The ‘Master’ Plan behind every successful garden

Stephen Jones

OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener Volunteer

Although on a cal­en­dar it is still mid­sum­mer, by most stan­dards sum­mer is draw­ing to a close. A new school year is just around the cor­ner and the easy days of sum­mer are sud­denly packed with appoint­ments and errands. As a result, often the gar­den suf­fers. Annu­als and peren­ni­als alike are over­grown and under-watered, drain­ing their soil every day of nutri­ents. Of course it is some­what tempt­ing to just let it go until autumn…but with just a lit­tle bit of effort and a well-laid plan you can max­i­mize the rest of your garden’s sum­mer and begin to pre­pare for the chang­ing sea­son. Behind every suc­cess­ful gar­den, there is a mas­ter plan.

One of the eas­i­est improve­ments to make to the mid­sum­mer gar­den is scal­ing down annual growth. Par­tic­u­larly vines such as sweet potato and vinca. All those extra leaves and roots your vines have added are increas­ing the plant’s need for water. Veg­e­ta­tive growth like their leaves needs a lot of water to sup­port itself and as a result the whole vine wilts. Every bit trimmed off will make a dif­fer­ence in how far its water goes. Luck­ily trim­ming vines is fool­proof — cut freely to acquire the shape and arrange­ment you desire. Petu­nias can also be cut back in the same fash­ion. This time of year is also per­fect to give your con­tain­ers and gar­den a solid fer­til­iza­tion to nour­ish the soil that has been sup­port­ing your plants all season.

Because your mas­ter plan should include all four sea­sons, it is the per­fect time to con­sider win­ter inter­est in your gar­den — and even the spring to fol­low. If you plan to plant bulbs this autumn, now is the time to research which vari­eties you would like and order them. With so many fan­tas­tic online resources avail­able as well as mail-order cat­a­logs the selec­tion is end­less in rare tulips, daf­fodil and hyacinth for exam­ple. Pop­u­lar vari­eties always sell out, so by being ahead of the curve you ensure your­self best selec­tion. Of course after the crisp lovely days of fall, win­ter does set in; and it is lovely to have some action in your win­ter gar­den. Whether you choose to liven up your win­ter land­scape with bird­feed­ers or add color with box­wood and blue spruce there are actu­ally a fair amount of viable options for win­ter inter­est. Just remem­ber, if you invite birds and squir­rels in the win­ter they will still be there in the spring. Some gar­den­ers pre­fer to leave their orna­men­tal grasses uncut through the win­ter because of the unique way they catch snow. Con­sid­er­ing all of these com­po­nents to your gar­den now will help you achieve your gar­den goals every season.

Another great project to start this time of year is com­post. Com­post is called “black gold” by many gar­den­ers for good rea­son — there is sim­ply no more nat­ural, easy or inex­pen­sive way to add potent health and nutri­tion to the gar­den than with com­post. Also with the abun­dance of fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles right now there is a sur­plus of fruit and veg­etable scraps almost every night. Another advan­tage to start­ing the com­post now is it will get a head start and be use­able for next year. Com­post­ing requires heat to pro­duce the end result, and while it will even­tu­ally pro­duce its own heat in the dead of win­ter, it only helps to give it the advan­tage of a warm envi­ron­ment. If you have not ever com­posted before, try it this sea­son. Your plants will thank you next summer.

While it is still too hot to trans­plant, prune or divide any peren­ni­als it is the per­fect time to decide and iden­tify which of your peren­ni­als need care in the com­ing fall. Arm­ing your­self with a plan will save you from wan­der­ing through the gar­den on a cold fall day unsure which peren­nial needs what. First decide which plants need divided or trans­planted, and which require fall pruning.

Sum­mer always has a way of slip­ping right into fall, but hope­fully this year there will be no sur­prises for the gar­dener with the mas­ter plan. At this crit­i­cal time of year a lit­tle bit of mid­sum­mer main­te­nance goes a long way and will con­tinue to keep your gar­den an excit­ing and daz­zling retreat for your fam­ily ­and friends.

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener volunteer.

Posted by Master Gardener on Aug 12 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.