Home Page
Living
Garden
Beauty
Health
Environment
About Us

 

Allotment and vegetable gardening month by month guide: July - September

 

JULY

July is usua5lly one of the driest months so a lot of time may be spent watering. You can reduce water loss and save yourself some time by preventing water loss. Mulching with a layer of organic matter 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 in full swing now, providing you with the following:

• Broad Beans
• French Beans
• Runner Beans
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Courgettes
• Cucumbers
• Kale    
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Spring Onions
• Peas
• Early Potatoes
• Radish
• Spinach
• Tomatoes
• Turnips

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.

Sowing:

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

• Spring Cabbage
• Chicory
• Chinese cabbage
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Peas
• French Beans
• Beetroot
• Carrots
• Radishes

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:

If they've not gone out yet, it's time to plant out your leeks. Just dib a hole about 150mm 6" deep and drop the leek into the hole. Water it in and the job's done. Don't follow old advice about trimming the tops and roots, it has no beneficial effect and is probably harmful. You don't need to fill the holes with soil, enough will wash in with watering and rain. The reason you plant in a hole is to blanch the stem
It's also the month to plant out:

• Broccoli and Calabrese
• Cabbages and Cauliflowers
• Kale

Cultivating:

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.

Don't forget to feed your tomatoes as well, we demand a lot from them and need to keep them well fed. It's a good idea to give your maincrop potatoes a feed as well. A major cause of poor crops with potatoes is poor nutrition. They are a very greedy plant and a boost now will pay a dividend in tubers. A feed balanced as for tomatoes is ideal. If you make your own feed from comfrey, this is ideal.

Keep your onions well weeded and don't forget to feed them as well to get the best possible crop.

In the greenhouse:

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.

July is a good month for summer pruning apple trees.

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.

With broad beans you can pinch out the tops which are most attractive to blackfly. Another 'trick' is to plant some nasturtiums which attract blackfly. You can then pull the nasturtiums and their blackfly.

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.

 

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.

• French Beans
• Runner Beans
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Courgettes
• Cucumbers
• Kale
• Kohlrabi          
• Lettuce
• Onions
• Spring Onions
• Peas
• Early Maincrop Potatoes
• Radish
• Spinach
• Tomatoes
• Turnips

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:

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.

Keep feeding your tomatoes, we demand a lot from them and need to keep them well fed.

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.

Plant new strawberry plants and pot up runners from established plants.

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.

 

SEPTEMBER

September is the end of summer although we're often lucky to have an Indian summer with blue skies and sunshine, nothing is certain with the weather. The bulk of the harvest comes home now and as crops come out the plot begins to empty

Harvest:

The maincrop potatoes should be ready now. To repeat August's advice regarding harvesting potatoes:

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 or longer 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.

You may well have reasonably sized parsnips now but they will stay perfectly happy in the ground and do taste better after they have had a frost on them.

The runner beans and French beans will be continuing to produce and the last of the peas should be coming in. Compost the foliage of the peas but leave the roots in the ground as the nodules on them contain nitrogen.

The harvest will be in full swing and in addition to the above you should have:

• Beetroot
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflowers
• Courgettes
• Cucumbers
• Globe Artichokes
• Kale
• Kohlrabi
• Lettuce
• Leeks
• Marrows
• Onions
• Pumpkins
• Radishes
• Spring Onions
• Spinach
• Sweetcorn
• Tomatoes
• Turnips

From the greenhouse you should be picking aubergines, chilli and sweet peppers as well as cucumbers and tomatoes.

If you grow fruit then the picking should be in full swing there as well: Apples, pears, plums, peaches from the trees, blackberries and raspberries from the canes and strawberries from the bed.

Sowing:

There's not a great deal to sow now but surprisingly it's the right time to sow winter lettuces such as Arctic King for spring harvests.

The other salad crop is the winter hardy spring onion. I'd suggest White Lisbon but ensure it is the winter hardy version.

Green Manure:

Early September is the time to sow green manures. If you do not need to dig over your plot as you do with heavy soils or intend to spread manure on a patch then following on the last of a crop with a green manure is a great idea.

The first benefit is that the green manure will hold onto soil fertility that would otherwise be washed out by the winter rains. In fact, sowing a legume such as Winter Tares will fix nitrogen from the air.

Secondly, they will prevent weed growth so you will have less work to do. Finally they help improve the soil structure. In the spring you just need to dig over and allow them to rot down for a few weeks.

One of the best green manures for winter growth is Hungarian grazing rye. It continues to grow, albeit slowly, in cold weather and should be around 15" tall come the spring from an early September sowing. Not only will you have a lush mass of foliage but it also produces a mass of roots that will provide humus for bacterial breakdown.

Planting Out:

Your spring cabbage plants can be planted out now and over wintering (Japanese) onion sets can go in for an early onion harvest.

You can plant out garlic as well although I prefer to plant it out later in the year.

Cultivating:

Keep feeding your tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. It's not really worthwhile feeding other plants at this time of year as they are nearly finished and the nutrients are best saved for the spring. Keep the side shoots in check on the tomatoes.

Fruit:

Tidy up the summer fruiting raspberries, cutting off the canes that have fruited and tying in the new shoots that will bear next year.

The summer fruiting strawberries can be attended to now as well. Cut off the foliage about 1" from the ground, clearing and weeding as you go. Any runners can be planted up to replace 3 year old plants that are best replaced now.

General Tasks:

Keep an eye on your brassicas for butterfly eggs and caterpillars, these will most probably be under the leaves. The greenhouse pests should be declining but keep an eye out if the weather is good.

Making Compost:

If you've not already done so, empty your compost bins. The compost that is ready can be spread on the ground and the compost only partially rotted returned to the bin to finish off.

You will probably have quite a bit of foliage ready to compost and building a heap properly will help the transformation from green waste to valuable compost. At the base of the heap place woody material, sweetcorn stalks etc to allow some airflow up into the heap. Next place a six inch layer of green material and add some sulphate of ammonia or dried blood to add nitrogen. Just a small sprinkling is sufficient, about 50g per square metre (2oz per square yard) is about right.

Another layer of green material but this time lightly sprinkle with lime to keep the pH up. Repeat the process and top off with a piece of old carpet or some plastic sheeting to stop it getting too wet in the rain and to keep the heat in.

The heap should heat up after a few days and be ready to turn in four or six weeks. The smaller the particles the more surface area they have relative to weight and the faster they will decompose. If you have a shredder, this will be ideal but otherwise cut things up with shears, crush things like brassica stems and they will go down much faster.
If you don't have a shredder but do have a hover mower you can lay foliage on the lawn and run over it with the mower to shred it.

 

Source: Vegetable Growing Month By Month by John Harrison