August is all about taking the time to fill in spots where plants just didn't make it despite our best intentions. In the herb garden, it can be especially frustrating if herbs have gotten out of hand and they have gone to seed or kicked the bucket. If your mints haven't taken over your herb plot and you've got a little room left, there is still time to plant with incredible rewards as we enter into the dog days of summer.

We can ensure steady and flavorful production of basil, coriander (cilantro), and dill throughout summer into fall. Our herb grower recommends planting in monthly intervals from spring through late summer. This method will provide your garden with backup herbs just as your favorite flavor is ready to cease production, lose flavor and bolt (go to seed). By planting basils, coriander and dill in early August, your garden could provide an assortment of flavors and textures until October! We find they perform best with protecting the tender leaves of these herbs from hot afternoon sun. Dress them up in moss baskets and have them around for BBQs. Rosemary anyone? Here are some of our late summer herb selections:

Basil-Pesto Perpetuo Basil is a spicy basil with cream marbling against smooth, light sage green leaves that is perfect for pesto. To liven up your summer iced tea, try Cinnamon Basil and sweeten with Stevia. Genovese is a great full-bodied basil. Sweet Basil is a great standby for pesto and is great for drinks like Mojitos, too. Lemon basil and Thai basil are great finds, too. The many tastes of basil will enhance your garden and the versatility of your dishes.

Coriander (aka cilantro) can also give you great herb production if planted as late as August. Hopefully you have it planted by now, but we've still got some available for our late starters. Fresh leaves can be cut for seasoning as soon as the plants are 4 to 6 inches tall. The seeds can be harvested when the heads turn brown and used in baking, poultry dressings, and French salad dressing. Coriander seeds smell and taste much like a mixture of vibrant sage and orange when green and add a cooling Southwest flair to your table. They're also used in Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Latin American cuisine. In addition to adding this herb to your salsa, try wrapping a few sprigs in a chicken inspired flat bread dish. Check out Modesto's Farmer's Market-where there is a vendor that carries amazing herbed flat breads and yogurt products. Yum!

Dill is another flavorful and attractive herb that can be added to entrees, fish steaks, breads and cool dipping sauces. The fresh leaves can be harvested as needed and used as seasoning. Seed heads should be harvested then the seeds ripen to a light brown color. The feathery leaves of Dill add ornamental value to your garden and have the added bonus of creating a home for butterfly caterpillars.

English, lime, creeping and silver thymes-great on meat, fish, poultry, and in stuffing, sauces, soups. I could go on forever!

As you plant your last bit of herbs for the summer, we hope that you will find that some of the seeds and dried leaves from your herbs will expand your spice pantry.

They seemingly appear overnight, the dead spots in lawns! Spring, summer and fall definitely see their share of turf problems, when disease pressure is at its highest. Of course, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The best way to prevent a severe disease and pest outbreak is to maintain a healthy, vigorously growing turf through cultural practices, fertilizing and pre-emerging. Keep Burmuda grass lawns cut to one inch; keep cool season grasses such as fescue, bluegrass and ryegrass lawn cut longer at 2-2.5 inches. Aerate (punch holes) your lawn in spring and fall to encourage better drainage and a decreased thatch layer. “About 75-80% of common lawn diseases can be avoided altogether just by optimizing these practices to avoid stressed grass, which is more susceptible to disease outbreaks than healthy grass,” according to University of California’s Agriculture and Natural Resources website, http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu. Learn more about different lawn diseases, fungus, and bug problems that plague many a Central Valley homeowners and how to approach them using the concepts of Integrated Pest Management (IPM).

The first step to correcting lawn issues is identifying the problem--fungus, disease, bug, or watering issue? Each problem has its own unique set of symptoms. The key in diagnosis is identifying a pattern through a seven step process. Some of these answers only you will be able to supply.

1. What kind of grass do you have?
2. What is normal for this particular grass? Does it go dormant, die off in warm weather, etc?
3. What are common problems for this particular grass? Is it prone to certain bugs, fungus or disease?
4. What do you see that is abnormal? Spotting, striping, mushrooms, moss, white patches, brown patches, odd shapes, bugs, etc?
5. What is the overall health of your lawn? Otherwise healthy except by the house? Is it affected in the shadier areas? Low or high spots?
6. What are the site conditions? Clay or sandy soil, slope or flat land, sun or shade?
7. What kind of care is your lawn getting? Regular mowing at the correct height? Fertilizing product and application rate?

With a sample and by following this process, we can make an educated guess as to what the issue is and recommend an appropriate product to control or cure the problem. A pie tin sample with good and distressed grass (with soil, roots and grass) should give us a good idea of what is going on. Most often, we find watering is the biggest factor, causing yellowing of blades when dry and setting up disease pressure when wet. With a diagnosis, we can also recommend good cultural practices, fertilizers and pre-emergents to ensure a healthy turf going into next spring with fewer problems in the future.

Even in partial sun, a Japanese maple’s leaves may still crisp in Modesto’s summer sun and wind negating the beautiful fall turn for which they are prized. Sound familiar? There is a simple solution that will have you enjoying the beautiful new foliage reminiscent of spring. Simply use a gloved hand to gently strip off shriveled, crisped leaves, pulling carefully away from the trunk to prevent branch breakage.

Fertilize one last time with Azalea, Camellia and Gardenia acidic fertilizer before switching over to Master Bloom. By doing so, you will encourage new sets of leaves to emerge in 3-4 weeks, leading to an extraordinary November/ December fall show in oranges, reds, pinks, yellows and everything in between!

With the return of hot weather, water usage comes to everyone's attention. When the weather gets hot everyone starts turning up the timer to give the whole yard more water.

Most people concerned about garden water conservation understand that some plants need more water and more frequent watering. The reaction most of us have is turn up the spigot for the whole yard. This is the reaction that wastes water.

If you see dry areas in your garden your first reaction should be to do a check of the irrigation coverage. If heads are blocked, clogged, adjusted wrong this need to be fixed. If your irrigation system is designed wrong so there are dry areas, again, this needs to be fixed.

If you have a few plants that get stressed out you may need a supplemental system to water them. In garden plants this often means hydrangeas, roses, ferns. And the winner is Jeanne Drew! What I do is have a drip line that runs through my garden and gives these plants extra water.

This allows most of my garden to be watered once or at most twice a week with my lawn being watered three times a week and my high water needing plants getting a couple of extra waterings a week.

As your garden gets established deeper. even less frequent watering becomes possible.

Remember, don’t over water 90 percent of your garden to keep 10% moist.

As a couple of points of interest some history of low watering.

Bedding plants like petunias, marigolds and vinca are often watered daily or in best cases three days a week but in the morning and then the evening. Several years ago Martin Hildebrandt and I ran a test to see how far we could push infrequent watering to bedding plants in good soil in a very hot spot next to the road in front of the nursery.

At a previous home Donna and I were doing some garden remodeling and had some shrubs in the ground and our irrigation system was destroyed by the remodeling. We watered well established plants three times that summer from the end of the rainy season till the start of the next rainy season!

The results of the watering test Martin and I did was a FOUR Week Interval between waterings in August!! Yes, 28 days between watering.

Don't misunderstand what we did. We carefully forced the plants to adapt to a low watering regime. We didn't just not water in August. And when we did water we ran the system for 45 minutes to 60 minutes to get the entire soil column moist. Though this is not a suggestion, we were surprised with the results showing that plants can be pushed once established.

This does tell you that most of us OVERWATER.

Happy Gardening,