The Beautiful Annual In Your Container Garden That You Should Prune Before August Is Over

When August is almost over, which spells the end of summer, your container garden is probably still looking gorgeous if you've spent the time tending to it and ensuring that all your plants receive plenty of water. If you have a love of colorful blooms, you probably have quite a few different annuals growing in those containers, and some of them may need a bit of extra pruning before the end of the month. One of the beautiful annuals that would benefit from a bit of extra attention from your pruning shears, along with a range of perennials you should prune in August, is the pretty Diascia or twinspur.

While planting Diascia flowers is an easy way to add blooms to your container garden, by the time that the end of summer comes around, you may find that your plants have become a bit leggy, and giving them a trim now will tidy them up and even promote a new growth flush. If you've experienced a fairly hot summer, you may have even found that your Diascia has few flowers. If you prune it back quite hard in August, you should hopefully see new blooms into the fall.

Diascia is one of those pretty plants that make gorgeous fillers for your containers, and is a delicate and colorful flower that looks stunning in hanging baskets. These easy-care plants are also fairly low-maintenance and deer-resistant. The species originates in South Africa, but there are now a variety of different hybrids and cultivars available with floral colors including pink, orange, white, rose red, and lavender. This array of colored blooms means that it won't be that hard to find a variety that you could add to almost any container that you have. But to keep those pretty flowers blooming right through the end of summer and into the fall until your first frost hits, you will have to give your Diascia a bit of a trim in August.

Apart from deadheading the spent blooms during the growing season, you can trim your entire plant back to around 4 inches, especially if you've noticed that blooming has stopped when it's been really hot. If you do this, your Diascia should reward you with another lot of blooms that you can enjoy even as the heat and memory of summer starts to fade away. If you happen to live in USDA hardiness zone 8 or above, you may even be lucky enough to appreciate those colorful blooms well into October, especially if you happen to have cultivars such as 'Blackthorn Apricot' or 'Coral Belle.' As an added bonus, those blooms will keep any migrating hummingbirds happy with their nectar and feed any butterflies that are still hanging around at this time of the year.