August is galloping by at an alarming rate. For our family, this month has involved rain-affected cricket matches, another damp camp, flood-delayed train and car-journeys, and I’ve just disconnected our over-flowing water butts from the downpipe. All-in-all, a rather different story from last summer. If you manage to dodge the drops sufficiently to get outside, here are some suggestions to go at:
Keep it neat
The combination of sunny spells interspersed with downpours has resulted in phenomenal growth in the garden. The volume of biomass out there, compared with last year, is amazing, but also somewhat overwhelming when you are trying to keep it all under control. In general, if it’s finished flowering, prune out the flowering stems or remove dead heads. If it is also trying to get in your back door, shroud your lavatory window or scalp you from the pergola, then give it a prune as well. Keep hedges such as privet, yew and beech trimmed.
This week I have pruned a wisteria; these are vigorous plants, and pruning them in late summer and then again in winter diverts their energy from new stem production into flowering. Remove weak and unwanted whippy stems, particularly those growing from around the base. Remove any stems that have outgrown the space provided by the supporting framework. Any thin stems should be shortened, encouraging them to thicken. Shorten these again in late winter, to two or three buds. This is where the flowers will develop.
Fruit and veg
Keep harvesting soft-fruit, and prune the gooseberries and redcurrants; my father popped up this week with a freezer box stuffed full of fruit from his Yorkshire Dales garden. And since it poured the following day, I was able to spend the time making a big batch of delicious raspberry and redcurrant jam.
Start lifting maincrop potatoes. If the foliage looks blighted, remove it and put it in the municipal green waste (not the compost heap) and leave the potatoes for a further couple of weeks before lifting. Lift and dry onions once the foliage starts to yellow.
Sowing for late autumn cropping
Once the summer harvest has freed up some space, consider late sowings for autumn crops, particularly in milder southern climes; beetroot, chard, kohl rabi and salad onions can all work well. In northern areas, the growing season can be extended by using cloches, horticultural fleece or a cold-frame or unheated greenhouse.
Keep weeding
There’s always weeding to be done, and it’s particularly worthwhile to get those perennial weeds out now, before they set seed. And if you’ve commissioned a neighbour to look after your garden whilst you’ve been on holiday, don’t forget to bring them something nice back, to say ‘thank you’!