Tales from the Plot for August
August should be a time of plenty if you’ve done the job right. I thankfully have had successes, but also failures this year sadly. We have spent the last six months setting seeds and planting out, only to witness the fattest, largest population of pigeons munch their way through the young tender seedlings …… unless they were covered of course. I’ve never known so many slugs and snails as there have been this year, they decimated my peas to such an extent I just dug them up and threw them in the compost in disgust. To add insult to injury a friend of mine has produced as good a crop as I’ve ever seen, admittedly covered in fine mesh from germination until harvest so both myself and my grandson Sydney have been denied the pleasure of picking from the plant and eating them fresh. Next year my peas will definitely be covered…lesson learned!
Broad beans have been a great success for me thankfully and are all now harvested and in the deep freezer. It’s been a good year for strawberries with half of our crop being consumed with cream or ice cream or added to morning cereal, the rest made into jam to be enjoyed throughout the rest of the year: a similar practice is being carried out with the raspberries.
I made a bit of a mistake with my Savoy cabbages: they’ve been grown under netting and done really well but sadly they needed harvesting right in the middle of the summer when you don’t really fancy Savoy cabbage! There you go you never stop learning!
Potatoes have done very well I think it’s because of the very wet start to the year that lasted well into June – potatoes seem to like that.
Potatoes, cauliflower, cabbages, french and runner beans, carrots etc, all being harvested as needed, however you can still sow lots of crops in August, for harvests into autumn and beyond.
Not a lot of plot holders realise that you can actually set garlic now, I was always told that you plant garlic on the longest day and harvest it on the shortest. I personally leave it a little later than that although I’m not a very successful garlic grower.
If you want fresh new potatoes on the dinner table on Christmas Day, now is the last chance to set them. I have learnt this from previous experience, if later than August they will not have time to mature before the cold weather comes back.
Prepare to lift onions towards the end of the month, wait until the tops begin to fall over as this indicates that the bulb has stopped swelling, dry them before ‘stringing’ and putting into store and these bulbs will then keep until next March.
The apples and pears will soon begin to colour up along with plums and damsons being in full flow so harvest regularly, hopefully the late fruiting raspberries will be cropping well by now.
Make the last of any outdoor sowings to provide a late harvest for this season, radishes and lettuce will still produce a crop.
The end of this month signals the time to begin summer pruning of your apple and pear trees (but those grown as cordons, espaliers or fans, for trees and bushes, leave these until the winter to prune). The purpose of summer pruning is to encourage the development of fruit buds for next summer.
August is definitely the last month to prune stone fruit trees (plum, apricot, cherry and peach), and of course as always keep hoeing those weeds. I find it quite remarkable that it doesn’t matter how much care you give to your vegetable plants the weeds grow faster and more often than not look healthier! If you have a interest in growing fruit and veg, on August 17, visit the allotment open day there will be tea, coffee, cakes, tombola, some fruit and veg on sale plus you can also have a walk round and talk to some of the plot holders – there is a lovely atmosphere and children are welcome
Richard Thorpe 15b Syston allotments