Kitchen Garden - August

Vegetables

• Pick courgettes regularly while they are small.

• Pinch out the tips of the climbing shoots of runner beans once they reach the tip of their supports.

• Sow lettuce, winter spinach, spring cabbage and Chinese cabbage out of doors.

Herbs

• Continue to take cuttings of woody herbs including hyssop, lavender, rosemary, curry plant, rue and sage.  Dip the cuttings into hormone rooting compound before inserting them into small pots of equal parts peat and silver sand or peat and perlite.

• It’s a good time of year to divide congested clumps of chives.  Dig them up and divide in small clumps of about five or six bulbs.  Replant with a handful of your favourite J Arthur Bower’s planting mixture.

Fruit

• Plant rooted strawberry runners now to ensure a good crop next year.  If you leave this much later the crop will be severely reduced.

• Continue to prune raspberries and tie in new shoots.

• Prune gooseberries, shortening the main stems and side shoots to five leaves.

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