Tips For Gardening in Late Summer (Plus a Garden Tour)

This sloped flower bed is a bit of a crazy mess, but every year it is getting better. I made some changes this spring and I’ve got some more to make this fall. My goal is to have consistent three season color in this perennial bed with perennials in mass plantings. Want to know more about designing your own 3-season perennial garden, be sure to check out: Designing with Perennials for 3 Seasons of Bloom. 

This flower bed has come a long way in three years and I’m loving the progress so far. If you haven’t already seen the makeover of this garden, check it out when you’ve finished up here. Right now, it’s pretty much all about the coneflowers, black-eyed Susan, phlox, balloon flower, coreopsis and the last of the daylilies in this flower bed.

Here’s a cute little vignette with tall garden phlox and birdhouse stakes. Got to love the photo bombing lily.

Here’s a sweet little garden area beside our deck. There’s Viking Magic daylily, False Sunflower and a pot of mandevilla. I like to add in a few annuals around the border to keep consistent color going throughout the summer. 

How to Keep Mosquitoes Away When You’re Working In The Garden

To deter the bugs, especially mosquitoes, from bothering you when you’re outdoors, I highly recommend these citronella bracelets. They really work and last a long time. I wear one around my hat and one on each wrist.

These thermacell units work amazing at keeping the bugs away too. We have a couple on the deck, so we’re able to enjoy evenings outdoors and they do the trick. If you’re working in one general area in your garden, they will also work to keep the bugs away from the area.  

Another weird thing that works to repel bugs is Bounce dryer sheets. I’ve stuck these in my hair before with a headband and hair clips. Just remember to take them off before you run into neighbors or decide to make a run to the garden center. Yep, I did that!

Here in the same tiered flower bed are my favorite coneflowers – PowWow Wild Berry, along with Irish Wedding Daylilies and a few little Kobold Liatris that the bunnies didn’t eat.

This shade border garden that runs along our back fence has come a long way since last year. Here it is last summer.

Despite the fact that most of the shrubs were eaten to the ground by rabbits last winter, the plants are really starting to fill in and this year it’s one of my best gardens.

I recently did an updated post on this Shade Border Garden and included some of my junk garden vignettes in it. This is one of my favorite posts and I think you’ll enjoy it! Here’s a different angle, but it’s easy to see the progress in just one year.

Tips for Gardening in Late Summer – Tidy Up The Gardens

Grab a bucket (or a grocery bag), a pair of gardening shears and gloves. The links are to my favorites.  Just take a quick pass through the garden and deadhead and cut back spent foliage. See those ugly daylily scapes, cut those all the way to the ground. Dried up hosta flowers, those too. Now, pull those weeds while you’re at it.

If you have a bunch of flower beds like me or a really big garden, just pick one flower bed or area a day. Really, you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can tidy things up. 

Don’t forget to Save Some Seeds when you’re deadheading those flowers!

Just in case you need some more tips for How to Deal With Weeds In Your Gardens, many have found this post very helpful. Also, Flower Garden Maintenance has some great practical tips for keeping your flower gardens looking their very best all summer.

Here’s a section of the made over shade garden. It’s filling in nicely for now, but at some point in the future, I’ll be rearranging and getting rid of some of the common hostas, like royal standard and lancifolia. I don’t have anything against them, there are just so many other more attractive varieties I’d rather have. It’s also on my never ending list to add some other shade plants to this garden. Yes, there is slug damage to some of these plants and I missed snipping some spent flower stalks. See what I mean by rough and ragged. Note to self, to get the Sluggo out earlier in the spring.

Aren’t impatiens amazing! They are such an underrated annual flower. They require so little care and they let you know when they need a little drink. Plus, they do not require deadheading to offer up continuous blooms the entire season. Impatiens are definitely a perfect annual flower for the shade.

I’ve shown this cute little tipped pot of impatiens in a few other posts. The latest was the Summer Flower Gardens post. Now look at it – a Pinterest project on steroids. Where’s the pot? These impatiens went wild. Ha ha, oh well, at least they are pretty. See what I mean about impatiens!

Let’s not forget about the vegetable beds. Here’s one of my tomato plants – Super Sweet 100.

Lots and lots of banana peppers. I give lots away and we like them chopped up in taco meat and other Mexican dishes. They are also wonderful in salsa. 

What to Do in the Vegetable Garden in Late Summer

Give the veggie beds some attention too. I just have 4 raised beds, so not much to tend to. I go through and do a quick weeding. To keep down the weeds, I use dried, untreated grass clippings around the veggie plants. Now, cut all the yucky looking leaves off the bottom of the tomato and cucumber plants. The tomatoes aren’t ripening very fast, so I’m going to give them another dose of some organic fertilizer. If veggies are taken care of, some will just keep producing right up until the frost gets them.

In my zone 4 gardens, there are many veggies that can be planted for a fall harvest. Did you know that cooler weather make vegetables sweeter. Some vegetables that can be planted in August for a September or October harvest are: radishes, lettuces, spinach, broccoli and many others.

This year I’m experimenting with growing more veggies in containers. I’m learning that they require much more fertilizer and water, as well as larger containers.