August In the Garden

This week on “In the Garden with UC Master Gardeners”, it’s ‘This Month in the Garden’ for August. UC Master Gardeners Katrina Kirkeby and Teena Spindler are back to help you get through the heart of summer with tips for your garden. Unless you live right on the coast, Just “Say No” to thoughts of planting most varieties of  permanent landscape plants. BUT … Just “Say Yes” to Bananas!  If you have the space and a good source of water and fertilizer, you can be successful and have your own fruit in a little over a year. Katrina and Teena always have a great time sharing their gardening experience with you every month on the “In the Garden” that always airs on the first Thursday of the month at 8:30 a.m. PST on 88.9 KUCI Irvine if you are in our broadcast area. You can also find our show on this podcast platform or on our website KUCI.org/listen. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the In the Garden Show produced by UC Master Gardeners. I'm Katrina Kirkabee and I am one of your co-hosts today, along with Tina Spindler. And this week's topic is August in the Garden. Good morning, Tina. Good morning.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Who wants to be in the garden in August? It's too hot. Too hot. But but we are going to give you some tips on what your garden needs in August, and then you can figure out when you can get out there to do it when you're not going to be baked to death.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

I'm an early morning person in the August in the garden. I don't spend a lot of time in the garden, but it's early.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

When I go out in the garden in August, man, I make sure I have a water bottle close at hand. Even if it's early in the morning because you get hot so quickly. And and there aren't even any clouds to burn off in August, usually. The sun is just out from the get-go at the beginning of the day.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

See, I really don't like the heat. I am up like right before sunrise. Oh, there you go. There's no sun. It's just a light enough to get out, and I'm done by 7 a.m. 7 am done.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Wow, you're you're an early bird. Um but we we can we can do some of these watering uh techniques so that we don't have to spend a lot of time out there watering. And we've we talk about these a lot. We talked about them in July, um, but I but I am going to add some new ones that we haven't talked about before. But first of all, let's just review the ones that we normally talk about. The first of which is to turn your sprinklers on manually if you haven't done it recently and make sure that all of the sprinkler heads are functioning, that they're all pointing in the right direction, because we don't want to have that water running off into the street. And then also when you do that, check your timer. Make sure that you have it coming on for the appropriate amount of time for the appropriate number of days during the week. And if you don't know or you're a little confused about, you know, am I over or underwatering? Our advice is to go to your water district's website. I know mine in Irvine, Irvine Ranch Water District, has a great page on their website that tells you for this time of year your sprinkler should be running, you know, every other day, and for turf it should be on, you know, for whatever it is, you know, three minutes, uh two different cycles of three minutes or three different cycles of two minutes each. And let me just recap what that means. A cycled irrigation means that say you think you need to water or it's recommended that you water your lawn for a total of six minutes. Well, you don't want to turn the sprinkler on one time for six minutes for the whole time, because what that does is it allows that water to pool, to run off, and to not soak into the ground, perhaps. It's better to have three different cycles of two minutes each and a break in between so that that water has a chance to percolate down deep where the roots are. And so the way you do that is when you have, you know, say you have six stations in your in your yard, and you program each station, you know, you have a drought-tolerant area, you know, that doesn't need much water at all. But you have a lawn and that needs to have more time. So you program each of those stations to come on for the appropriate amount of time, and it goes through one whole cycle of all six stations, and then you tell it your automatic sprinkler system that you want it to do three different times of that program. So it will start with station one, then go to station two, three, four, five, six, and when it's finished, it'll start again. One, two, three, four, five, six. But you're doing each individual station for a lesser amount of time as it comes on.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

So what you say, it'll absorb better.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

It definitely will absorb better. So if you haven't set your sprinkler system up to have that cycled irrigation, be sure you do that. If you're not sure how to operate your timer then uh and you've lost the instructions, uh, if you have a gardener, you can ask them to do it because they're usually pretty familiar with all automatic sprinkler timers. Uh if you do it yourself, uh what you can do is you can find the model number and the make of your timer, and you can go online and you can do almost every irrigation controller will have instructions online that you can then download and keep in a safe place.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

And I tend to do it when it's cool. Oh, yeah. So I'm some people like to do this stuff in the morning, some like to do it in the afternoon. Most of us don't like to do it in the heat. Yeah. So just go have a glass of walk ice water, a cold drink, and go over there and play with your system. And also, it's a good time to make sure my system is running. I'm using more water this month than any other month. Sure. So I really want to make sure I turn turned my sprinklers on the other day early in the morning, and it just took a few minutes to turn them on to make sure I had no leaks, there's no broken faucet, because I am pumping out as much water as I'm going to use any other time. And if there's wasteful time, this is when I would have an if I had broken anything, this is when I would have it, that I'd be paying the biggest price for it.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

You'd be wasting the most water this time of year. And you know, Tina, you uh brought up, I think it was last month, about having those little flags. And those little flags, they're super cheap. You can get them at a box store, and what they are is just a little, it's it's a thin wire at the end of the thin wire, there's a little flag, and I think they're wonderful. You turned me on to this a couple years ago, and I just have a bunch of those. When I turn on the sprinklers, I just go and hit if there's anything wrong. I just put that flag there. And depending on who's going to fix it, at least we I I don't remember. You know, it's like I have a big yard. It seemed like was it this sprinkler or that sprinkler? What was the problem? But you got that little flag there, and you know that you could go straight to that problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

Right, and they're reusable after you use them and fix the sprinkler that time, you just collect them and put them in a drawer and then they're there for the next time.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

I think I got mine two years ago, and I'm still I pull them out and everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:17

You know the other thing I use them for, which is kind of funny, I I'm up against open space, so I'm plagued with gophers, and I use them to mark new gopher holes because when the the gopher guy comes, when you have a you know a pretty good sized yard, uh you can describe over the phone where the the different holes are, but it's so much easier for him if you put those little flags where the new activity is.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Oh, that's a great idea.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah, so they they can be used for lots of things. Um so let's go on to some other uh water uh preservation techniques. Um and of course, we always talk a lot about mulch. So if your mulch, if you haven't had a chance to mulch, or if your mulch is looking thin throughout your uh beds, uh now's a good time, even though it's hot, try and do it early in the morning or hire someone to do it. But get those beds mulched because if you have a three to four inch layer of mulch in your uh garden beds, it will conserve so much water. And also this time of year, it'll keep your soil so much cooler, so your plants will be less stressed. Yeah. The plants will be happier. Yeah, so all kinds of reasons to do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:23

A lot of times, I don't know about you, Tina, but sometimes in the late afternoon, if I I don't have the mulch down, some of my plants are kind of wilting. Oh, I know. It's so sad. It's sad, you know, they're little they're saying it's hot. Little droopy leaves, little droopy leaves. You put some mulch on there and they're like, oh, this is a lot better. I can handle this. Thanks, Mom. It's kind of giving them air conditioning.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

Yeah, or or sunscreen, or uh, you know, it's it's just uh a great way to encourage general health in your garden.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

And if you can't put four inches on, put something. Yeah, even a couple inches is better than that.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

It's better than nothing. Yeah. Um, so let's talk about some other uh water preserving techniques that we we don't talk about as often. Uh one thing that I experienced last year is I have a a big slope in the back of my property, and because I was being so thrifty with water last year because of the drought, I lost some some plants on that slope last year. So I want to talk for a minute about preserving water and watering efficiently on a slope. And again, the first thing to do is to do that cycled watering with your automatic sprinkler system. It's especially important to do that on a slope because think about it. If you if you pour a little bit of water on a slope, what's the first thing that happens? It runs down to the bottom of the slope, right? So you only want to have the sprinklers on the slope on for a very short period of time, but do it probably three different cycles when you're watering on that, if you're if your automatic sprinkler system will allow you to do that. Um the other thing to do is to change the heads that you might be using on your slope to low flow heads. The low flow heads emit a smaller amount of water, and what you would need to do then is increase, so say they were your old sprinkler heads were coming on for two or three minutes, you might have to double that with the low flow heads because they're gonna emit less water, so it's gonna take a longer period of time to get water out. But because it's coming out slowly, it's not gonna run off like the traditional heads do. The other thing to do on a slope is, and I had to do this for my citrus trees because I lost a couple, is I had some citrus trees on the bottom of the slope, but if you don't have, you know, and I had just watering basins that I'd made out of soil, but of course, over time those watering basins, you know, degrade and this the water wasn't staying in the root zone of the citrus trees. So if you have some plants on your slope that need to have that water captured, I suggest that you either terrace your slope, which is a huge, you know, huge task to terrace your slope. But what I did is just where I had eight citrus trees up there, I just got those interlocking brick things, you know, that you can get at a big box uh reach home improvement store. And I just made half basins on the downside slope that um then captured, you know, and then you fill it with a little more soil and and mulch on top. And what happens then is as the water wants to go down the slope, it's captured by that half wall.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

There's a lot of different ways you can do it. If you you don't want to do those, I've I have those those that what you have to and I have that for my vegetable garden, uh-huh. But on the slope where I had my fruit trees, I did it really simple. It's like two posts and some wood boards. Well, there you go. Yeah. Sure. It was inexpensive, it was fast to do, and they last a long time. So there's is there's a lot of different ways you can do it. Yeah. But capturing that water so it doesn't run off is uh however you do it, capture the water.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

It's it's key. And then of course the other thing to do, even on a slope, is is to mulch your slope. And if you're, you know, like my slope is pretty huge, so to mulch the whole slope gets kind of expensive. So I only do that, you know, maybe once a year. But like this time of year, I'll just go out with buckets of mulch and I'll just dump it around the plants that I think are needing a little more protection, because what that mulch does again is it keeps the soil cool and it catches the water and keeps it from running down and allowing it allows it to soak in a little better. So anyway, so those those are a couple of tips. Uh, if you have, I I hope nobody has this, but if you have an older property and you still have some lawn on a sloped area or or your front yard just you know slopes down to the street and you still have lawn, the other thing that you can do to make sure that that water is not just running off is to aerate your lawn. And so everybody what so aerating can be done either by uh manually, um, it's basically a little tool that is kind of looks like it's like picture the handle of a rake, right? But at the bottom, instead of being a rake, there's a bar that comes across and there's two tubes that point down, and what you do is you step on that bar and it pushes those two vertical tubes into the ground and it basically drills little holes into the ground. You might also have seen the aerating sandals, which are pretty funny looking. They're these things that have nails on the bottom of them, and you strap them to your shoes. I don't think those are as effective because the nails are usually only about an inch or an inch and a half long, and so it doesn't go very deep into the lawn. So I prefer the other one, the other tool that has the two vertical little posts, because they they're probably what would you say those are, six or eight inches? Something like that, yeah. And so um, and there's a place where you put your foot and you just step in it. And if you have a big lawn, it's probably gonna be too tiresome, and then you would want to rent a uh an aerator. There's a machine that you can roll across your lawn that that aerates it for you if you have a big lawn.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

We've done that. We also have some friends that have older kids, uh huh. And that has been something fun for them to do. You can go stomp on stuff in the yard. You know, the teenagers just can go and play with that thing in the yard and it wears off some energy and also helps your yard.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Yeah, it's it's definitely it it helps so much when you do that. Uh because then of course you the water hits the lawn and now there are these these holes, you know, literally there are these holes in the soil. So instead of running off, that water runs into the nearest hole and gets down where the roots are. So aerating is a huge, huge benefit to keeping that uh water on your on your lawn rather than it running down the slope into the gutter.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

I'm amazed if anybody, since the weather we've had for the last number of years, anybody has anything running off.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

Yeah, yeah, we do we definitely want to avoid that. So um then a couple other watering tips for containers. It gets so hot uh when the sun hits the side of those containers, man, they just that soil just heats up so quickly. And you probably are noticing you can water your pots twice a day and they still look like they're wilting. So one of the things that I have found is really helpful is to double pot the pots. And so you just find a pot that is a couple inches, an inch to a couple inches bigger in diameter than the pot that your plant is planted in, and you just drop the pot that contains the plant into this empty pot, and now it has some insulation. So the sun hits that outer pot and it hit heats up the walls of that outer pot, but by the time the the warm air hits the second pot, it's it's not as hot, and so it stays much cooler, and the water that you have in that inner pot lasts a lot longer. Wow. And what else do you do? Then the other thing that I just started doing a couple years ago, which I can't tell you what a big difference it makes, is I started mulching my pots. I mean, kind of a no-brainer, but especially uh I have some citrus in pots, and I put a layer of bark chips on the citrus pots, and oh man, they they are so much happier having it's it's probably an inch and a half to two inches of of chips, you know, wood chips on the top of that.

SPEAKER_00 15:43

You know, those little roots are right at the uh surface, and when you're protecting them, they're happy. You know how hot we get? Yeah, it's not a lot of things. What do you think the plant they can't get out of the sun?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

It's like it's like a sunshirt, you know, putting that that mulch on. It's like you putting a sunshirt on and protecting your skin. Though the one tip though is make sure you move the wood chips away from the trunk of the shrub or the tree that you have or the plant, or the plant, whatever plant you have in there. For if you have uh pots planted with, say, a flowering perennials or annuals, and you have several plants in a pot, it's it it isn't as easy to mulch it because you have it so densely planted. But if it's that densely planted, often you don't need to mulch it because the canopy of the plants is is acting as a mulch. It's already shading the soil, so it's not quite as important to mulch those pots. But the other thing I've been mulching, because I grow tomatoes in pots too, because you always need more tomatoes and I run out of space. So in the pots I grow tomatoes in, I mulch that as well, and the tomatoes really seem to be happy having that mulch. So those are those are some tips. Uh a last word of advice would be regarding hand watering. Uh I uh I hand water my pots obviously, and and I water them actually twice. So I go through the garden and I water each pot till the water you know is coming out of the bottom. But what you don't realize is that sometimes if that top of that soil has gotten dry, that water is kind of running to the sides of the pot and just going down the sides of the pot and not really wetting all of the soil. Not absorbing. Yeah. So the thing that I also do is I make one pass, water all the pots, and when I'm done, just like cycling your automatic sprinkler system, I go back and I hand water all those pots again. And then if I really have time, I take my finger and poke it in to the soil and to make sure that you know the water has gone down at least uh you know three, four inches to make sure that it's not just running off the sides. And then uh finally regarding hand watering, um, just know that it's not the best way to water your you know, beds, your planting beds, uh, because even though the soil may look wet on the top, it's kind of hard for us to have the patience to stand in one place and water that area long enough for that water to seep down. So if you are hand watering only without an automatic sprinkler system, be sure you occasionally take a trowel with you and open that soil up a little bit and make sure that you're getting down deep enough to get to the roots. Because oftentimes all that's wet is the top inch.

SPEAKER_00 18:33

You know, you'd either take a trowel or they have these probes that you could stick in the ground to tell how wet things are, and the farther down it'll say it's wet or dry. We also have this one that's kind of a it's it's oh, you can help me describe it. It's shaped like a T and you can actually put it in the ground and you get like a core out. Yeah, yeah, it's uh it's called a soil probe. Yeah. And it is that's another thing we use when I'm not quite sure how much water might underwatering, overwatering, what am I doing? And that's especially good for fruit trees. I love it on the fruit trees.

SPEAKER_01 19:03

The soil probe that that Katrina's describing is is is long. It's what is it, 16, 18 inches? Something like that. It's 14 inches. It's it's a good size. And because your tree roots go down fairly deep, you want to make sure that you are going down deep enough with your watering uh that uh the roots are getting if if you're only watering the top six inches, your fruit tree's not gonna be happy. So that soil probe allows you to take a core of soil out and and you can tell how deep the water's getting.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

You know, if you're gonna spend the time and energy to plant a plant or a tree, you really want to make sure that I'd rather give one tree enough water than several trees not enough. Right. You know, and you if you're gonna spend the time and energy, you might as well make sure it's happy.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yes, and and the other thing to remember too is that uh, you know, a lot of times our trees are planted in with other plant material. So we water the whole bed, you know, twice a week or whatever is required. But but do remember that, especially in the summer, uh your fruit trees really don't want to be, or any tree does not want to be watered often. It wants to be watered deeply. So uh if you have it in a bed where the sprinklers are coming on twice a week, that might not be enough for it because the water isn't getting down to the deep roots. So you might once a month, I I try in in July, August, and September, once a month to take the hose, put an old-fashioned little sprinkler head on it, and I drag it to each of my fruit trees and let it, you know, water for a good long time so that it has a chance to soak in. And if you do that once a month in addition to your uh automatic sprinklers, then you're probably getting the the water down deep enough for that fruit tree.

SPEAKER_00 20:53

Good idea. A lot of us do that. I mean, we we a lot of us don't think about it because we do have fruit trees with our flants and they need a little extra help. They do, and they really do. You will have a wonderful uh surprise if you take care of it because the fruits will be just delectable.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Well, and the health of the tree, you know, but that's that's the main thing. You you'll you know, in especially when we w had this long-term drought and we were all trying to conserve water, um we lost trees because we weren't watering deeply in a few.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Two pine trees that have never been I've never watered. And in the last year I took a soaker hose to both all of them because one is just you know, it's huge, it's huge, it's and it's beautiful. And my pine trees are in my driveway and I've never water 'em. Usually we get enough water during the wintertime and I took uh I s uh slowly soak them a couple times or several times over the water.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

You know, I'm glad you mentioned that because it reminds me of something I forgot to mention. Mentioned. And that is we often, when we plant a tree or a shrub, make a watering basin, right? To so that the water gets directed where the roots of that new plant are. You know, we want to make sure that the water stays in that watering basin and goes right down to the roots. What we may forget about those plants, you know, that say we planted them in March or April in the springtime, now it's August. Well, between now and then, that watering basin may have, you know, completely disappeared, right? But that plant's still young. And so it's a good idea if you did plant new plants or even your old older plants to go back and recreate those watering basins out of soil. But this time when you do it, make the because what Katrina was saying about the soaker hose, when she does that, she puts that soaker hose just outside what's called the drip line of her tree. And the reason she puts it outside, I mean depends on how big the tree is, but generally, you know, at least a foot or so outside the drip line of that tree. And the reason is that there are a lot of feeder roots outside that drip line. And what the drip line is, is think of the canopy of the tree and where the canopy of the tree stops, you know, from side to side, and that's called the drip line. And when you are making a watering basin, you always want to have the watering basin a little bit outside the drip line because you want to encourage those feeder roots to continue to spread out as you know, so they can find water as they get older, they'll look for water on their own. So this time of year, if you especially if you planted new shrubs or trees, check those watering basins, you know, reconstruct them, maybe make them a little bit wider so that you can encourage the roots to go out uh into uh new territory. And also, you know, carry the hose with you and fill up that watering basin once or twice and just to make sure that that young little root ball is being taken care of. Exactly. Yeah. I think that's it. Can you think of anything else about water? Gosh, that was a lot about water.

SPEAKER_00 24:06

That was a lot. Well, it's August.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

It's August, though. That's that's all we want to worry about.

SPEAKER_00 24:10

We don't want people plants to burn up and die in August. They need some extra leaven. Yeah. You know, even though we don't want to be out there, I think the plants, some of them don't want to be out there either.

SPEAKER_01 24:19

They don't have leaves. They don't have lead. I'm trying to just give them water.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah. Yeah. And be smart about it.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

And since we were talking about uh trees, should we talk just a little bit about uh fruit trees right now? Oh, great idea. Okay. So let's talk about deciduous fruit trees. Did you have a good peach crop this year?

SPEAKER_00 24:37

Oh my gosh, I am still getting peaches. I am just, we're gonna have peach cobbler. This guy we're taking peach cobbler to a friend's house on Saturday because we have the sweetest peaches in the whole world, and I have so many that we're dehydrating them, and wow, I'm just like, oh, the peaches and the nectarines are just incredible.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah. How about you? Um, I only have one peach tree, but it's had its best year in a long time. And I attribute that to all the rain we got this year. The trees are just super happy. But one thing that folks might be noticing happening to their deciduous fruit trees right now, like peaches, apricots, plums, etc., is that they send up, you know, they're growing vigorously, right? Because it's sunny, it's warm, they're sending out all of this these. They have lots of water this year.

SPEAKER_02 25:22

It's all flushed out.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

And and one of the things you might notice are what we call water spouts, and that's when uh these um pretty much vertical, very vigorous shoots come out of the branches or sometimes even out of the trunk. And they'll you'll you'll notice that they're like way more vigorous and overtaking the other growth on the trunk. And they pretty much go straight up. And they pretty they grow grow straight up. That's how you recognize them. And it's a good idea if if you can go out early, like Katrina, with your loppers, to cut those off. And the reason is that they sap a lot of energy from the tree because they're growing so vigorously that they're taking all of the water in the food. And those uh usually are not the fruit-producing uh you know parts of the tree. So go ahead and cut those off. And then if you have espalied deciduous fruit trees, they're gonna be growing like crazy, and and the new growth is probably gonna be affecting the shape of your espalier. So you want to take a look at that and either train that growth to grow where you want it, you know, horizontally on your espalier, or if it's uh, for instance, new growth that's coming out in a perpendicular direction or a direction that you don't want it. You just want to completely cut that growth off up against the main trunk or the main branch that it is growing from so that you can maintain that espalier shape. Because man, things love to grow when they get sun and water. It's amazing. Yeah. Also and fertilizers. Fertilizer, yeah. We should talk about fertilizer. Sure. Um, this this time of year um I don't fertilize things too much, except my roses. Um the reason I don't fertilize them too much is um because it is uh you know it's really hot uh when there's a lot of new growth and you fertilize, then there's even more new growth which requires more water. So um so I don't I I don't generally fertilize a lot, with the exception of my roses, because I love my roses. And um so I do go ahead and continue in my feeding plan, which I I try to feed the roses uh about once a month because I just love to have that continued bloom. So this this time of year, when I do that, I don't know about you, but I've noticed you know I've had some fungal disease like rust or powdery mildew, and I've had uh some damage from insects, maybe a lot of aphids. And so one of the things I do when I decide I'm gonna have a rose day is that I take my my pruners, my hand pruners out, and instead of just deadheading, I do a little semi-pruning of my roses because sometimes they just look so bedraggled with the damage from disease and and insects. Don't be afraid to give your roses a little bit of a haircut, not as hard of a pruning as you'll do in January, but you know, I'll take them down, you know, a couple feet on the ones that are tall, right? Um because usually those fungal diseases are you know on the new newer growth, right? And I just get so sick of looking at them that I just take them down a bit. It depends on you know how big the rose is. Obviously, if it's only a two-foot-tall rose, you wouldn't cut two feet off of it, but um I just take that that uh damaged stuff off, kind of reshape the the bush a little bit, and throw those trimmings away. Don't compost them because they do often have bugs and and disease. So throw them away and then apply that uh organic fertilizer, give them a good watering, and you will have a brand new flush of bloom in a few weeks. And you can keep it going till December in our climate. So it's beautiful. Tina has roses.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

I can't believe it all year round.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

It's hard for you to until in in January. I'm like, okay, guys, you're you're getting pruned. I'm sorry you're still blooming, but you're getting pruned anyway.

SPEAKER_00 29:31

This is spectacular. Sometimes some things that are just simple to do that just take a few minutes just give you days and weeks and months of enjoyment.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Yeah, I just think it gives because especially in the fall, I don't know about your garden. I I try to plant things that bloom in the fall, but it gets, you know, so hot in our summers that by September, you know, the garden's just not looking great. So I do love giving the roses a little TLC in August because then they bloom again beautifully in September, and at least I have something pretty to look at.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

Also, you know, Tina, we need to let everybody know if there's so much information that UC Master Gardeners have on roses and on planting and on pruning and on irrigation. And I know a lot of people are driving around right now, but one of the easy ways to find out is check out our webpage. And you could just Google UC Master Gardeners Orange County, California. And it's UC Master Gardeners Orange County, California, because you want to make sure it's UC Master Gardeners and you want to make sure it's Orange County, California, and not New York or Florida. And we have a wonderful website that tells you all about water and irrigation and fertilizer and pruning and fruit trees and flowers and just about anything you have a question on, and they also have a hotline. And the hotline you you go on there, if you have a question, you can't find it on there, you want to know something, and you just type in your question. If you have a picture of something you're having a problem on, attach it. There's a group of volunteers that just love to answer questions. It's their way of giving back and it's their way to share their information with the community, and they love getting questions. So it's right there on the front page, it's called the hotline. You just click on that link and they will send you information or send you a link or answer your question. And it's just they're very friendly and they're very nice people, and our website has a lot of good stuff on there. So that's PC Master Gardeners Orange County, California.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yes. Uh uh one thing I just wanted to mention is if you have a problem and you can take a photo of it on your cell phone and attach that as a file to your question, that will also help them identify your problem maybe a little bit more quickly.

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Yes. Because it can actually it's one thing describing it, but when you actually see a picture of it, it really it helps a lot. Yeah. So so And if you can't and you don't know how to do that, that's okay too.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

No no worries if you can't, but just if you have the ability to do that, that might help them answer your question.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

You mean a picture's worth a thousand words?

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Something like that, yeah. Especially when you're talking gardens. And trying to describe a an insect or a color of a bug or a or plant damage or the other thing maybe we should mention, uh, because I'd like to talk about pest control a little bit, is that the University of California has an amazing uh pest management website, and it's so much more than that, it actually tells you how to uh take care of your plants. And that would be uh the University of California's IPM website, and that stands for Integrated Pest Management, and that is actually like having an entire gardening library at your fingertips on free. Um and you can rest assured, because it's uh produced by the University of California, that it is all scientifically based. So I just love it. And the other thing, speaking of pictures, is if you just go to that and you can just Google University of California IPM so that you don't have to worry about memorizing the exact web address, but just Google University of California IPM and say you had a question about roses, uh, you'll click, you know, home gardens, and then it'll have a whole list of types of plants, and you click on roses, and it will have a whole list of pests, diseases, and pictures. So if you're not sure, you know, that what this brown stuff is on the leaf of your rose, you can just start looking at the pictures, and you'll odds are you'll discover that it's rust, and there will be a whole set of instructions on what you can do to control rust. So it's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 33:50

Step by step, it's really awesome. It's really awesome. And what's really nice, it's made for the home gardener. It is. You don't have to have a degree in anything to understand this. It's you just go in there and they speak to your listening.

SPEAKER_01 34:02

Yes. It's scientifically based, but the but the language is easy for you to understand. So um, you might even be able to solve your problem before you email the hotline.

SPEAKER_00 34:13

And it's fun to go around and look, too. You just go you can go in there and play on the website. It's fun.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Yeah. At least it's fun for us, but then we're dorky gardeners, so you know. Our idea of fun is a little different than some, right? Oh, God help us, huh? So let's talk a little bit more about pests. Uh the pests are pretty active in August because of the warm weather. So the walking around your garden early in the morning is a great thing to do because you want to keep an eye out and spot any damage early, particularly things like tomato hornworm, because if you leave your garden uh unobserved for a week, man, those tomato hornworms could completely defoliate and eat every leaf off of your tomato plants. So do try and walk your garden fairly frequently so that if you see a pest you can control it. For tomato hornworms, you want to hand pick, but sometimes they're hard to see because they're green and they camouflage really easily. So I do both hand picking and I usually spray with BT, Bacillus theringensis, if I'm saying that right. It's always a tongue twister. And that is a an organic pesticide that kills caterpillars. So be sure when you spray it, you're only spraying it on your tomato plants because you wouldn't want to kill the caterpillars for butterflies that we want to see hanging out in our yard. So use it judiciously. And it's always best if you're using a pest control product to do it early in the morning when it's cool or late in the day when it's cool so that you're not doing it in the heat of the day and perhaps damaging the plant tissue. Also try and do it when it's not windy because you don't want that stuff blowing, blowing everywhere, and then read the directions and then reread the directions, wear protective clothing, and uh, you know, wash your hands before and after, wear rubber gloves and don't overuse. Don't overuse. Uh and and when we say to use the pesticide, uh we are assuming that you either have written the hotline and found out what pesticide to use, or you've gone to a reputable nursery and they've told you, or you've gone on the IPM website and gotten that information because you you want to use the pesticide that is specifically for the pest that you're trying to control. And and before you even use a pesticide, uh master gardeners practice IPM. That's why the website's called IPM. It's called integrated pest management, and it just means that you use the least toxic method to control your problem. So the way I control most of my snail problem is my shoe. I just pick them off and I stomp on them. Yep. Right way. If they get really bad, then I will get an organic uh snail bait to spread in the garden. But if I can control them by, you know, stomping on them, then I'm not hurting the environment, I'm not hurting myself, and it's uh just best to use the least toxic method that you absolutely can.

SPEAKER_00 37:28

It's better for your plants, it's better for your garden, it's better for society as a whole. Yeah. You know, we don't need more chemicals than if we can take care of it just really simple by stumping on it or taking a hose and washing off those aphids.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Yeah, Katrina was telling me this morning she blasted her her aphids before she came to record the radio show. She's been having a terrible aphid problem. So let's talk about aphids.

SPEAKER_00 37:51

Oh, Tina, tell me about aphids. I have I have been spraying my plants. They have been with water, that's it. With water. Yeah. So I've been shooting them early in the morning and and getting those aphids off. But this year, I don't know if anybody else has had aphids, but I have this one bed that the aphids are just coming to. I've never had them like this before. I've shot them off before and I haven't had them back so quickly. Yeah, because usually they're too stupid to come back. But I got homing aphids or something.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

I don't know. Well, I I'm guessing what's happened is you had a lot of eggs that were rehatching, you know. So so aphids are attracted to new growth. They like tender new growth. They sure do. And so because we've had this nice warm weather, and if you're irrigating property properly, your plants have hours and hours of sunlight, and they're getting, you know, water if you're irrigating properly. And so, of course, they're saying, hey, it's time to grow. So the plants are sending tons of new growth out, and that's what aphids are attracted to. So they come and they feast on that new growth. They they're sucking insects, so they're sucking the juices out of the out of the plants. And also the interesting thing about aphids is that they can be farmed or um uh cultivated by ants. And so the ants like the honeydew that the aphids secrete, and as other insects do. And so if you see that you have a lot of ants, one of your first defenses is to control those ants. Because if you control the ants, odds are they are they're gonna diminish, and so they won't be farming crops or herds of aphids, and and that will also help keep the population under control. And and you know, to control ants, uh, you know, one of the things I like are the baits. Yeah. And I put the baits out because those are self-contained, they're not messy. Um, hopefully, you know, if you have kids, you have to be a little careful because you don't want them to be attracted and play with those baits. Uh but I I like the the baits and I put them out in strategic places and that helps control the ants. And I don't have to mix anything because they come, you know, pre pre-done. Then the other thing for the aphids is what Katrina's doing. She's going out there every morning or maybe even twice a day with her hose nozzle, that the one, the brass nozzle that gives you that really strong jet of water, and you just spray them and you knock them off. And as I said, usually they're too stupid to come back on the plant.

SPEAKER_00 40:24

But apparently Katrina had lots of eggs or something. I must have lots of eggs. I'm just taking, I'm holding that plant in my hand, and I'm like, you go, baby, you go, and it's coming back. I'm like, I've never had this before. There's just stubbornness. And so I know if I stay on top of it, it'll be okay. Yeah. But I've never had to stay so on top of it.

SPEAKER_01 40:43

The other thing that you can do is you can use uh insecticidal soap that is an organic insecticide, and you uh just squirt it on uh wherever the aphids are, and that uh soapy uh uh concoction covers their body and smothers them. Kind of kind of gruesome, but but it does. Um another organic product that is used for uh multiple pests. We won't get into the details, but you can look this up on the IPM website is uh spinocad or spinocad. Uh different people pronounce it different ways. How do you say it, Katrina? Both ways. Both ways, yeah. Anyway, it's spelled S-P-I-N-O-S-A-D. Another organic uh pesticide. Doesn't mean that you should be using it like crazy just because it's organic. But if you are growing uh food crops and you want to be sure that you're using organic products, um this is one to use. But again, you know, read the directions, make sure that it's uh the right thing for the pest you're trying to control, and try and control the pest without using it. But um, as a last resort, if you're having trouble getting things under control, then uh perhaps try these organic pesticides.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

You know, and another thought process is sometimes we want to put our head in the sand and say maybe the pest will go away. I have done that before, and what I find is if I see them and the sooner I take care of it, the easier it is to take care of.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Oh my gosh, we we always say when we're giving talks on pest control, the best pest control is you. You in your garden frequently attending to the problem early. Exactly. Yeah. A lot less investment now, a lot less work later. And the plants will be happier. For sure. Um and also if you're watering properly and your plants aren't stressed, you'll find you you actually have uh you know less pest problems because believe it or not, pests are actually attracted to stressed plants. They I guess they see a victim and they they come swarming. So keep your plants healthy and that helps defend against pests also. Exactly. Okay, should we move on to planting? Oh, planting, Tina's starting to smile. Yes, so but here's my advice in August don't plant.

SPEAKER_02 43:01

Ha ha.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

No. But truly, don't plant in audience. Um here are the exceptions. Okay, you're having a party and your lar yard is not looking so great. Okay, here's what you do. Mulch. Mulch the yard, clean it up, and put a fresh layer of mulch down on your beds. It will look wonderful. Um focus on your pots. Take your pots, and if those are looking bedraggled, go get some colorful uh annuals and put those in your pots. Don't expect them to last for months because you're planting them, you know, in the heat. Think of them more as party decorations. Disposable. And disposable. And you might get lucky and they might, you know, last for a few months.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Well, also the seasons are going to change.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

The seasons are gonna change your.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

They're gonna they're not gonna last through the whole winter if you're planting summer plants. They're not gonna be the winter plants. So just realize you could spru spruce it up for a party, but realize it's not. Not going to be for the long term. And like Tina said, party decorations.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Yeah, and think of, I mean, what I like to do when I when I have uh parties this time of year or in September or even October is um choose annuals that match your whatever your theme is. You know, if you're if you're doing a red, white, and blue theme, pick red, white, and blue plants to put in your pots or fall fall, or or if you're gonna have, you know, uh table decorations that are bright summer, you know, like you're having a a luau and you're gonna do, you know, hot pinks and oranges and yellows. You know, pick pick plants that reflect those colors and um again treat them as as party decorations, you know, and they they may last for a month or two, they may last just for a week or two. So um, but that's that's kind of my one exception, is that I will plant some new pots if I want to have something you know pretty and exciting on the walkway or on the patio or the door.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah, I pretty much you know, I deadhead and then I kind of clean up and what's there is there because I know it's not going to be happy if I plant it.

SPEAKER_01 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:03

And so I just make the best of what I have and dress it up and clean you know, clean it up. If you're having a party and a lot of things, you know, dead deadheading, get rid of some of the old branches and mulch and it truly if if you clean up and you put a fresh layer of mulch, your garden will look lovely.

SPEAKER_01 45:19

It may not be as colorful as it was in the springtime because the spring blooming flowers are done. Um but the other thing also to remember, if you're having a party and say you have roses like I do, I always backtrack and four to six weeks before I'm having the party, I fertilize what I want to bloom.

SPEAKER_00 45:37

So you are so good. It's it's we're not quite as all organized. It's you know, six weeks before the party.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

But you know, if like I hosted a tomato, you know, tomato tasting at my house party kind of thing. And so, you know, a month before I thought, you know what? Time to give those roses a little shot of fertilizer, because it would be kind of nice to have some roses blooming in the garden when I when I have my little tomato tasting party. And it's nice you can count on the roses. They're pretty they're pretty dependable, you know. Four or five, six weeks before, if you give them if you give them some food, they're like, hey, time to bloom. So yeah, that's that's a good thing to do. But continuing on with the planting theme, there is actually something I plant every August.

SPEAKER_00 46:21

Yes, there that's when I thought you were smiling about.

SPEAKER_01 46:23

Yeah, and this is Katrina knows. I order seeds for the cool season, which is so counterintuitive because it's so hot in August, but you have to plant your cool season plants from seed in August if you want to be able to plant them out in your garden in October. So this is the time to get out those seed catalogs that probably arrived back in January or February and order the seeds that you want for your cool season garden.

SPEAKER_00 46:54

You know what I find that's really cool about the seeds versus buying it's cheaper, or but besides being cheaper, is that you get uh vegetables that you don't get in a nursery.

SPEAKER_01 47:07

And flowers. And flowers. Because you know me, I love the tall varieties and and I I love stock, for instance, which is a cool season flower. And in the nurseries, it's really hard to find the tall varieties of stock. And those are the ones that are amazing for picked bouquets because they're so highly scented, and you can bring them in the house. Um, so that's one of the main reasons I do it, is I I want to be able to have things I can't get in a nursery. Tina, what are some of your favorites?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

Well, I know Tina has flowers. Well, first of all, Tina has a flower garden that is just stunning, and pretty much all year around is super impressive. And you think about it ahead of time, and the plants you plant, some of them are just so unique and it's so beautiful. You walk in and you stop and you go, I haven't seen that, or I haven't seen one that tall, or I haven't seen one that big or that color. And and I think the reason why that happens is you get a lot of from seeds. I do.

SPEAKER_01 48:08

I st I start a fair bit from seeds, but but it's not overwhelming. I I usually pick like maybe four to five things that I want to start from seed. And so this time of year, to get ready for the fall, I usually I always get stock because I absolutely love stock. Um and then uh I also love English daisies. Uh that's just a like a front edging kind of a plant, and they're just lovely, they stay low, so they're good for pots or good for the front of your border. Um, and then of course the stock is good for the back of the border. I love Godetia. It's it's uh uh comes in shades of pinks and purples, and it's uh just a beautiful, and and when they bloom, they they just they're probably about two feet tall, and they're these really vibrant colors, and uh they're cool season. How do you spell that? Godetia is G-O-D-E-T-I-A. Okay. I also like larkspur. Um that's that's a a lovely tall flower. I sometimes grow delphinium from seed because there are different kinds of delphinium that you can grow from seed that you can't usually get in the nursery. Um But you know, I also a bachelor button's something that's stupidly easy to grow. So if if you're a beginning gardener or you haven't tried things from seed before, uh that's when you actually can just direct sow in the garden. It it comes up, you know, super easily on its own. So there's, but again, like with the with the bachelor button, um, there are some taller varieties of bachelor button and so or colors. There's instead of just the traditional blue bachelor button, there's some um kind of purpley pink bachelor button as well. So so that's why I just love to you know order these, look at the seeds, and uh it's the bane of my husband's existence because I keep you know baskets of these seed catalogs, but I tell them, you know, it's a pretty cheap and harmless addiction because usually once you order one of these catalogs, then you're on their mailing list and you get it every year. But if you want to save trees, you do not have to get paper catalogs. They all of these seed companies have some amazing websites, and so it's a great way to just spend an evening sitting with your laptop, you know, surfing the net and and just Google seed catalogs and and tons of them will will pop up.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

You know what one of my hardest problems is with the catalogs? It's choosing. Oh, I know. I I want to end up with like 729 plants. Oh, it's uh it's just a lot of things.

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Katrina, I have so many expired seed packets at my house. I really uh this year I'm gonna go through them. Um but I always order, you know, I always say you're only gonna order five flowers and you know the vegetables that you want, whatever cool season veggies. And and let's talk about the cool season veggies, the variety that what we want to grow. Okay. Cool season veggies. Uh, peas, sugar snap peas, where you can eat the whole pod, uh, peas where you can let them grow to maturity and shell them, shelling peas. Of course, lettuces. There's an infinite number of lettuces, and we're coming up on cool season lettuce. But Katrina and my favorite green these days is kale. Kale. My favorite is um blue curly kale, and Katrina's favorite is cosmic kale.

SPEAKER_00 51:32

Cosmic kale. But you know, I re I like growing about five or six different kinds of kale. And I think because we eat lots of kale, like we're having kale today for lunch.

SPEAKER_01 51:41

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 51:42

And I love combining the different kales. Oh, that's see, that's so cool. And you get the different textures and the different colors, and you can just take a snip of leaf off of each one. And it just I just love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:54

And I have to tell you, here it is, August, and the kale that I planted in when did I plant it? February? It's still going. I have all my I have all my kales going. And and I had a crop that I planted in October and it got full of aphids, so I pulled it out and planted it in um, replanted it, you know, in in February.

SPEAKER_00 52:16

Yeah, you know, we find that it's just kale is one of those things that you can grow and grow and grow. It's easy to grow. If you haven't grown kale before and you want something simple, grow some kale. Yeah, it it is absolutely it's bulletproof. It's bulletproof, it's prolific. Sometimes it gets some aphids on it, so shoot them off. You know, you see them early, just shoot them with a hose.

SPEAKER_01 52:39

And it does not bolt like lettuce. It it will it can eventually bolt, but not as quickly as lettuce does. You know, lettuce you get, you know, always frustrates me because we'll get, you know, some 90-degree days in February, right? And that's the end of your lettuce crop. It's it's bolted, you're gonna have to plant some new. Um, and then of course the root vegetables are great for uh the cool weather, beets, carrots, all of that stuff is wonderful. And uh what else do you like to plant in the fall? Oh, I love cauliflower and broccoli. There you go. See now I'm lazy. I I buy six packs of those because my raised beds are somewhat limited, so it's just easier for me to grow those from transplants. But but I do like to start my lettuce seeds, do like to start my um I don't I don't start being the peas uh in from seed indoors. I start those directly in the ground, and so I wait to do that until the end of summer.

SPEAKER_00 53:37

Now, do you start your lettuce this early?

SPEAKER_01 53:40

Um you live closer to the beach than I do. Yeah, I I can um sometimes, but I generally wait a little bit longer on the lettuce, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:49

Because it grows so fast. It does. So you don't need a long lead time off. Yeah, and I live a little farther indoors in or indoors, um in inland. Inland. And it's warmer in the fall.

SPEAKER_01 54:01

Right. But if you are gonna start the let uh the uh the coal crops, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, if you are gonna start those from seed, August is a good time to start those from seed. And the cool thing about starting those from seed is you can get some really interesting varieties. There's orange cauliflower, purple cauliflower. Um, so that those are kind of fun to try. Yeah. Do we have any time left? We just have a couple minutes left.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

Any last thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Uh yeah, the the other thing I would mention about vegetables is your summer veggie garden is probably still going pretty well in August. So do keep it watered, do keep it mulched, do check it for pests, and most of all, harvest. Harvest. Harvest, harvest, harvest. Even if you can't eat it all, harvest it. Because if you don't harvest it, then the plants are going to think that they're done, that they don't need to produce anymore. So do do keep harvesting.

SPEAKER_00 54:55

Harvest it, give it to your friends and neighbors. My neighbors and friends love it. Yeah. You know, I I grow too much, and when I go home today, it's like we gotta pull we should have done it this morning, get our tomatoes off. Right. I have so many tomatoes, and people love them as presents.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Oh, let me just drop off a few homegrown tomatoes to you. Oh. And and also if you're gone on vacation during August, do find someone to come attend your garden. Even if you have automatic sprinklers, um, it's a good idea to have them, you know, come a couple of times if you're gone for a week to just double check, make sure those sprinklers are coming on. You know, pick any tomatoes or zucchini that are going crazy. Otherwise, you'll have baseball bats for zucchini when you get home from a week's vacation. This is true. We have both done that. So I think that's it for today.

SPEAKER_00 55:43

So stay cool, everybody. Everybody stay cool. Realize you're not going to be doing a lot in the garden in August and enjoy what you have, prune up what you have. Wear that sunscreen, wear that hat. Get out early in the morning or late in the evening, and um there's a lot of fun things to do in in August besides spending the day in your garden. And eat lots of good veggies that you've grown. Yeah. All right. Until next week, we hope you all have a wonderful week and we hope you stay cool in this weather. And uh looking forward to talking to you guys next week.