August garden calendar

The garden bursts with abundance in August, with plump, juicy red tomatoes and fragrant herbs for the kitchen, and lavender blue spikes of Russian sage and towering muted Joe Pye weed for the soul. Don't be fooled into thinking you can just sit back and enjoy it now. If you do, you might regret it come spring.

1. Harvest zucchini while they're small; they'll taste better.

2. Keep mower blades set to a minimum of 3 inches.

3. Clear out spent crops and plant peas, lettuce, radishes and spinach in their place for a second harvest.

4. Bring split cabbage heads indoors immediately after noticing them or they will become inedible.

5. When lightning looms, be sure to turn off pond pumps.

6. Need to relocate evergreens? You can start now and continue through October.

7. Keep pulling those weeds. If they're allowed to go to seed, you'll have more next year.

8. Remember to check moisture levels in containers; potted plants need more frequent watering than their in-ground counterparts.

9 Got gardening questions? Join me for a live chat today at noon at newsday.com/gardendetective.

10. It's Bloom Day! Upload photos to show off what's blooming in your garden today at newsday.com/bloomday.

11. Move potted tropicals and vacationing houseplants into the shade. Later this month you can move them indoors.

12. To help prevent heat wilt, mist leaves of hybrid tea roses with liquid seaweed.

13. Divide Japanese and Siberian iris and other spring bloomers.

14. Harvest beets if they're 2 inches wide. Roast them in tinfoil and saute the greens, and you'll have two different side dishes from one plant.

15. Leave tomatoes on the vine until fully ripe.

16. Harvest onions when tops flop over. Let them cure in the sun for a few days.

17. If you haven't sprayed roses, you can use their hips in tea and jam.

18. Clean up fallen fruit from around trees.

19. Water the lawn deeply. Less-frequent, longer watering sessions trump frequent sprinkles on established turf.

20. Transplant spring-flowering bulbs that need to be relocated.

21. It's prime lawn-renovating time. Remove dead patches, core aerate, apply compost and seed. Water deeply once, then lightly several times a day.

22. Spend a lazy afternoon looking through gardening catalogs and order spring bulbs before the pickings get slim.

23. Divide crowded daylilies.

24. Plant peonies with a healthy helping of compost.

25. Check that mulch isn't covering plant crowns, and move it 3 inches away from tree and shrub trunks.

26. Plant white clover in future garden beds. Turn over next spring for naturally nitrogen-rich soil.

27 Join me at 7 p.m. for the Great Long Island Tomato Challenge at Newsday (235 Pinelawn Rd., Melville). Bring your biggest tomato and you might be crowned king or queen.

28. Replace spent annuals with pansies. They'll bloom through fall and again next spring.

29. Shop end-of-season sales for great deals on perennials. Just be sure they're healthy.

30. Move potted tropicals and houseplants indoors for the off-season.

31. Tell me what you've learned this year and you might get published: newsday.com/gardenmistakes