• August is pretty much the last chance to sow seeds for early crops next year.
• Broad beans will have plenty of time to grow large and robust plants before the cold weather if you get them sown directly into the veg plot this month. Shorter varieties such as The Sutton Dwarf or Aquadulce Claudia have a much better chance of surviving high winds, but it is still sensible to plant them somewhere sheltered!
• Have you ever thought about growing tatties for Christmas? Most first or second early varieties will give a December crop if you grow them in large pots and bring them into the greenhouse or polytunnel before the first frosts.
• Hardy greens such as spinach, pak choi and winter lettuce will crop (albeit slowly) from November to March if sown now.
• If you have any empty space in the veg garden following an early crop, why not sow a green manure crop to hold the soil together and add organic matter for next season. Mustard, clover, vetch or phacelia all work really well.

• It’s well worth giving your plants a boost in the form of either a liquid fertiliser or organic granular feed. There are still several weeks of growing left before the autumn, leeks and winter brassicas really benefit from being bulked up in August.
• Take off any yellowing or old leaves at the base of your brassicas to help prevent mildew and remove hiding places for slugs.
• Pinch the tops out of your tomatoes so that they put all their energy into ripening the existing fruit rather than growing new trusses.
• Give woody herbs a good prune to prevent them becoming woody. Rosemary and lavender really benefit from a good haircut at this time of year, helping to stimulate fresh new growth.

• French and runner beans normally start in August, keep picking to encourage continuous cropping.
• Courgettes will turn to huge marrows in the blink of an eye, so keep checking your plants if you like them small and tender.
• Second early and main crop potatoes can be lifted from now on.
• Rather than thinning out beetroot, I just pull the smallest ones out from in between the larger roots that I intend to store for the winter. Beetroot the size of a golf ball are perfect for roasting whole.
• Keep harvesting kale leaves to encourage new shoots. If, like me, you are too lazy to pick individual leaves, you can just snip the whole top of the plant off and it will branch from lower down the stem.
• Leave the stump of your cabbages in the ground after harvesting and often a couple of tender mini cabbages will sprout up from the base giving a crop of winter greens later in the year.

• The hedgerow may seem a little burnt out at this time of year but there are actually quite a few treasures to be found in August.
• Bilberries can be found in large quantities in woodland but also on moorland.
• Blackberries are often to be discovered on patches of wasteland and overgrown gardens.
• There seems to be a very heavy crop of rowan berries this year, meaning we’re in for a hard winter if folklore is to be believed. Whilst the berries themselves don’t have the most exciting flavour, they make a wonderful jelly if added to crab apples.

And to find out more about foraging in the wild, with guidance on how to be safe and and also responsible in what you select, we have a booklet available for download. It was produced in 2019 for the Scottish Foraging Fortnight, which was developed through Scottish Government and EU support under the LEADER programme. The booklet – titled Come Foraging! – distils guidance from the then Scottish Natural Heritage (today NatureScot) who supported the Foraging Fortnight.

We also have here a Guide to Some Common Wild Edible / Medicinal Plants Around Orkney created by ethnobotanical researcher Anna Canning. This lists a range of wild plants, from Dandelion and Nettle to Red Clover and Crowberry, with notes on how to identify them and how to use them.

If I’m honest, the garden has become a little dishevelled this July. The combination of windy weather and drier conditions have taken their toll on June’s vigorous young plants and I’ve got a bit of tidying up to do to get the veg patch shipshape once again.

The highlight of the month has been digging the first new potatoes, which is always a pleasure. Whilst it’s not been a huge crop so far this year, the flavour and quality of the tubers has been very good, with little slug damage and no sign of scab. The foliage was just starting to die back on my earliest varieties by the end of the month, so I cut it back to stop any blight from travelling down the stems and into the tubers.

My first crop of peas worked very well, I always grow the German variety Blauwschokker for its lovely pink flowers and striking purple pods, but for flavour and value for money you can’t beat Kelvedon Wonder. The plants were from last year’s saved seeds and I’ll be repeating the process this year. I try to save a few of the biggest pods so that I’m selecting for the best plants. I always leave my rows of peas until the foliage is white and the pods are papery dry before collecting the peas to store.

There seems to be an abundance of cabbage white butterflies about this year so I’ve been regularly checking for eggs and caterpillars. We’ve started harvesting our huge Red Drumhead cabbages, one of which will feed the family three times over. Unfortunately, my pigeon-ravaged Brussels sprouts don’t seem to be recovering and may well end up on the compost heap. Our cauliflower, on the other hand, have been magnificent, I grew a beautiful purple variety called Graffiti and the flavour is so much better that anything you might find in the supermarket. Caulis can be a bit of a pain in that they tend to all come at once, but if you choose old-fashioned varieties rather than F1s, their cropping will be a little more spread out.

We’ve only harvested a handful of onions during July as most of them bolted during June. I’ve left the pom-pom like flowers on the bolted plants because they look rather nice and I may even try collecting their seeds, so at least I’ll get something for my efforts. Interestingly, the onions I’ve grown in other gardens this year haven’t bolted at all and I’m wondering if I just got a batch of dodgy sets.

At long last, our tomatoes have begun to ripen, albeit very slowly. We stuck with good old Gardener’s Delight this year and they are as tasty as ever. I’m trying to leave the ripe tomatoes on the vine for a while before harvesting to build up the ethanol levels in the greenhouse and hopefully encourage the trusses of green fruit to ripen more quickly. I’m also wondering if the neighbouring apple tree needs a prune to let in more light! The first few Cayenne chillies have started to turn yellow so with any luck spicy curries will be on the menu before long.

Here on the mainland, in Moray, although the ground is quite dry, we are still getting regular rain and so watering hasn’t been too much of a chore during July. It’s been a different matter in the greenhouse of course. A client of mine recently purchased a cheap battery-operated water pump and tank, and now the watering in his polytunnel is completely automated. The 50-litre tank has to be topped up weekly but the continuous supply of moisture directly to the roots via a drip feed pipe has worked wonders for his tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers. If you’re struggling with watering, a system like this is highly recommended.

As I often do, I am feeling rather glad that I don’t still live in England. Dealing with drought and temperatures in the mid Thirties must be making gardening really difficult, not to mention farming. This all points to even higher food prices looming on the horizon, and perhaps shortages of crops such as potatoes and brassicas. All the more reason to be growing our own!