HARVESTING

You can be harvesting lots of things this month:

• French  beans,

• Runner beans, 

• Lettuce, 

• Beetroot,

• Turnips, 

• Courgettes, 

• Onions, 

• Garlic, 

• Pencil leeks, 

• Calabrese, 

• Summer squash, 

• Second early potatoes

• and the first outdoor tomatoes, which should also be ‘stopped’ if not done last month. (Take the growing tips off the top to stop them growing any taller so they can put all their energy into making the fruit.)

SOW

The end of the summer is in sight, so as rows fall vacant, refill them with sowings of fast-growing varieties that will be ready to use quickly. 

In practice, that means sowing early varieties of carrots & peas.  As odd though it sounds, they are the quickest to mature.  If you have cloches or horticultural fleece, then you can deploy them in a month or 6 weeks to extend your cropping season well into autumn. 

Meanwhile, there is still time to sow lettuce, baby spinach leaves and a few spring cabbages.  In a good summer, it’s also worth sowing oriental leaves including Pak Choi.

HERBS

Take cuttings from herbs. Cut and either dry or freeze herbs.

FRUIT

Harvest Blackberries, Loganberries, the last of the Summer Raspberries and early varieties of eating apples.

Late this month or next, cut strawberry runners that were pegged down last month from the parent plant.

Once all the fruit has been picked, prune gooseberries and redcurrants by cutting back all side-shoots by one-third and make sure that the ‘leg’ is clean shaven i.e. remove any side-shoots growing on the trunk. 

Prune summer fruiting raspberries by cutting all the old fruited canes down to 1” above ground level. 

Prune blackcurrants by cutting two or three of the older stems close to the ground, this encourages new shoots to spring up from low down the plant; this way you’re constantly replacing the older unproductive stems with new, higher yielding younger ones.