Tasks for August

It’s National Allotments Week this week and we’re all Growing Together – this year’s theme for the annual celebration of all things allotment-related run by the National Allotment Society. National Allotment Week Allotment sites all across the country are opening to the public and welcoming in local communities to see for themselves how plots are open to all sections [...]

Dry and store onions now that their top growth has browned and begun to droop: this is a sign that they've drawn all the energy in their leaves deep down into the roots and are going dormant, ready to store. Drying your onions hardens the skins and preserves the inner core, keeping it fresh and ready for you to use [...]

Sow a bed of winter salads to keep you in deliciously fresh leafy greens right through the colder months of the year. This is a great technique for putting your greenhouse borders to good use once the summer crops are cleared – and it'll also work under a generous-sized cloche in the open garden. All you need is a raised [...]

Bees love school gardens the best according to results from this year's Great British Bee Count, in which the public recorded sightings of over 100,000 individual bees during May. Most bees were spotted in school gardens, with woodlands the next most populous habitat. Overall, gardens provided the greatest variety of bees with almost a quarter of survey participants recording more [...]

Lift maincrop potatoes now they're fully mature and get them into store ready for winter. Early maincrops like Maris Piper and Desiree are ready for lifting now, with late maincrops following in the next couple of weeks. Don't leave it till September, as blight is an ever-present worry at this time of year: it's wise to lift the crop a [...]

The plant of the month for August is the hydrangea, a plant with a natural charm all its own. With its blousy blooms of pink, white and blue this much-loved cottage garden favourite has delicate colour and an old-fashioned prettiness that belies its easy-going nature. There are two types of flowering hydrangea: the mopheads, producing large round pompom-like flowers, and [...]