By the end of August every year, I am usually feeling how our vegetable garden looks - slightly wilted and tired - more than ready for the winding down of autumn into winter. In middle Tennessee, August is often our hottest and most humid month of the year. The verdant greens of high spring and early summer start leeching away and everything slowly turns sun-bleached hues of green and yellow and brown. The sun loses some of its intensity and that subtle shift in light means that autumn is truly on its way, even if it doesn’t remotely feel like it yet.
Here at Woodside, spring and early summer was a marathon of planting! In went the veg garden (now in its second year). In went dozens of perennials and shrubs (some of which had been languishing in pots for over two years). And finally, in went sod and 160 yews, just after the grading for the Long Walk was finally finished.
Then, like much of the rest of the world, it turned hot and dry here for weeks on end. Watering became an act of triage, rotating from one area to the next to try and keep things alive enough to send down roots and get established.
It was exhausting and little thrived.
We lost a half dozen yews, some potted perennials that hadn’t made it into the ground yet and our youngest apple trees.
Our vegetable garden did not produce bountiful harvests. The cucumbers were all slightly misshapen and succumbed to mildew early, field mice made meals of all our melons (no doubt suffering from lack of water themselves), the tomatillos looked sickly all season and everything that could bolt, did.
And in the midst of it all, we couldn’t keep up with eating and preserving the things that did grow. Some weeks the chickens ate more from the garden than we did.
But here’s the thing: it was a hard year for gardeners everywhere and it’s important to remember that it is OK if you did not can every tomato and save every plant. It does not mean you failed in any way, because that’s the wonderful thing about gardens: there is always next year.
As the season winds down, it is worth taking a look around at the things that have done well. Both as a reminder that even in the most adverse situations things can and will survive, but also as lessons about what plants can do well in hotter, dryer conditions. We will certainly continue to have both.
There were things in our ornamental garden that defied the heat and the humidity and romped on without care: the Vitex, the Echinacea, the ornamental grasses and Black Eyed Susans. The Cannas, the Lantana, the Gaura and the fig trees had no issues. We have a potted key lime and a bay laurel that could not have been happier.
Even some plants that I thought were almost dead, having been scorched by too much sun and too little water, are suddenly getting a second wind in August after one good rain and are growing back. The foliage suffered, but I suspect heavy mulch protected the roots and kept them cool enough to survive.
It was also interesting to note that, for us, some plants that are traditionally considered full sun actually performed quite well with half sun under the tall canopy of a younger tree. The light shade reduced some of the sun-stress and kept things from needing as much water.
In the veg garden, the cherry tomatoes and hot peppers loved the heat and had little demand for extra watering. The zucchini squash faired very well despite irregular watering and our berry patch offered up generous handfuls of fresh fruit each morning for weeks on end.
If there was a star of the veg garden this year, though, it was the butternut squash. We planted a few vines for the first time ever and they were so prolific that I cannot imagine it not being a staple in our garden now.
It also requires no more commitment from you than picking at the right time, curing someplace warm for 10 days or so and then storing away in cool pantry until fall or winter when you have renewed energy and want to turn it into hardy butternut squash soup.
August Garden Tasks
I am aggressively clearing out things from our raised veg beds that are clearly past the point of being able to produce much else in these last few months before our first frost date.
I didn’t start much way of seeds for fall crops this year, but fortunately there is a local farm and CSA where I have purchase starts to plant out in September. I’m going to try a few things I haven’t grown before, just to see how they do.
I am still watering, but we have had some sporadic rain days here and there so it is a less frantic affair.
I am taking a break. In early mornings when it is cooler and the humidity hasn’t kicked in yet, I am walking through our garden and just simply enjoying the progress we have made so far.
“Field Notes from Woodside Gardens” is a collection of stories about creating a garden. Most Fridays, I share what’s going on in our garden, along with tips and ideas that you can use in yours, wherever you are. Please consider becoming a free subscriber if you haven’t already.