The Vegetable Plot - August

Cut-and-come-again

August is a month for both harvesting and sowing on the vegetable plot. Crop peas, courgettes and beans while they are young and tender. What else have you grown? Tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, peppers, beetroot, carrot – keep them coming for summer salads.


Keep an eye on your tomato leaves for signs of blight, which can be prevented using Bordeaux mixture, a fungicide mix of copper sulphate and slaked lime, to ward off downy and powdery mildew. Sow cauliflower, corn salad, endive, radishes, red cabbage, spinach and turnips. Earth up maincrop celery, harvest shallots and dry herbs. If the weather’s dry keep watering tomatoes, marrows, ridge cucumbers and brassicas.

You can start blanching endive and continue blanching leeks and celery. Coriander, chives, dill, basil and other herbs can be sown in pots which you can bring indoors when the weather turns cold. Why not sow some cut-and-come-again salad such as mizuna and rocket leaves? You can have a plentiful supply right into autumn.

• Dig up early potatoes and dry for next year’s seeding
• Blanch endive, leeks and celery
• Sow fast growing lettuce such as Little Gem and Tom Thumb
• Clear out spent cucumbers grown in frames
• Sow winter spinach in a sheltered place. 
• Sow cauliflower, corn salad, endive, land cress, radishes, red cabbage, spinach, turnips