SEEDS TO SOW IN AUGUST

August in the vegetable garden is a time for enjoying and preserving our harvests. It is also a time for looking ahead to Autumn and beyond. This month we will be sowing lots of cooler season salad leaves but our main focus will be taking care of our soil by planting green manures. Green manures have multiple benefits for our soil by providing nutrients to the soil and to the soil organisms and also by protecting the soil from the elements.

Carrots, Kohl Rabi and Turnips

It is getting late for these crops now. August is your absolute last chance to sow these crops to still be in with a chance of a harvest.

Oriental Salad Leaves

Oriental salad leaves prefer cooler temperatures. We will be sowing oriental salad leaves for the next couple of months. They really add some fantastic flavour to a salad dish. Sowing a good amount of oriental salad seeds in August provides the plants with the opportunity to put on some decent growth before the autumn when the temperatures will really drop. Our favourites are Mizuna and our Chinese Mustards

Rocket

Rocket seeds are great for sowing now as long as the temperatures are not too warm. Salad leaves can struggle during really hot weather when they have a tendency to bolt. Our wild rocket is so tasty and we sow these seeds as often as we can!

Spring onions

Sow plenty of spring onion seeds now for a fresh, flavour burst in the autumn. Our ‘White Lisbon’ onion is a really good choice but we also have our ‘Ishikura’ onion which is perennial. Perennial spring onions divide in both the spring and autumn. As long as you don’t pick them all they are an easy, fuss free crop to grow.

Green Manures

Green manures are living plants that we often grow over winter to keep the soil covered. If we keep our soil covered with living plants as much as possible, our soil will retain the water and nutrients that will help to feed the vital soil life. A healthy, living soil will help to provide us with an abundance of nutrient dense food during the growing season so we should to do everything we can to look after it.

We often grow green manures for short periods of time and then we ‘top and chop’ them so that we can use them as mulches. We grow varieties like red clover with a longer-term view. Using green manures as mulches will save alot of money too. In the book ‘Dirt to Soil’ by Gabe Brown, Gabe talks about how he grew no dig potatoes by covering the seed potatoes with Alfalfa. Green manures have a multitude of uses and since they are cheap and easy to grow, they remove the chore of sourcing and moving animal manure around your plots!

Happy Sowing!