Organic Gardening Magazine

Sowing and planting

• Make a final sowing of summer lettuces and salad leaves in a shady spot at the beginning of August. You can go on sowing summer radishes until the end of the month. Sow winter varieties of lettuce and winter radishes now to provide an ongoing harvest through the autumn.

• In the south, you can still sow kohlrabi and turnips outdoors for ‘baby’ roots to harvest in October. Further north, wait until the end of August and sow them in the greenhouse or polytunnel border.

• Sow corn salad, landcress, winter purslane and rocket for winter cropping.

• You can still sow chicories and endives this month, as well as the full range of oriental greens. Think ahead about their need for winter protection, and sow in blocks which match the dimensions of your cloches or cold frames.

• Sow spinach and Swiss chard for spring crops – and if you haven’t sown your spring cabbages yet, do it now.

• You can still sow a ‘second-cropping’ variety of potato at the beginning of the month for (all being well) new potatoes at the end of the year. In theory this can go into the open ground, but the best way of dodging the likely hazards of blight and frost is to sow a few tubers in a big pot and keep it in the greenhouse or polytunnel.

• More in the magazine

Crop care

• If you have brassicas or other transplants still in pots, get them planted out as soon as ground becomes vacant; they need all the growing time they can get.

• Make sure that everything is watered regularly; in a dry August many crops will bolt at the first opportunity.

• ‘Stop’ outdoor tomatoes by pinching out the growing tip; flowers that form after the beginning of August won’t have time to develop into fruit, and you want to direct the plants’ energy into the lower trusses.

• Pinch out the flowering spikes on basil and other herbs that you are growing for their leaves. Dry herbs for winter use in August, while the plants are still at their peak.

• More in the magazine

 

August fruit

• Harvest soft fruit on a daily basis and freeze the surplus – or make it into jam. The difference between ripe and overripe can be as little as a couple of days.

• Cut out all of the spent canes on summer-fruiting raspberries. Tie in the best new canes, and prune out the weaker ones and any that are surplus to requirements.

• Summer-prune redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries if you didn’t get it done last month. Trim this year’s side-shoots back to three or four buds, remove damaged growth, and thin out inward-pointing branches.

• Transplant rooted strawberry runners into their permanent positions, or into pots. The latter option allows you to move them under cover in February to produce a forced early crop.

• Continue summer pruning of fruit trees. See pages 32-33.

• If your fruit trees are bearing a heavy crop, prop up especially laden branches, and thin out congested growth so that air and sunlight can reach the ripening fruit.

• Tie strips of corrugated cardboard around the trunks of apple and pear trees to catch codling moth larvae as they descend. In the autumn these can be removed and burnt.
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