Now's a great time to change out your fading summer vegetable and flower gardens with cool season plants. You can have flowers and veggies through winter's first hard freeze will cool season varieties. Fall Vegetable and Flower Plants are arriving now! See the photo gallery below for our recent arrivals!
Start Your Fall Gardens
Tips for the Garden - August 2020
Our summer continues with a lot on unknowns and questions still left unanswered. But the garden will welcome your every visit. Enjoy the opening of every new flower and every new bird or butterfly to visit.
Your main tasks for this month begin with the letter W. Weeding and watering. Both tasks are pretty self-explanatory. If you let weeds get ahead of you and they go to seed, you are going to have hundreds more to deal with this fall and next spring. When using herbicides be sure to read and follow all label directions thoroughly. They are written for your protection. Generally, it is best to pull weeds that are growing in and immediately around your desirable plants, and spray those that are “in the open”.
As far as watering goes, August is usually an extremely low moisture month, so slow deep watering at the base of desirable trees and shrubs on a weekly basis is very important. Try to eliminate drought stress on your plants. When the weather is dry, please take care of your desirable plants with slow soaking waterings. If you have questions, do not hesitate to give us a call.
Mowing the lawn is another task that continues in August. Due to the usually hot and dry conditions that are the norm in August, you may be able to space your mowings further apart. It is also beneficial to let the grass grow longer to help shade the roots.
If you are thinking about a new addition to your landscape this fall, now is the time to talk to your favorite landscape designer. Your designer can discuss your needs with you, design the changes or new additions, and get you on the schedule for a fall installation.
If you tried your hand at seasonal vegetable gardening this spring, here are a few ways you can enjoy a fall garden. Carry Tomatoes, Peppers and Basil over in your fall garden. Direct sow Beets, Radishes, Peas, and Spinach now where other spring crops such as Broccoli and Cauliflower have come and gone for this year. It is best to replant nursery starts of Broccoli and Cauliflower, and not sow them from seed this time of year. The possibilities are still quite many, so carry that garden adventure out a little further into the fall. You won’t be disappointed!
See you next month……….in the garden
Sandi Hillermann McDonald
How will you spend your Hillermann Bucks?
Hillermann Bucks Redemption Days are coming soon on August 1st through August 15th! Match your Hillermann Bucks dollar for dollar with real cash, for up to 50% of your purchase. Use them on any in-stock merchandise in the Garden Center, Nursery, and Greenhouse. Holding or Tagging is NOT allowed for Hillermann Bucks, so if you've got your eye on a perfect piece of pottery or a beguiling bird bath, come in and get it before it's gone!
Summer Browsing & Shopping at Hillermann's
We have many nice items, plants, blooms, displays, gardens and more - for your shopping and browsing enjoyment throughout summer! Here are just a few photos of some great things you can find at Hillermann’s. Come by and visit for a while!
Turtlehead Tiny Tortuga - Perennial Plant of the Week
Turtlehead (Chelone obliqua) plants are native wildflowers that adapt beautifully to garden conditions. This cute variety of Turtlehead is more compact growing 12-18” wide and 12-16” tall. Tiny Tortuga forms an upright, bushy mound of thick, dark green foliage. Plants produce upright stems of large dark pink-rose hooded flowers that bloom late summer into fall. Showy and long lived.
As a native wildflower, Turtlehead will do well planted near or around water features in your garden. Nice in rain gardens, bogs and pond side. Because of its small size, Tiny Tortuga is a great option for containers and borders. Also good for mass plantings and cut flowers. It performs best in evenly moist conditions with fertile loamy soil with abundant organic matter. Turtlehead looks great when planted in its native woodland setting. And, if it’s happy there, it will slowly naturalize to form an exquisite groundcover. Hardy in USDA zones 3 to 8.
Tiny Tortuga is easy to grow. Plant in full sun to part sun. It likes a rich, slightly acidic soil. The crown of the plant should rest just at or above the soil surface after watering in. Keep the soil continually moist with a garden hose or sprinkler while the plants set root and throughout their growing and blooming season. If your plants start to get floppy, prune or pinch back the stems of established plants in mid-spring. Since turtlehead blooms late in the season, there is no reason to deadhead spent flowers. You can leave the flowers to dry, and then collect the seeds if you like. The plant will self-seed in moist soils. Propagate by division, cuttings or seed. Mulch each fall with shredded leaves to maintain a moisture-retaining humus. Turtlehead is rarely bothered by insects or disease. However, it can develop a powdery mildew due to moisture fluctuations. Keeping the plants evenly moist should alleviate this problem.
Turtlehead Tiny Tortuga attracts butterflies and hummingbirds and is bee friendly. It is also deer and rabbit resistant. The varied colors of Chelone combine well with other late-season bloomers, like sedum, Joe Pye weed, and anemone. Additionally, since it likes moist soil, it naturally partners well with ferns.
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Anemone - Perennial Plant of the Week
Also known as windflower, anemones are grown for their beautiful, nodding blooms on long, wiry stems. The common name is derived from the Greek word anemoi, which in English means “winds”. The foliage looks similar between varieties, but size and bloom times vary between spring, summer, or fall. Fall-blooming Japanese anemones are particularly noteworthy because they fill the midsummer-to-fall gap in gardens. Flowers range from white to pink to rose, with yellow anthers surrounding a green/yellow center.
Anemones’ timeless grace enhances any garden. Depending on species, anemones can be some of the earliest perennials up. Those spring plants typically cover woodland floors with delicate, nodding blooms in soft shades, most often white, rarely tinged pink or purple. But the true showstoppers are fall-blooming anemones. These larger plants come in many shades of whites and pinks with petals ranging from single rows to double. From later summer to fall, there is no other perennial flower quite like Anemone in the border. They are prized for their late summer color that lasts into the fall. Their graceful flowers are freely and continuously produced on tall stems over lush mounding plants. They are also good to use in containers, mass plantings and for cut flowers. They are deer and rabbit resistant.
Perennial anemones are easy to grow, and once established, they can create large colonies of plants for grand displays. Plant in an area that receives part shade (protected from the hot afternoon sun) in well-drained soils rich in organic matter. If needed amend the soil with the addition of organic material to raise the level 2-3″ to improve the drainage. Peat moss, compost, ground bark or decomposed manure all work well. The extra organic matter will help keep a consistent moisture in soil, which will help avoid browning and crisping on leaf edges.
Anemones spread by underground rhizomes that multiply readily; in some cases they can be almost aggressive spreaders. However, their shallow roots make them easy to dig up. Water as needed during active growth periods; about 1″ of moisture per week is a good estimate. After blooming has finished for the season leave the foliage in place; don’t cut it off. The leaves will gather sunlight, create food through photosynthesis and strengthen the bulbs for the future. For a tidy appearance, remove old foliage before new foliage emerges in early spring. Divide clumps every 2 to 3 years in early spring. In shadier plantings, keep an eye out for powdery mildew, which can be a mild nuisance.