Allotment & Vegetable Gardening in August

August is often the summer month with blue skies and hot so a lot of time may be spent watering. You can save yourself some time by preventing water loss by mulching with a layer of organic matter, which will help preserve moisture but may encourage slugs so you will need to take action against them.

Another good method of preventing water loss is to hoe. This not only kills the weeds but breaks up the top of the soil stopping water from being drawn to the surface by capillary action and evaporating.

Harvest

The harvest should be doing well, providing you with both fresh vegetables and vegetables to store over winter.

When you harvest your potatoes take care to remove all the tubers. Any left will not only sprout next year and become a weed but will also be a reservoir for disease and potato blight spores. It's often worth forking over a few days after harvesting potatoes because more seem to miraculously appear.

If blight has struck your potatoes the best method to preserve the crop is to remove the haulm and dispose of it then leave the potatoes in the ground for a fortnight to stop the spores getting onto the tubers. It's best to harvest potatoes fairly early in the day, rinse them off as they come from the ground and then leave in the sunlight for a day to thoroughly dry off and harden the skins before storing.

Sort carefully and place perfect specimens into hessian or paper sacks in a cool dark but frost free place. Damaged tubers should be used first before they have a chance to rot and spread their rot to the rest of the sack.

It's worthwhile to empty the sacks after a few weeks or a month and check that there are no potatoes going off. Discard these before they rot the sack. You might like to pop a few slug pellets into the sacks as well. It's amazing how the slugs can appear no matter how careful you are. If you are concerned about slug pellets, remember these are in store and present no risk to wildlife.

Sowing, Planting and Cultivating

Sowing

There are still quite a few things you can sow in August.

• Spring Cabbage
• Chinese cabbage
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce (sow a hardy variety for winter use)
• Spring Onions (White Lisbon winter hardy)
• Radishes
• Spinach
• Turnips

Green Manure

When you have harvested your potatoes you might like to consider sowing a green manure crop. Mustard is fast growing and is supposed to confuse the potato eel worm into breeding at the wrong time. It is a brassica so don't use it if you suffer from club root.

Another fast growing crop you can use as a green manure is French beans. Even if you have enough beans to feed an army, the plant produces a fair amount of leaf and stem plus the roots, as with all legumes, have nodules containing bacteria that fix nitrogen from the atmosphere. Free fertiliser as well as organic matter.

Planting Out

August is the month to plant out:

• Savoy Cabbages and Cauliflowers
• Kale

Cultivating

Runner beans that have reached the top of their supports will benefit from having the growing tip pinched out.

Keep on top of the weeds, it really is far easier to hoe them as small seedlings than as grown plants. Even if you can not see any weeds, hoeing will actually be killing tiny seedlings you have not noticed and will be helping reduce moisture loss as I said above.

Keep your tomato sideshoots in check, you want tomatoes not masses of foliage. Ensure they are watered regularly, drying out prevents the plant from taking up sufficient calcium and the deficit causes blossom end rot.

In the greenhouse

Stop tomato plants now to encourage fruit to swell and ripen. Stopping is the process of cutting off the growing tip so the plant's energy is not diverted into foliage from fruit.

Keep a close eye out for pests such as whitefly which can controlled with either biological controls or sticky yellow cards. The fly is attracted to yellow and once on the card cannot get off.

Ensure good ventilation. It can get incredibly hot in a greenhouse with strong sun and scorch your plants. You should also consider shading the house either with blinds or films or with a shading wash

Fruit

Many fruits are ready to harvest or swelling. Swelling fruit requires a lot of water so ensure they have enough.

Finish summer pruning apple trees and prune mature plums after fruiting.

General Tasks

Keep on top of the pests. Aphids and Blackfly are a particular problem. You can control them with pesticides or just wash them off many plants with a strong jet of water. A wash with soft soap will do no harm to the plants and will reduce numbers.

Turn your compost. The warmth will be helping your compost break down and turning it out to in will ensure even breakdown. Water if it is dry as the microbes need some water but don't make it absolutely sodden.

Keep an eye on your brassicas for butterfly eggs and caterpillars, these will most probably be under the leaves. Pick or wash them off before they dine on your dinner.

Monthly Vegetable Growing Articles

• What to do in the Garden in January
• What to do in the Garden in February
• What to do in the Garden in March
• What to do in the Garden in April
• What to do in the Garden in May
• What to do in the Garden in June
• What to do in the Garden in July
• What to do in the Garden in August
• What to do in the Garden in September
• What to do in the Garden in October
• What to do in the Garden in November
• What to do in the Garden in December

There is no such thing as an absolute set date for a job in gardening, for a start temperatures vary according to where you are in the country.

Winter comes earlier to Scotland than Devon. Next, each year is different; some warmer and some colder although the trend is toward warmer the exception proves the rule.

So, adjust for where you are and the weather

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