In August, when flower gardeners are sitting on their decks admiring the blooms or meandering around watering and dead-heading, vegetable gardeners are busy bringing in the harvest.

By now, garlic leaves are yellowing and withering - a sign it's time to harvest the clove clusters. These need to be dug and laid out in a dry spot until the excess soil can be brushed off. Then they can be hung up for storage in an airy, dry, fairly cool place.

Soft-neck garlic is easy to braid. If the leaves are very fragile, string can accompany the leaves through the braid. But hard neck garlic is reluctant to bend and is better bunched with each cluster positioned so that it doesn't touch another.

Shallots and storage onions can be encouraged to dry by lifting them with a fork a few days before harvest. Once out of the garden, these can also be braided. Storage onions can be harvested and kept over the winter in the same way as shallots and garlic.

It's important to dig potatoes before the late blight hits, which is usually after the first serious rainstorm either in late July or early August. Potatoes also need to be stored in the dark. Once the skin is dry, packing them in a cardboard box between newspaper layers works well.

If potatoes spend time in sun or bright light, they'll turn green - this means toxicity is developing in the skin and the flesh underneath the green patch. Green potatoes shouldn't be eaten.

But if they look otherwise healthy, green potatoes can be replanted where they won't interfere with spring crops (adding to the flock of volunteer potato plants that potato gardeners always have).

Tomato plants grown in the open garden will succumb to the same late blight that infects potatoes. Once it's on a tomato plant, blight infects every tomato. Sometimes they appear fine at first but usually succumb later.

That's why, when rain is predicted in late summer, it's best to pick every half-ripe tomato before rain actually pelts down. These will ripen on windowsills. Many of the smaller, green tomatoes will also ripen if left on the plant, which can be hung upside down in a dry, sheltered place.

Watering is the most important thing you can do for green bean plants when they start producing. When there's no rain, watering every day is vital, misting is also good, and mulching them helps conserve soil moisture.

When it's impossible to give them enough water, bean pods need to be picked very young before they get a chance to become tough. Once the seed beans within the pods begin swelling, the pods will already be too tough and stringy to eat.

Keeping up with picking is vital with zucchinis. The fruits quickly go from succulent six-inchers to monsters that are watery, tasteless and take forever to use - and trying to give them to people is a great way to get a laugh.

Picking and composting is best for these big zucchinis. Allowing them to remain prompts the plant to stop producing.

Squash fruit is ready when the part contacting the ground is yellow and stalk turns beige. But harvesting can wait until frost withers the leaves.

Send garden questions to amarrison@shaw.ca.