Seasonal Gardening helps you understand what to do in your garden throughout the year. These guides focus on monthly and seasonal tasks, planting times and weather considerations for UK gardeners.
The main jobs in the garden in August in the UK are keeping everything watered and fed through the driest weeks of the year, harvesting daily so crops keep producing, summer pruning fruit and trimming hedges and lavender, deadheading flowers, and sowing the salads, spinach and spring cabbage that carry you into autumn. It is … Read more
By the time August arrives, the allotment has usually stopped feeling like a race. The beans are climbing, the courgettes are out of control, and most of the spring panic about getting things in on time has passed. So a lot of people assume the sowing is over. It isn’t, not by a long way. … Read more
There is a strange myth that July is too late to sow anything, that the growing year is somehow over once the longest day has passed. It is completely wrong, and believing it means missing out on some of the best crops of the whole year. July is one of my busiest sowing months in … Read more
June is the month the garden finally pays you back. The slow grind of spring is behind you, the tender crops are out, the soil is warm, and suddenly everything starts growing properly. The trick in June is keeping up rather than catching up. A little work now spreads across months of harvests later. If … Read more
June is one of the best months in the UK gardening year. The soil is warm, frost risk has passed across most of the country, and there is still plenty of time for both direct sowings and transplanting tender crops that have been growing on indoors. Whether you are planting out for summer harvests or … Read more
May is a great month for flowers. The soil is warm, the days are long, and most things you plant now will be flowering by July. Whether you have a border, a veg patch, or just a few pots outside the back door, there is plenty you can get going in May. One thing to … Read more
If you only have one good month for sowing in the UK, May is probably it. The soil has warmed up properly, days are long, and seeds that would have sat in cold ground doing nothing in March will germinate quickly and reliably now. You also still have enough growing season ahead of you that … Read more
May is the month when the garden stops waiting and starts demanding. Everything happens at once seeds need sowing, tender plants need planting out, weeds appear from nowhere, and somehow you’re also supposed to be keeping on top of watering, feeding, and pest control. It’s brilliant, but it helps to know what actually needs doing … Read more
The vegetables that survive late frost in the UK are the hardy cool-season crops: peas, broad beans, onions, leeks, garlic, kale, cabbage, spinach, chard, lettuce, radishes, carrots, parsnips and beetroot all shrug off a typical spring frost. The ones that do not are the tender summer crops, tomatoes, courgettes, pumpkins, squash, sweetcorn, beans (French and … Read more
One of the most common reasons vegetables struggle in spring is not poor weather, weak seedlings or lack of fertiliser. It is planting into soil that simply is not ready yet. Warm days can arrive quickly, garden centres fill with plants, and everything feels ready to grow — yet underground conditions often remain cold, wet … Read more