- Keep up with harvesting vegetables and herbs
- Pick yourself a bouquet
- Pull any spent summer crops and sow seeds of spinach, arugula, kale and lettuce for fall harvesting
- Sow cover crops this month on any bare ground in the vegetable garden
- Order seed garlic for planting in October
- Continue to weed and deadhead
- Keep watering plantings that went in this past spring and any trees or shrubs that have been planted in the past three years
- Deadleaf daylilies, astilbes, ferns and other perennials that may have dried out in the extreme heat of August
- Stake tall plants ahead of time to prevent collapse in wind or rainstorms
- Refresh summer containers with fall color
- Finish summer pruning of spring blooming woody plants this month
- Touch up mulch if bare soil emerges after garden renovation work or heavy duty weeding
- Divide and transplant perennials that bloom in spring or early summer now
- Cut back perennials going dormant (such as Mayapple, lupine, bleeding heart, jack in the pulpit) but leave orange butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) to turn brown and disappear on its own
- Finish dividing and planting bearded iris before the end of the month so the plants can root well before winter
