Kitchen Garden Magazine

Grow your own fruit and veg with the UK's No. 1 Kitchen Garden magazine

Jobs for August

If nature follows the script August should be a month of harvesting and watering as crops languish in the summer sun. Let’s hope so! In the meantime there are lots of other jobs to get on with too, including sowing winter crops and summer pruning trained fruit. Sue Hoy brings you a roundup of the top jobs for the month

KG top tips

• Pick runner beans daily so that none get too large and tough. If you find any large, unusable beans that you’ve missed hiding under foliage, pick them and put them on the compost heap – if left, they will stop other beans forming.

• In hot weather, water crops in the evening so that the moisture has a chance to soak into the soil before it evaporates.

• Sow salad crops like lettuce only in cooler spells because high temperatures will prevent germination. If possible, grow them in a shady spot to help prevent bolting (running to seed).

• Harvest courgettes regularly while they’re still small so that they don’t become marrows overnight. Like runner beans, the formation of larger fruits will prevent further flowers and fruits forming.

• Water pumpkins and gourds in hot dry spells, and liquid feed to boost their size. This is a crop which likes both sunshine and lots of moisture, and it performs badly in very dry conditions.

KG QUICKIES

• By now, outdoor tomatoes should have begun to ‘set’ several trusses of fruit. To make sure that they develop well and ripen, pinch out (or ‘stop’) the top of the plant after 4-5 trusses have set to divert the energy back down the plant to the developing fruit. Check stakes and ties, and keep a close eye out for blight, which has become more common in recent years.

• The first sweetcorn should be ready towards the end of this month. An indication that it’s ready to be picked is that the tassels turn brown. Peel a little of the sheath back and press a fingernail into one of the kernels. If the moisture coming from it is milky, the cob is ready to harvest.
Sweetcorn is best straight from the plant to the plate – the fresher the better – so harvest immediately before you intend to cook or freeze it, so that it’s not hanging about losing flavour.

• Sprouts are ungainly, top-heavy vegetables, which suffer badly in windy areas. Now is a good time to check them to make sure that they’re stable in the ground. It may only be necessary to earth up around the stout stems, but if you garden in a very windy area, you may need to stake the plants individually to prevent them being blown out of the ground in autumn gales.

 

FRUIT IN BRIEF

• Gardeners aren’t the only ones to find figs irresistible – the ripening fruits are a magnet for wasps too. It can help to half fill a jam jar with sugary water, or just add water to the residue of jam when a pot is finished, and hang it among the branches. The wasps are attracted to the jar instead of the figs, and drown in the water. This is a good way of protecting plums too.

• Continue harvesting soft fruit on dry days for immediate eating or freezing.

• Prepare new strawberry beds, and plant up using rooted runners or bought-in plants. Make sure that all perennial weeds have been removed from the bed before planting.

• Prune fruited raspberry canes back at ground level as soon as they’ve finished cropping. Dig out any stray runners which have wandered away from the bed.

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

Copyright information

© Mortons Media Group • | Subscribe | Renew | Buy current issue | Kitchen Garden offers shop