August is the last month of winter and it's really an important month to
start preparing your garden for spring and summer, with the rapid increase
in the hours of daylight - in July we gained 15 minutes more daylight, and
in August we now gain 45 minutes more daylight. This increase in
daylight hours wakes up the dormant garden and stimulates plants to start
growing.
Click images to enlarge...
August Garden
Rocket and Swift Potatoes
Baby Beets and Carrots
Broccoli Florets and Radishes
Cabbages and Brown Onions
Keep the Rocket growing
Chives and Capsicums from Seed!
August Flower Seeds
My focus this month has been primarily on preparing potatoes, kumara and a
variety of seeds for spring.
Potatoes
Potatoes are the most versatile and useful vegetable you can grow, they are
also the easiest crop to grow in the Tauranga temperate climate as long as
you provide adequate frost protection. If you have potatoes already
planted as I do, continue to cover the potatoes with compost, so that the
potatoes focuses on producing tubers (potatoes) not greenery, and every now
and then I trim back the greenery. If you do not have potatoes planted
now is the time to get some seedling potatoes and start the "
chitting"
process, which takes 3-4 weeks, and then get them into your garden for
summer. Back in May I planted Swift and Rocket potatoes in potato
containers, as they are the quickest to mature and are ready with three
months of planting, like some
varieties these do not flower to indicate they are
ready, so lifting time is based purely on the length of time in the
ground/container, so I shall be lifting those potatoes at the end of this
month, and in the mean time start "chitting" more potatoes to
replace them.
Click for more on growing potatoes.
Prepare the garden for spring planting, digging in generous helpings
of compost. Now is the time to add Lime if necessary.
- Clean up the fire place and scatter wood ash around the garden
and rake it through your soil but keep away from rhododendrons or
azaleas
- Sow seeds in trays ready for transplanting later, cabbage,
Celery, Spring Onion, Onions, Silverbeet, Spinach and Lettuce.
- Sow seeds directly into the soil, Carrots, Parsnips, Beetroot,
Peas and Radish.
- Plant Seed Potatoes or purchase for sprouting.
- Prepare Kumara's for planting in September
- Plant Asparagus crowns into previously prepared beds.
- Plant Strawberries, and feed liberally with Strawberry Food.
- Plant Rhubarb plants, lift and divide clumps of Rhubarb
- Protect winter crops of Cauliflower, Broccoli, Cabbage and Broad
Beans with Champ to prevent fungus diseases.
- Plant seedlings of Cabbage, Cauliflower, Lettuce, Broccoli,
Silverbeet and Spinach.
- Protect seedlings from slugs and snails with Blitzem.
- Lift and divide perennial herbs such as chives and tarragon.
- Plant new herb plants in garden or pots, I've added more mint,
sage, thyme, rocket, triple curl and italian parsley to mine.
- Re-pot indoor plants and overgrown patio plants
Kumara
August is also the month to also start "
chitting" Kumara
in the same way as you chit potatoes (
refer
to growing potatoes). Then next month you can plant Kumara (early
spring) as they needs at least five months of warmth. Once the 3-4
week "
chitting" process is complete, cut a kumara into pieces each
with a shoot. Plant in a mound row about 10cm deep and 40cm apart.
Kumara grow like a vine that tries to put down roots, lift out the vines
occasionally to break the roots. Water them regularly and when the
vine turns yellow the kumara are ready, dig the kumara up and leave
uncovered in the sun for a couple of days, then store in a cool dry place.
During August many vegetables have been or are close to producing a crop for
example I have been thinning the carrots and the baby beetroots this month
and these have been great in winter stir fries or as
roasted baby carrots
with an orange honey glaze and roasted baby beets with
balsamic
vinagriette. Other seedlings I planted in May now stimulated with the
increase in daylight hours include broccoli starting to develop florets,
radishes, cabbages (though it looks like I've been a bit slack with the
blitzem) and brown onions. As for Rocket in Tauranga this herb just
doesn't stop, I still have a large rocket growing from May and I have just
planted another one for spring, it's so nice to have a bit of rocket salad
with mash potatoes in winter - a touch a summer I guess, just keep picking
the flowers so it doesn't go to seed too quickly.
I had a pleasant surprise at the beginning of this month. At the end
of summer my chives produced the pom pom flowers as they always do, but this
time I decided to cut the pom pom off and put them on a paper towel in a
cane basket in the kitchen, after a few weeks the little black seeds were at
the bottom of the basket. I thought "
they probably won't grow"
so I just threw a clump of them in a corner of the garden (semi shade), then
the other day I was thinking "
they don't look like spring onions?"
so I bit into one of them - and to my surprise I now have chives growing -
so I'll be doing that every year!! Grow your own chives and see I'm not
always an organised gardener and it does pays to try things you never know
what you might discover!
In preparation for spring and summer I am now planting Alyssum (Cameo
mixture), Carnation (Fragrance), Everlasting Daisy (Mixed Hybrids) and
Chrysanthemum (Snowlands) in pots in the garage, to go with the capsicums I
have planted from seed from last summers crop. So when
September/October comes these will go out into the garden and hopefully give
me a mass of colour and attract the bees to the vegetable garden to help
with pollinating my crops.
