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It often feels as if everything comes into season all at once and needs picking at the same time in August. Evenings are beginning to draw in with cooler, damper nights, bringing rots and fungal infections. Clear any spent crops, composting everything you can. Mulch the cleared soil or sow a green manure to help prevent weed growth.
Keep thinking about water conservation so we’re not reliant on using hosepipes and mains water.
Harvest
Continue with the harvesting of all vegetable crops and keep up with the picking of runner beans to maintain cropping well into the autumn.
Continue lifting potatoes.
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. These bulbs will then keep until next March.
Start to thin apples and pears down to one or two fruits per cluster. The apples and pears will soon begin to colour up.
The plums and damsons will be in full flow so harvest regularly.
Harvest the earliest grapes sand if not already done, carry out the last thinning of the bunches on late grapes.
Harvest soft fruit. The late fruiting raspberries will be cropping well by now.
Sowing and Planting
Make the last of any outdoor sowings to provide a late harvest for this season, radishes and lettuce will still produce a crop.
Plant out the last of any spring brassicas.
Ensure sprouts and kale plants are firmly planted or are staked to protect against the winter winds.
Ensure any winter bedding seeds are sown no later than the beginning of the month. Winter pansies, violas, wallflowers, primulas etc. can brighten up plots in the duller months of the year.
Vegetables
Continue to water all crops at least once a week.
Continue to use a liquid feed on most crops in moist soil. Try making your own from nettles, comfry etc.
Feed asparagus beds and support top growth.
Check over autumn planted onions in storage for early signs of rot: they never tend to store as well as main crops.
Fruit
August is definitely the last month to prune stone fruit trees (plum, apricot, cherry and peach), complete the task as soon as possible. You want to aim for an open structure of branches and remove any that cross over so they don’t damage each other.
Prune blackcurrants by removing branches that carried fruit this year.
Reduce side shoots on red and white currents by two thirds.
Remove straw from around strawberry plants that have finished fruiting, lightly prick the soil with a fork and apply a general fertilizer. Prepare new strawberry beds.
Flowers
Keep all cut flowers well watered.
Keep tying in sweet peas and cut off faded blooms.
Keep dahlias well fed – they are greedy plants.
Cut any annual cut flowers as they are ready.
Greenhouse
Keep greenhouses, polytunnels and cold frames well ventilated and dampen down floors staging etc. on the hottest days.
Continue to tie in new growth on tomatoes, melons and cucumbers.
Tomatoes should be well watered to avoid blossom end rot and fed regularly with a high potash (potassium) fertiliser. Continue to remove side shoots and on warm days tap the plant to aid pollination.
Ripening melons should be supported with nets so they cannot break away from the vine as they swell.
Pests and Diseases
Blossom end rot can affect aubergines and tomatoes causing black sunken blotches on the skin of the fruit. Usually due to a lack of calcium, the disease can be stemmed by amending your watering habits to ensure the calcium found in the soil is fed through the water to the plant – so water regularly and don’t allow the soil to dry out. (Discard any damaged fruit).
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