August Reckoning: A Post-Vacation, Late Summer Garden Reset

I’m not in the best place emotionally when I get back from Italy. It’s like being spiritually plucked out of the warm, cuddly waters of the Adriatic and plunged into the icy waves of the Pacific Ocean. I go from hot to cold in every metaphorical and literal way.

Back in the Bay, besides being overjoyed to see my cat, I tend to fixate on the negative: work, fog, everything costing an arm and a leg. So of course, when I surveyed the scene on the balcony, at first I saw only the failures. I felt stupid and guilty for thinking I could have a gardening hobby AND go on vacation in July. 

I’ve now been back for two weeks and have calmed down. Actually, most plants survived, thanks to my neighbor’s watering (maybe some of my DIY self-watering gadgets helped too? Hard to say). And there were more than a few positive surprises upon my return.

Perhaps August is a good time for a garden reset. Despite my jet-lag and sour mood, a nostalgic, back-to-school feeling crept in to my subconscious, making me want to make to-do lists, go plant shopping, and start afresh. Hopefully, the work I’ve done over the past two weeks has set the garden up for a beautiful fall.

Three tragedies

I came home to only three tragedies: a dead sticky monkeyflower, mildewy cosmos, and munched-on pepper and basil starts. Yet they weigh heavily on my conscience.

I don’t know what killed the monkeyflower. It was a precious native plant with lovely light orange flowers beloved by pollinators, and I should have been here to keep it alive.

Powdery mildew terrorizes the East Bay every summer.  My cosmos might have succumbed even if I had been here to treat them with various remedies (neem oil, baking soda, milk spray, and whatnot). But still, I grew them from seed, and I could have at least tried to save them. 

You may recall that earlier this spring, my cat ate my pepper seedlings. They miraculously recovered, and I planted them out before I left, thinking they were strong enough to keep growing without me for the next four weeks. Alas, they survived a cat attack only to be eaten down to bare stems by something else; maybe slugs or squirrels. The basil got hit, too. Despite scaling back my edible growing after the harsh lessons of Tomatopocalypse 2023, I was nonetheless punished again for leaving my summer vegetables in July.

Six happy surprises

Alright, enough with the self-flagellation; the good news fully outweighs the bad:

1. Resilient marigolds. While not as full and bushy as I wish they were, the marigolds I sowed this spring are healthy enough, with lots of flowers and buds. With a little doting, they should keep going through early fall. 

2. Lavender ready for harvesting. When I left, my lavender wasn’t quite ready to pick, and I was worried I would miss the window for a good harvest. But the ruffly purple blooms were just right upon my return, and the fragrant bundle is now hanging upside down from the ceiling in our bathroom.

3. Flowering fuchsia. This year’s first display of pink pendant flowers on my three-year-old fuchsia immediately put a smile on my exhausted face when I got home.

4. Thriving natives. Although my sticky monkeyflower didn’t make it, the other natives on the balcony are doing great. The Heuchera cylindrica is lush, the California fuchsia is ready to burst into fall color, and the plantsitter’s accidental watering of the Lewisia resulted in an impressive second flush. The yerba buena’stendrils are spreading all over my pots, the Aquilegia formosa still has a few flowers left to give, and one of the woodland strawberries produced a perfect runner for me to pot up.

5. Olive bumper crop. I don’t want to get too excited because the olive fruit fly could ruin everything, but my olive tree is loaded! Although some of the leaves turned yellow and fell off (likely due to underwatering), the fruit looks very promising. If all goes well, I’ll have way more than six this year!

6. Baby figs!!! Perhaps most exciting of all, while I was away my fig tree started to make figs! I wasn’t sure it would have any fruit this year, given the modest amount of foliage. But there are like ten baby figs on there, and they are so freaking cute.

Cleaning up, troubleshooting, and moving on

Once powdery mildew has taken hold, it’s important to stop the spread. After removing my sick cosmos, I cleaned my pruners and pots with soap and hot water and sprayed my pots with an alcohol solution for good measure, leaving them to dry in the sun.

With the tainted contents of my railing planters gone for good, I turned my attention to the plants that were surviving but not thriving. Going away for a month makes you realize the importance of feeding, pruning, and good old observation. As Monty Don says, every garden needs a gardener.

While I was away, something severely damaged the stem of my dahlia, to the point where it flopped over like a felled tree, and I thought it was all over. But I tied it to a bamboo pole, kept watering and feeding it, and to my surprise, it seems unfazed! It has new growth and two little buds that continue to develop.

My rose looked sad due to a lack of nutrients. After sprinkling the soil with special rose food and giving it a weekly drink of delicious fish fertilizer, it’s now rapidly putting forth new red growth.

One pepper and one basil were so destroyed I had to let them go. The others have enough foliage left to be worth a rescue effort. With regular watering, feeding, and the occasional application of Sluggo, they seem to be pulling through. The fickle Bay Area weather will decide their fate, as both like warm temperatures.

To guarantee leaves through the remainder of summer, I bought a couple of new Genovese basil starts at the nursery. They’re obviously much bushier and nicer than mine, and already growing like crazy. The ones I grew from seed are scraggly and chewed on, but bouncing back!

Railing planter refresh

With the Bay Area’s warm autumn, the growing season is far from over. I decided to create colorful displays in my now-empty railing planters that would carry on until December, when I’ll plant out my spring bulbs. Plus, a little retail therapy at the nursery was excellent medicine for my post-vacation malaise.

I looked for plants known to flower through the fall that would enjoy the full sun on the railing. To spill over the edges of all four of my rectangular pots, I chose ornamental oregano “Kent Beauty,” a low-maintenance, sun-loving favorite. For the two smaller pots, I bought chamomile (another minor failure: the ones I sowed and planted out stopped growing for reasons unknown to me). For the two larger, I filled them with a fiery sunset-orange diascia, dark purple Thai basil, and peachy pink snapdragons.

When buying plants at the nursery at this time of year, you can save a lot of money by dividing them into smaller plants. Use a bread knife or your fingers to carefully split the roots apart. It’s also wise to pinch out flowers from new plants once you’ve potted them up to encourage root development and, eventually, more blooms.

My late summer/fall planters don’t look like much right now, but they should come into their own over the coming weeks and months. I may not have skillfully nurtured their contents from seed, but sometimes you just have to give yourself a break and go shopping. 

Looking forward to fall

Coming back to the daily grind after a long vacation is never easy. We mourn the loss of owning all our time, not just a few hours in the morning and night and the too-short weekends. 

Downtrodden and overwhelmed, I somehow mustered the will to spend my suddenly scarce free time getting reacquainted with my garden, yanking rootbound soil from pots, hoisting trash bags of it into the dumpster, hauling plants and potting mix up to my apartment, scrubbing heavy terracotta vessels, planting, watering, fertilizing, and sweeping debris away.

I like to think that this laborious process sped up my mind’s journey across the Atlantic and the North American continent to inhabit my body again. Though I’m still adjusting, I do feel better about one thing: my balcony, and its promise of fall flowers and fruits.