than lettuce while continuing to produce deep into fall.

The colorful stems add ornamental value, blurring the line between vegetable patch and flower border. I often tuck chard into mixed beds where it looks every bit as handsome as many decorative plants.

The Bright Lights Swiss Chard from Plant Addicts is my go-to choice if you don't want to sow from seeds, but if you do, I also love the Bright Lights Swiss Chard seeds from Amazon, which provide a rainbow of stem colors and excellent garden performance.

Harvest outer leaves regularly, and plants will continue producing for months. In mild climates, they may survive winter entirely. For gardeners who appreciate edimentals, Swiss chard offers beauty and practicality in equal measure.

7. Chinese Cabbage (Brassica rapa subsp. pekinensis)

One of the frustrations of spring sowing is that Chinese cabbage often bolts before producing worthwhile heads. July changes everything. As days gradually shorten, plants focus on forming dense, crisp heads rather than rushing into flower. The result is often superior to spring-grown crops.

Good moisture is essential. Any interruption in watering can affect quality and encourage bitterness.

These handsome cabbages are ideal for slaws, stir-fries, and fermentation projects. If you have ever wanted to make your own kimchi, this is an excellent crop to grow.

Gardeners planning a productive hardy vegetable garden often include Chinese cabbage among their most valuable late-summer sowings.

Look for Matsushima No. 2 Chinese cabbage seeds from True Leaf Market for reliable results.

8. Radishes (Raphanus sativus)

If gardening were judged solely on speed, radishes would win every competition.

Many varieties mature in less than a month, making them perfect vegetables to plant in July. They can fill temporary gaps between slower-growing crops and provide almost instant gratification.

I often sow a short row whenever space appears. By the time I have forgotten about them, they are ready to harvest.

Fall-grown radishes are usually superior to spring crops. Cooler conditions encourage crisp roots with milder flavor.

Burpee Cherry Belle Radish seeds from Amazon remain a classic choice for quick and reliable harvests. For continuous harvests, sow little and often through July and August.

9. Lettuce (Lactuca sativa)

Yes, lettuce can still be sown in July. The secret lies in choosing heat-tolerant varieties and providing a little afternoon shade where summers are particularly hot.

The rewards arrive as temperatures begin cooling in late summer. Tender leaves develop rapidly and often outperform spring crops.

I sow lettuce every few weeks from spring through summer because there is something deeply satisfying about walking into the yard and gathering salad ingredients moments before dinner.

For dependable results, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce seeds from Burpee are a longstanding favorite. Keep seedbeds moist during germination and consider using shade cloth in warmer regions.

Gardeners seeking extended harvests often combine lettuce with other cut-and-come-again vegetables, creating a steady supply of fresh leaves right through fall.

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Spring gets all the attention, but July rewards thoughtful gardeners. While others are admiring their tomatoes and assuming the work is done, you can quietly set in motion a second season of harvests.

The beauty of sowing vegetables in July lies in optimism. Every seed represents a promise that gardening does not end with summer. Carrots sweeten beneath autumn skies, kale glistens after frost, and rows of fresh lettuce appear just when many assume the growing season is winding down.

That, surely, is one of gardening’s greatest pleasures: the realization that there is always another crop waiting just around the corner.

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As the temperatures soar in the summer, cool-season crops are always likely to bolt. It is a frustrating yet natural process, and one that gardeners consistently battle with year after year.

Vegetables, including lettuce, spinach, arugula, radishes, and Asian greens, bolt and start to flower when temperatures pass 70°F. However, there are ways to prevent bolting vegetables, such as proper watering, mulching, providing shade to your crops, and planting them at the right time.

I have seen many crops bolt over my years growing vegetables. While I have lost many potential harvests, I have also picked up a few tips to reduce the chances of bolting vegetables blotting your kitchen garden. Whatever the size of your vegetable garden, these five factors can make a difference each season.

1. Be Consistent With Watering

Regular, consistent watering can reduce stress on your crops and lessen the chances of you looking at rows and rows of bolting vegetables you need to remove from the garden.

True, temperatures will affect when a vegetable bolts. But the likelihood of it happening increases when a crop is under stress from a lack of moisture. Vegetables suffering from drought stress will also start to bolt at lower temperatures.

To avoid this happening, check your plants often (a moisture meter can make it obvious when it is time to water – you can get a soil moisture meter at Amazon) and keep them well hydrated. Infrequent deep watering is more beneficial than little-and-often watering, and offers the best way to keep soil moist in the summer.

So your watering makes the most impact; water the vegetable garden in the morning on hot days. This helps prevent the soil from drying out and gives crops time to take up moisture before the temperatures rise.

2. Mulch to Regulate Temperature and Moisture

Heat and moisture are two factors that cause bolting of vegetables. An efficient way to combat both is by mulching the vegetable garden.

Mulching around crops regulates soil temperature. The thick barrier keeps the rays at bay, so the soil around the roots stays cool rather than getting baking hot. The layer also locks moisture in the ground, meaning less water is lost to evaporation, and your plants can take advantage.

Use organic products for this. The best organic mulch for a vegetable garden includes compost, straw, bark (you can get bags of pine bark mulch at Lowe’s), or shredded leaves. Spread it in a nice, thick 2-3 inch layer around your vegetables.

3. Give Crops Some Shade

High temperatures usually kick-start cool-season vegetables into survival mode, where they bolt in an attempt to flower and produce seed before their time is nigh. Giving crops some shade from the sun reduces the temperature by several degrees and can be the difference between bolting and non-bolting vegetables.

Gardeners can use shade cloth to cover plants. It is ideal to opt for a shade cloth that keeps out 50% of the light, such as this breathable shade cloth at Amazon.

You need to install the cloth over some hoops (like these fiberglass hoops at Walmart) to keep it raised off the crops. As the cloth heats up, if it is touching the vegetables, it can burn them.

An alternative way of providing more natural shade is through companion planting. You can plant cool-season, heat-sensitive crops under the partial shade of taller vegetables, including pole beans, tomatoes, or corn.

4. Pick Bolt-Resistant Varieties

One efficient way to avoid the issue of bolting vegetables is to be savvy when shopping for seeds. There are bolt-resistant varieties of many vegetables to plant, including spinach, lettuces, and Asian greens.

In truth, bolt-resistant varieties aren’t a guarantee. They have been bred using modern techniques to be more resilient to temperatures or inconsistent watering, but they can still bolt under extreme conditions.

Adding some bolt-resistant or heat-tolerant varieties of cool-season crops to your seed sowing schedule can help alleviate potential worries about vegetables bolting.

For example, you can get bolt-resistant Seaside spinach seeds at Burpee and bolt-resistant Jericho lettuce seeds at True Leaf Market to try out if you regularly suffer from these crops bolting each season.

5. Time Your Planting Right

Often, gardeners see their crops bolt because they have been planted a bit outside of the ideal.

We have all sown cool-season crops a bit too late in spring, which leads them to bolt once the summer temperatures arrive. Even fast-growing vegetables can lack the time to go from sowing to cropping if sown in late spring or early summer.

Ensure you give them enough time to mature. Work out the days to maturity – which you can often find on seed packets or online – and sow them at the appropriate time. If you miss the spring sowing, you can often sow again in late summer for harvests in the fall.

To avoid complete losses, radishes, lettuce, spinach, and arugula can be planted successively.

Starting early in spring (once the ground is warm enough, or even sowing seeds indoors) and sowing these every few weeks will give you different ages of crop in the kitchen garden. If they do bolt in the summer, you should have already had some harvests, and you don’t lose an entire crop.

Sometimes, bolting happens, and you have to deal with it. However, it doesn’t always mean you need to throw the crop away.

With some crops, like lettuce and spinach, the larger leaves can turn bitter, yet the smaller ones remain flavorful – it is not a total loss.

When it comes to bolting onions, though, you can lift the bulb and use it straight away in the kitchen. The bulbs may be smaller than ideal, but you can still harvest the onions and eat them.

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Growing your own fruit has to be one of the most rewarding things to do as a gardener. One way to get more out of your crops is by propagating them, i.e. multiplying them and growing double as much fruit.

If you grow blueberries, you can propagate them through cuttings. It might seem daunting compared to propagating ornamentals, but the truth is blueberry plants are straightforward to multiply, especially through softwood summer cuttings. It is also possible to propagate via hardwood cuttings in fall, though this takes much longer.

There are only a handful of steps to successfully propagate blueberries from cuttings, and you don't need loads of tools either (though, picking up this rooting hormone powder from Amazon will boost your chances of success). Here, with insights from a professional gardener, I talk through each step so you can harvest even more juicy berries from your backyard.

1. Take Healthy Cuttings

'Blueberries can be propagated from hardwood (old growth) or softwood (new growth),' says market gardener, Cody Deluisio.

'Softwood cuttings can be taken from early spring into mid-summer. Hardwood cuttings are taken after the leaves have fallen off in the fall,' he explains.

Softwood cuttings tend to provide faster results, as they take root much more easily. But, hardwood cuttings are thought to be more low-maintenance to manage, so there are benefits to both.

Whichever you choose, the first step is to identify and take healthy cuttings.

'Start by cleaning sharp gardening snips with rubbing alcohol. You want them to be very clean,' Cody says.

This will prevent the spread of pests and diseases, and ensure plant health is maintained. These Fiskars bypass pruning shears from Amazon will easily cut through both old and new growth.

For softwood, look for new growth that is flexible and green, and has several sets of leaves. 'Cut 4-6 inches of healthy stem right where it goes to hardwood at a 45° angle,' Cody describes. Take care to cut just below a leaf node, as this is where roots will emerge.

To take hardwood cuttings later in the year, rather focus on last year's growth. This will be the woodier stems, around a pencil's thickness, and 6-10 inches in length. You should cut half-an-inch above a bud, also at a 45° angle.

2. Prepare the Stems

The next step to propagate blueberries from cuttings is cleaning the stems, i.e. removing unnecessary foliage.

'Strip all leaves of but the top two,' Cody advises.

Leaving lower leaves can risk rotting when the cutting is in soil, and also drain's the plant's energy. You can use your fingers to pinch them off or these gardening micro snips from Lowe's to cut them off cleanly, redirecting the cutting's energy into rooting.

For hardwood cuttings, there won't be foliage to remove as the plant is dormant.

For both types of cutting, it's recommended to dip the end in rooting hormone. This is a powder (it also comes in gel form, like this rooting hormone gel from Amazon) that contains plant auxins responsible for rooting.

'Rooting hormone is optional but greatly improves success,' Cody notes.

3. Plant the Stems

With your cuttings prepped, the next step is to plant them in a well-draining, acidic soil to help them root.

'Put the cutting into an acidic mix, either a store-bought acidic potting mix (like this from Walmart) or 50/50 peat moss and perlite (which you can purchase from Amazon),' says Cody. 'Place the end of the cutting approximately two inches deep and firm the soil around it,' he describes.

Blueberries are acidic-loving plants, so if needed you can make your soil more acidic for both your existing shrubs and new plants.

'Soak the soil and let it drain for 15-30 minutes,' Cody says.

4. Find a Home For Your Cuttings

Where you keep your blueberry cuttings depends on whether they're hardwood or softwood.

'For softwood cuttings, place the container in a greenhouse or a bag to keep humidity up. Make sure it gets indirect sunlight,' Cody describes.

You should maintain consistent moisture and a temperature between 68-77°F. These humidity domes from Amazon can be useful to use if you aren't able to provide a greenhouse. Take care to place the cuttings somewhere with bright light.

Hardwood cuttings don't need so much humidity because they are dormant and leafless. Instead, keep them somewhere bright and cool, and maintain consistent moisture without becoming soggy in winter conditions.

A cold frame (you can find affordable portable cold frames at Walmart), unheated greenhouse, or a sheltered wall are the best options for hardwood cuttings.

5. Regularly Check Your Cuttings

One of the biggest propagation mistakes for any plant is neglecting your cuttings and expecting them to still take root. Instead, you should be regularly checking on cuttings.

Softwood blueberry cuttings usually root within six to 10 weeks, while hardwood cuttings take several months.

You should maintain high humidity and moisture for softwood cuttings, while watching out for overly wet soil and temperature fluctuations for hardwood cuttings.

This soil moisture meter from Amazon can help you get watering right by identifying the moisture level in soil for you.

Give your cutting a gentle pull to check whether it has rooted before planting up.

'Take care not to tug for at least six weeks, the roots will be very weak and can be easily broken,' Cody warns.

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