Growing your own Vegetables and Fruit

August 2010

Storage of crops you have grown and want to harvest becomes an issue this month. Freezing is an option with fruit, but only if you have a big freezer! Not many of us are lucky enough to have cellars, or barrels full of sand as people used to.

The key to successful storage is the condition of the crop you harvest. Make sure it is clean and dry and can be kept somewhere cool and dark. Dig up one, or two to make sure they are ready.

Potatoes harvested now are usually second-earlies and do not store well. Eat them as you dig them up, or keep dry in a sack for a week at most. If you do harvest some maincrop, let them dry in the sun for a day or so before storing. There should be no need to wash them, just rub off dry soil.
Carrots (and turnips, beetroot) can be stored in damp sand, or peat, or lain on newspaper and stacked. Trim off the foliage before storing.
Apples and pears would love to be individually wrapped in newspaper and stored on trays. But most that are picked now will not store-eat them, and plan ahead for storage for later in the year.
Cabbages can have the outer leaves peeled off and then be kept cool and useable for months.
Tomatoes can be individually wrapped and stored, or made into sauce and frozen.
Onions and garlic are best stored high and dry, and dark, and you should be able to use them all winter. Leave a long stalk on the onion/garlic and then wrap this round some string to form the long plaits you see in French Country Life pictures
Runner and French beans go soft once picked, so blanch and freeze if possible. Broad beans should not get too big – small is perfect, but pick and eat now, or blanch and freeze.
Sweetcorn can be stored in a tray, but it really tastes best fresh. Old cobs are leathery and chewy to eat. You know it’s ready to pick when the silky tassles at the top of the cob are brown.(And peel back the green cob-covering to stick a fingernail in a kernel. If a milky liquid comes out it’s ready; clear liquid = unripe; no liquid = old. Check the kernel colour as well, a perfect yellow = ripe.)
If you look in gardening catalogues there are beautiful wooden storage options available (that will burn a huge hole in your pocket), but you can make do with large fruit boxes from supermarkets (the long flat ones for melons are great) and see if your garden centre or eco grocer has any of the wooden boxes that bulbs/veg are shipped in going cheap or free.  Get some in now for when you need them later in the year.

With all stored crops, you should check them regularly and remove any that are rotting. The smell is often a giveaway, and if you’ve smelt rotting potatoes, you’ll know it forever! The phrase ‘one bad apple can spoil the whole lot’ applies to all stored crops. As they rot they give off a hormone that ripens the rest of the fruit.

If you have grown runner beans you will have too many! You can blanch and freeze them, or eat them. But pick them you must, every other day, and you’ll have beans for maybe eight weeks. If you stop picking they will stop production, so even if you can’t eat them, or freeze them, you could give them away or put them on the compost. French beans seem less prolific, but they crop for a short time, so you need some plants sown in succession to keep yourself in a good supply.

Tomatoes will be starting to ripen and get heavy, so make sure the plant is well tied to a stake. Snap off any ‘laterals’ (little leaves that try to grow between a big leaf and a stem, and if left start to flower and exhaust the plant). Keep watering and bi-weekly feeding the plants. If you have big old leaves that are shading the fruit, cut them off now so that sun can get to the tomato and ripen it. If the plant is at the top of your stake, trim it off so it grows no higher.

Cucumbers and courgettes should be harvested as they get to the size you want. This will make the plant produce more flowers and more fruits. Large courgettes are marrows, and good for a laugh, but not to eat. Cucumbers that are too ripe aren’t nice to eat, the pips are huge and the flesh watery. If you’ve got three or four pumpkins on a plant, be happy with your lot and keep cutting off the growing tip so the fruits swell rather than producing anymore. If you are hoping to have huge pumpkins or squashes then you will have to water them well now. Put an upturned plastic bottle near the plant, (with the base cut out) and water through this everyday. All these cucurbits will love some seaweed extract in the water, as they are hungry plants. If there is plenty of sun, great, if not, remove big leaves that shade the pumpkin or squash so that they get the maximum of the suns ripening rays.

When you harvest a cabbage, you can cut it off at ground level, and put unwanted leaves on the compost heap. Pull out the root and remove it from your garden in case it carries disease. Clean up any yellow or mottled leaves. Similarly, any potato plants that don’t look well should be dug up and removed from your garden. Brassicas that are still growing should be covered, but if not (or anyway) keep checking for caterpillars and pick them off. If you’ve got a writhing mess of caterpillars it’s because you did not cover the plants, so plan this for next year! Just keep picking them off for now, hourly if necessary.

Your onions must be ready now! If the stalks have flopped, or the foliage yellowed, then they are ready to be lifted. On a dry day, carefully pull up the onions, using a fork if necessary, and lay them on the dry soil, or a wall, or a conservatory floor; anywhere dry and warm. If you can create a sort of raised bed for them on chicken wire this will help they dry on top and underneath as well. After a couple of days, store them somewhere cool and dark. If you store them damp they will start to grow again, using the bulb as fuel! Onions will store better if their outer skins have been toughened by drying out in the hot sun.

Potato blight happens at this time of year, it’s a fungal infection that can ruin your crop. Check your plants and remove any that have brown patches on the leaves. Blight tends to affect later varieties, more than early. You can still eat the tubers if they are not infected, but check them first. Spraying with compost tea or seaweed extract helps to keep the plants healthy. Blight is caused by spores that are in the air and settle in the ground.

Your fruit bushes need to have the fruit harvested and to be kept well watered or mulched. Make sure you’ve thinned your apples and pears so they can get lots of sun and ripen. Always remove diseased fruit, and try to have just two fruit per branch/spur waiting to ripen. Plum branches may be hanging down laden with fruit. You should prune them now, and you can do that to branches which are so heavy with fruit they look like they will snap (can you really eat all those plums?). If you have not got much plum fruit, prune back unfruiting branches to create new wood and fruiting spurs for next year.

If your summer raspberries are now finished, cut the fruited cane down to the ground (the foliage will probably be mottled and yellow). New unfruited shoots that look strong and green should be tied to a support to survive the winter. Don’t touch autumn fruiting raspberries, as they’ve yet to produce! You can also trim any fruited gooseberry or redcurrant bushes. Removed damaged wood and branches going into the centre, and then trim back outside shoots to remain with four buds.

Pot up the runners of strawberries to give you new plants. You can weigh down the runner with a stone.

Keep your plot tidy this month, clearing away dead leaves and spent crops. Weeding is often difficult if the ground is hard, but you can still hoe off at the surface.

Watering should be carefully done in August, as the ground can be so hot and dry that it will evaporate before doing any good. Water early in the day or late at night, and mulch with grass mowings, newspaper, compost after watering.

If it’s too hot (or wet!) to be in the garden, sit down and plan what you could be sowing for autumn. And then do it! And make a list of what you would do differently/the same for next year.

And also, order some green manure seeds, and plan where to sow them. Ideally they can go where you will have bare soil over the winter. There are many green manures available from the Organic Catalogue, and Suffolk Herbs. They grow easily, keep the soil healthy over the winter, and can be dug in or composted come spring. If you do not get round to doing this, empty out your compost bin in September and tip the lot onto the ground to protect it!

Make sure you are sowing some winter and spring greens now, so that you don’t have to rely only on your stored food over the winter months. You can also try sowing some chard, spinach, lettuce and they should be fine if the weather stays good for the next few months. If August is very hot and dry, the spinach, rocket, lettuce may bolt, but, nothing ventured, nothing gained! Keep the seedlings partially shaded and you could be lucky. Don’t sow seedlings and then go away for two weeks leaving them to fend for themselves. Wait until you are back from your hols so you can water them as they germinate.

Plant this month:
Outside  - Chard, Parsley, all spring greens, winter lettuce varieties, (and have a go at some late crops like carrots and beetroot), overwintering/Japanese onions, Turnips.
Leek, Lettuce, Spinach can be sown all year round and planted out, depending on the variety.
Plant out seedlings of: Winter veg and Spring greens
Harvest: Everything! Broad Beans, French beans, Runner beans, Beetroot, Blackcurrants, Blackberries, (summer) Cabbage, Carrot, Cauliflower, Courgette/Marrow,  Cucumber, Garlic, Onion from Spring sets, Peas,  Plums, Potatoes, Radish, Rocket, Raspberry, Sweetcorn, Tomato

Summer 2007 was a bit of an odd one, with more rain than usual. Blight hit potatoes and tomatoes, but the tubers seemed OK. The problem was finding a dry sunny day to lift them! Similarly the onions were huge, but endless rain meant they got bigger without being lifted. I continued picking salad crops, and broad beans and some French beans, but the outdoor cucumbers looked sad, and the courgettes slowed down. The beetroot, parsnips and carrots were delicious having done well in the rain.

In 2008 there was a lot of very heavy rain for all of August 2008, but with hot sunny periods (half a day) as well. The plot let us pick lots of beetroot, potatoes, calabrese, the last of strawberries, first of autumn raspberries, parsley, lettuce. Blight seemed to hit the toms and pots so we stripped the leaves off, but sadly it proved to be too late. Carrots that germinated then disappeared, presumably to slugs and snails. At home still lettuce, parsley, basil, chives, rocket, plus dwarf French beans, courgettes, peas. Sunflowers and sweet peas were looking lovely. Toms were ok, and produced lots of small fruits and Globe artichokes growing well.

2009 saw the plot go mad. It was dry for the first two weeks of August then heavy rain one day, warm sun the next. The runner beans shot past the top of their poles, but there were lots of beans on them, peas and mangetout appeared everyday, the carrots and beetroot were perfect, parsnips looked odd but tasted fine, potatoes continued to be lifted, onions were lifted and left to dry on 22nd, the raspberries are fat and the wasps love them when they get there first. The picked and stewed blackcurrants were so strong on flavour. The kale and cabbages look majestic, but most have bolted with big yellow flowerheads. The globe artichokes were huge, and the rows of sweetcorn look nearly ripe. The damsons and plums are looking nearly ready to eat, as are the outside tomatoes. At home the beans are pathetic, the peas are great, nasturtiums, sweet peas and phacelia have grown huge, and courgettes, lettuce, rocket, chives still produce. The carrots and beetroot seedlings have disappeared, but the radishes survived. The sweetcorn is very stunted, but the newly planted leeks look ok, and the Tumbler Tomatoes that flowered all summer are now producing lots of little red glossy fruits. Oops, at home I accidentally cut back old summer fruited raspberry canes, and got carried away and took out new ones a well! So, not surprisingly the canes are stunted for 2010, but there is a bit of fruit.

Tip! Once it has rained, mulch your crops with compost from the compost bin, straw, grass cuttings, shredded paper, anything to keep the moisture in. Your veg will love you for it, and the mulch gets broken down into the soil improving it.