Gardeners Checklist: Here Is What to Do the Week of Aug. 18

By Ron Kujawski

* Wait until the grass has fully recovered from this summer’s dry conditions before applying lawn fertilizer. Hopefully, with some rain soon, the cooler temperatures will bring most lawns back to their normal green state. A fertilizer application would help further their recovery by stimulating root growth.

* Dig, divide and replant daylilies. While you’re at it, trim away some of the sections of each plant that have thin, weak-looking foliage. Before replanting, I cut back all the leaves to about 10 to 12 inches - no need to use a ruler; just eyeball it.

* Start garden clean-up by cutting back damaged stems and foliage on herbaceous perennials in flower borders. Leaf and stem diseases, as well as pests such as slugs and snails, have ravaged many plants. Removing diseased plant parts from gardens will reduce the chances of widespread disease infections next year.

* Continue to pinch off flowers on basil, oregano, sweet marjoram, and other culinary herbs. Removing the flowers will stimulate more leaf production.

* Pinch a tomato. Before you get the wrong idea, I‘m referring to the pinching or removal of flower buds on tomato plants. Few if any of the flower buds coming into bloom now are likely to develop mature fruit before frost.

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Speaking of tomatoes, they are ripening fast and our kitchen is abuzz as my wife has started canning most of the harvest. (We prefer canning over freezing tomatoes due to better flavor retention with canning.) Tomatoes of the variety San Marzano are canned whole, diced, or as sauce. Other varieties are eaten fresh or are used to make tomato juice, which is then canned. In recent years, we’ve discovered another way of preserving tomatoes: dehydration. For this method, we cut the tomatoes (variety Principe Borghese) in half and place them face up on trays, which go into our food dehydrator. Dehydration can also be done in an oven at a temperature of 200 to 250°F for several hours. When drying tomatoes in an oven, place halved tomatoes on an oiled cookie sheet. In our opinion, the food dehydrator is easier and cheaper to use. We dry most of the tomatoes to the leathery stage and then store them in the freezer. However, I’ll let some tomatoes dry until they are hard and brittle. These are stored in canning jars along with a packet of a drying agent made with rice or powdered milk wrapped in tissue paper. When needed, the hard, dry tomatoes are ground into a powder using a spice or coffee grinder. What does one do with tomato powder?  Need some tomato paste — mix a tablespoon of the powder with a tablespoon of water.  Need to jazz up homemade salad dressing — add a spoonful of the powder. Need to thicken watery spaghetti sauce — drop in…okay, you get the point. 

Ron Kujawski began gardening at an early age on his family's onion farm in upstate New York. Although now retired, he spent most of his career teaching at the UMass Extension Service. He serves on Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Horticulture Advisory Committee. His book, Week-by-Week Vegetable Gardener’s Handbook, is available here.