The Vegetable Plot – August

“Salad days.”

Shakespeare’s expression for a youthful time implies inexperience but those in the know will be taking the last chance in August and planting salads. Little Gem and Tom Thumb lettuces, mustard and cress, radishes - hurry, sow and shade seedlings from the sun and heat.

If you have an established vegetable plot you’ll be enjoying your salads, the lettuces, rocket, tomatoes, beetroot and second-early potatoes. How about a Caesar or a Salad Nicoise?

While you are tucking in to your summer salads, look across to the vegetable plot and think: I can sow spring cabbages, winter spinach, red cabbage and turnips. Amble over and harvest your shallots, earth up maincrop celery, feed and train the tomatoes, spray and ventilate peaches and nectarines in the greenhouse. Or just enjoy a glass of wine and reflect on your salad days.

• Make a new strawberry bed on raised beds
• Lift potatoes as you need them
• Ripen off onions by bending over the leaves just above the neck
• Continue cutting out old fruited canes on raspberries
• Lift and pot up rooted strawberry runners
• Stake or prop heavily laden fruit trees and bushes
• Sow summer lettuce, rocket, sorrel, chicory, fennel
• Summer prune restricted apples and pears