Summer is starting to fade, and some plants are getting tired. Warm-season annual flowers planted in April now, at the end of August, have been blooming for months. Despite efforts to revive them by cutting off spent blooms and fertilizing, their best days may be behind them.

Much of the warm season still lies ahead, and we would like our outdoor spaces, both gardens and containers, to look good as long as possible. There are some annual flowers and ornamental/edible plants that don’t really get into full floral stride until mid-July or August and continue to look good into September and even October, with little or no deadheading.

One late performer is gomphrena or globe amaranth (Gomphrena globosa). Gomphrena are considered straw flowers and are often grown for cut or dried flower arrangements. Long-blooming, with blooms resembling a very cute flamboyant clover flower in form and size, gomphrena come in white, magenta, pink, orangish and red.

These plants are rounded, dense, about 18 to 22 inches tall and covered with many blooms. They need full sun, and they do well and look great in hot, even humid, conditions. Drip irrigation is best.

Well-drained soil is essential, and the plants are more robust with some compost included. They are drought-tolerant, deer-resistant and good in containers. They can make a fun mini hedge. Butterflies and skippers love the blooms.

Celosia plumosa (Celosia argentea plumosa) is another heat-loving, long-season summer annual. Upright growers reach about 2 feet tall.

These plants are grown for their plume-like 2- to 6-inch blooms that come in white, yellow, lime green and glowing burgundy. Some varieties have sadly been dwarfed to about 6 to 8 inches, transforming a striking garden ornamental into what looks like a children’s toy.

These small plants are too tiny to have any impact in a garden or container. Like many dwarfed plants, they have lost their vigor. There are still many good standard-size varieties available, however.

Some favorite celosias are varieties that have deep claret-burgundy foliage and glowing burgundy plume flowers that look surreal. The foliage is handsome even before the plume flowers bloom, and many other colors look great with it, such as yellow, red, orange, lime green and apricot. They look wonderful with dahlias of many colors and are smashing with orange cosmos.

They do need rich, composted soil to look their best. If picked when young, they can be dried or used as cut flowers and are very useful as a filler flower in arrangements.

Another even more fun celosia is Celosia argentea var. cristata. Its botanical name falls far short of the bloom’s striking resemblance to glowing velvet brains.

These plants are conversation starters — anyone who sees one has to pet the flower heads. Grown for the cut or dried flower trade, many of these are at least 3 feet tall and need support.

There is a smaller (2 feet tall) very easy-to-grow cultivar with smaller fantastical flowers called ‘Tornado Red.’ The flowers are deep burgundy and resemble parts of brains in their shape. They are not spherical like the taller varieties. ‘Tornado Red’ seeds are available from the Select Seeds Catalog.

Salvia farinacea, or mealycup sage, is native to Texas, New Mexico and Mexico, growing in woodland edges and meadows. It’s considered a short-lived perennial, but it’s almost always grown as an annual.

This upright and well-behaved salvia grows to about 2 feet and does well in a drought. The whole plants are very upright, rather than spreading. The leaves are green but can have a silvery cast, and the plant’s numerous and very attractive flower spikes are a vivid, almost electric, blue to blue violet.

There also is an all-white cultivar called Victoria White. It is a bee magnet, attracting bumblebees, native bees, honeybees and hummingbirds. It blooms all summer and into late summer. Cut spent flower spikes off to prolong the bloom even further. It grows well in containers.

Not a flower but a great late-season ornamental that is also edible is the ornamental chile pepper, which comes into its own in late summer.

The dense, compact plants are covered in small chile peppers in a variety of colors that look like edible art installations. Some are only about 14 to 16 inches tall and about twice as wide.

The variety ‘Numex Twilight’ has upward-facing fruits that transform from purple to yellow to red over a long season, creating a warm rainbow of small Christmas light-like chiles great in a pot or even as a small hedge.

Baker Creek Seeds has a spectacular variety called ‘Jigsaw.’ The foliage is variegated purple, white and green. Set against this tie-dye background are small, brilliant orange, red and purple chile peppers. This pepper will be great in a container.

Peppers need well-drained but very fertile soil to reach their best potential.

Kate Frey’s column appears every other week in Sonoma Home. Contact Kate at katebfrey@gmail.com, freygardens.com, Twitter @katebfrey.

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