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Jobs for August

It is important to maintain crops this month to keep them productive and to get the best out of all your hard work in previous months. Watering, harvesting and feeding are usually the main jobs for August, but there is lots of sowing to be done to ensure that your plot provides plenty of pickings for months to come

Fruit in brief

• Continue to check tree and soft fruit for signs of pests such as aphids (greenfly).

• Maintain traps for codling moth and plum fruit moth, replacing the little pheromone capsule if necessary, to reduce damage to the fruit.

• Harvest early apples toward the end of the month. These will not generally store well, so pick and eat is the best policy.

• Blackberries really come into their own now whether on the plot or in the hedgerows. If you have a glut this year make room in the freezer for your surpluses.

• Fresh figs are a real treat now. Check them every day as they ripen so quickly there is a danger that they will become overripe or that birds or wasps will get to them first.

TOP TIPS

• Continue to summer prune trained forms of apple and pear tree such as cordons and espaliers, cutting back sideshoots which have reached 25cm (10in) or so to the third leaf after the basal cluster (the cluster of leaves at the base of the shoot).

• Once strawberries have finished cropping the old leaves, straw mulch and unwanted runners can be removed. Take care not to cut off any of the new foliage that may already be appearing from the middle of the plant.

• Pinch back the fruiting shoots of kiwis to concentrate the plant’s energies on swelling the fruit and on producing fruiting spurs for the next season. Each shoot should be pinched out once it makes six or seven leaves. The main pruning is done in late winter.

Outdoor tomatoes

Tomato plants should be at their peak this month. Tie in the shoots to the canes or other supports regularly to prevent the stems from bending under the weight, especially in windy weather or on exposed sites.

Feed regularly; in order to make it easier to remember to do this, it may be more convenient to feed using half strength tomato feed (high potash) at every watering rather than full strength once or twice each week.

If the leaves of the plants start to turn yellow between the veins they may be lacking in magnesium and a dose of Epsom salts mixed at the rate of 28g (1oz) per gallon of water and sprayed over the leaves as a foliar feed should cure this. If it is a problem, check that the food you are using contains extra magnesium – it will tell you on the container.

Remove the sideshoots from cordon types before they become too large.

The biggest threat to tomatoes now is an attack of early blight which starts on potatoes, later moving to tomatoes. The first signs are a browning, usually on the tips or around the edges of the leaves. This quickly spreads to the whole leaf and the fruit, the whole plant collapsing soon afterwards. Fruit which looks OK when picked rarely keeps for more than a few days before decaying.

If this is a recurring problem for you and you wish to grow your tomatoes outside as opposed to in the greenhouse, try resistant varieties such as ‘Legend’ and ‘Ferline’.

For lots more advice, see this month's issue, available to buy online!

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