Share this Facebook Pinterest WhatsApp X Email Is it too late to plant peas? In the UK it depends on where you are and which month you have reached, but the short answer for late summer is: it is borderline, and often worth a gamble. A quick early variety sown in early August can still … Read more
Share this Facebook Pinterest WhatsApp X Email Is it too late to plant vegetables? In the UK, the honest answer for early August is: for some crops yes, but for plenty of others there is still time, and a surprising amount can go in now for an autumn or even winter harvest. The crops whose … Read more
Cabbage white caterpillars are the green and yellow-black caterpillars that strip cabbages, kale, broccoli and other brassicas to bare stalks in high summer, hatched from eggs laid by the two cabbage white butterflies. The only reliable way to stop them is to keep the butterflies off the plants in the first place, with fine insect … Read more
In September you can sow spinach, winter lettuce, rocket, oriental leaves, spring onions, radishes, chard, winter-hardy spring cabbage and green manures, and plant out garlic, autumn onion sets and overwintering broad beans towards the end of the month. It is also the best month of the year to sow a new lawn or repair a … Read more
Potato blight is a fast-moving disease that turns potato foliage brown and collapsing within days, usually in the warm, humid weather of July and August, and it can rot the tubers underground afterwards. The single most useful thing to know is this: the moment you see it, cut all the foliage off at ground level … Read more
The best bee friendly plants for UK gardens are single, open-faced flowers that bloom across as much of the year as possible: lavender, borage, catmint, foxgloves and hardy geraniums for the main season, hellebores and pulmonaria for the hungry early spring, and ivy and sedum for autumn. Skip the frilly double-flowered varieties, because they carry … Read more
The best place to buy seeds in the UK depends on what you are buying. For sheer range and reliability, Thompson and Morgan is the company I order from most. For rock-bottom prices on everyday vegetables, no-frills online packet sellers and the seasonal seed racks in discount stores beat everyone. For unusual varieties worth paying … Read more
How to grow gooseberries in the UK, plant a bare-root bush between November and March, or a potted one at any time of year, in a sunny sheltered spot with moist but well-drained soil. Space bushes 1.2 to 1.5m apart, prune to an open goblet shape each winter, and watch for sawfly larvae from late … Read more
Broad beans are sown in two windows in the UK: October to November for an overwintered crop that picks in late May, or February to April for a summer harvest six weeks or so later. Sow the big seeds 5cm deep and about 20cm apart in double rows, give the plants a simple string support … Read more
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