August and September in the Garden

Mid-summer's day is now just a memory and little by little the nights are drawing in - we're on our way towards autumn now. This is the period when you can enjoy the fruits of your labours and also start to think about preparing the plants and garden for the colder months ahead.

Harvesting is important for the next month or so. Many crops are ripening nicely now and you need to keep an eye on them to make sure that you don't miss the perfect moment to gather in your bounty. Some things will definitely be finishing in August/September - onions and garlic, for example, should be lifted by the end of August if they haven't been already, dried out and then stored in a dry, frost free place. Some folk plait their onions/garlic which looks nice but is a bit of a pain to do. We use a much cheekier ‘reuse' technique - drop the bulbs into legs of old pairs of tights with a knotted string between each one. These can then be hung up and onions removed from the top as and when required (we tend to hang them in a store room out of the way as a 6ft long pair of bulging tights hanging from the kitchen ceiling isn't a good look!).

The last of the main crop potatoes will need lifting during August, and at the start of the month you can put in some late crop spuds if you ordered any earlier in the year. When lifting potatoes try to do it on a dry, windy day and leave the tubers on the soil surface for an hour or so before putting them into paper or hessian sacks and then storing them in a dark, frost free place. As you are bagging them up pick out any that have any damage (holes from the fork for example) and put those to one side to consume first (or dispose of if they are soft or showing signs of disease - bin or burn them rather than putting them in the compost though). Keep an eye on the potatoes once they are in your store as well just in case anything nasty sneaks in as diseases can quickly spread through a sack of stored tubers.

Assuming you've either got tomatoes under glass or have managed to avoid blight on outdoor varieties you should now be getting a steady crop from the plants. If your tomato plants are still heading upwards and not producing much fruit they can be ‘stopped' - simply pinch out the top growth two leaves above the top fruiting truss. For most outdoor varieties four or five trusses are ample - in a good summer you can be reaching for the preserves book looking for additional ideas for what to do with them all!

On a hot summer's day fresh warm tomatoes will be a nice addition to a salad, and you should find that other salad crops such as cucumbers, lettuce, rocket, radishes, oriental leaves and carrots are available. Watch out if the weather turns really hot though as some crops might bolt if they get too dry.

You'll also need to keep up with any beans and peas that are cropping at the moment. Leave the pods on the plants for too long and they'll go floury or stringy. However, as the yields start to decline towards autumn leave some pods alone until they go brown and dry - these can then be shelled and either stored as dried beans or peas for winter stews, or, in the case of non-F1 hybrid varieties, saved as next year's seeds.

Beetroot should be ready to lift now - grab them when they are about tennis ball size. Carrots, parsnips, turnips and swedes should also have an eye kept on them as they'll be ready to harvest at some point. Summer cauliflowers, some broccoli, autumn cabbages and early kale may also be ready to start picking.

Sweetcorn cobs will be ready in August/September and, assuming you get there before any local badgers, are best cooked as soon as they've been removed from the plant. If you delay getting them into the pot by more than a couple of hours the sugars turn to starch and they don't taste nearly as good. I've even heard of folk taking a pan and a primus stove to their allotments so that plant-to-pan is in seconds rather than hours!

Courgettes should have a careful eye kept on them as if overlooked they can turn into marrows surprisingly quickly. Some squashes may also be ripening, as will some melons under glass.

As well as vegetables, fruits will be in full swing now. The summer fruiting raspberries will have been providing tasty desserts and when they've finished the autumn fruiting varieties soon start to provide instead. Early apple varieties will be plumping up nicely, and blackberries and their close relatives will also be reaching their prime. There's nothing that says ‘late summer' better to me than a walk down a country lane brambling and then picking some cooking apples off the tree at home before sitting down to a delicious apple and blackberry crumble. Yum! Don't forget that if you get a glut of apples you can make large batches of stewed apple and freeze portions to give you a warming taste of summer in mid-winter.

On the subject of fruit - now's the time for some essential maintenance. Once the blackcurrant harvest is over prune out a third of the oldest stems at the base of the plant. This should help encourage new growth. If you have cultivated blackberries, loganberries and related fruits you should tie in new young canes, as these will bear next year's fruit. You can also strike cuttings now, ready to overwinter in pots in a cold frame, if you want to increase your stock of plants.

As well as harvesting, you can still be doing a bit of sowing and planting out. If you've not yet got cauliflowers or kale transplanted to their final locations you need to do it as soon as possible - they need to bed in before the harsh weather arrives. Remember to firm them in well - they can become large plants and with relatively shallow roots can easily be rocked back and forth in high winters so that they fall over.

Keep sowing lettuce, chard and spinach beet for winter cropping. If the weather turns cold towards the end of September you can help protect them from frosts with cloches. Summer cauliflowers can be sown in pots and popped in a cold frame in preparation for next year.

Finally, in late summer many weeds will be putting on their final growth spurts and trying to flower and set seed. Don't let them get away with it in your beds! A few minutes hoeing here and a couple of minutes hand weeding there every so often should help you keep on top of them, as will laying down mulches if you haven't already done so. Any bare beds can be sown with a green manure - these are plants such as vetches and grazing rye that grow rapidly, out-competing lots of annual weeds and which you turn into the soil to improve the organic matter content. Worth keeping a few packs of such seeds in your seed tin!

Jim'll

photos (c) Jilly Graham 2009