Dahlias have been showing off all summer, and if yours are anything like mine, they’re still going strong right now.…
If you’ve walked past a flower bed this week and spotted a cluster of pink or lavender blooms shooting straight…
If you moved your houseplants outside for the summer, congratulations, they probably look amazing right now. Bigger leaves, better color,…
If your bearded irises bloomed sparse and sad this past spring, or if the clump looks like a tangled mess…
Every seed packet says lettuce and spinach germinate best between 60 and 75 degrees. Cute. Right now the soil in most backyards is sitting somewhere north of 85, and those little seeds are basically staging a sit-in refusing to sprout. This is the single biggest reason people give up on fall vegetable gardens before they…
By this point in August, your petunias have probably gone from a lush, spilling mound to something that looks more like a tumbleweed with a few sad blooms clinging to the ends. The stems are long and bare in the middle, the flowers have migrated to the very tips, and no amount of deadheading seems…
If you’ve walked outside this week and noticed weird circular patches in your lawn that look like someone dragged a wet cigar across the grass, you’re not imagining it. That’s brown patch, and August’s combination of heat, humidity, and overnight moisture is basically a welcome mat for it. It shows up almost overnight, spreads fast,…
If your rose bushes suddenly look like lace doilies and there’s a metallic green beetle orgy happening on every bloom, congratulations, you’ve got Japanese beetles at peak season. Early-to-mid August is their prime feeding window, and they will absolutely ruin your roses, grapes, hibiscus, and beans in the span of a week if you let…
You pick a cucumber that looks perfect, slice into it expecting that cool, crisp bite, and instead get something that tastes like it’s been marinating in dandelion stems. Bitter cucumbers are an August staple of disappointment, and no, it’s not you doing anything catastrophically wrong. It’s mostly the weather being a jerk. The culprit has…
You check the tomato patch after a good soaking rain expecting to be thrilled, and instead you find half your Brandywines have burst open like they lost a fight. This is peak August behavior, and it’s almost always about water, not disease, not pests, not bad luck. Let’s talk about why it happens and what…
