What to do in the Garden in August

It’s all too easy to hit the gardening doldrums in August, so concentrate all your efforts on keeping the display at its peak. Here’s our list of jobs to be getting on with this month.

General tasks:

• Keep up with watering concentrating on hanging basket and container displays, plants in the greenhouse and newly-planted seedlings.
• Top up ponds in hot weather using rainwater wherever possible – tap water contains too many chemicals to keep wildlife happy.

Ornamental garden:

• Prune wisteria, snipping back long whippy growths to 5-6 leaves from the main stems.
• Feed bedding displays each week with a liquid tomato feed to encourage more flowers.
• Set up flowerpot traps to protect dahlias from earwigs: suspend an upside-down flowerpot on a cane, stuff with straw and they’ll crawl in.

Kitchen garden:

• Cut out fruited canes from summer fruiting raspberries, plus any weak growth, to leave five canes per plant to tie into supports.
• Harvest sweetcorn once the tassels turn brown and kernels ooze clear sap when you press a thumbnail into them.
• Replace spent strawberry plants – they only crop well for about four years, so buy in new stock from our garden centre here in Pickering and replant.