What to plant in August

August is often a quieter month for activity in the garden. If the weather is hot and sunny, some early morning or evening watering may be all you feel like some days!

There are some vegetables and flowering plants you can plant this month if you feel like it. If it’s a hot day, do take it even easier than usual when gardening. Wear a sun hat and sun cream if needed, keep well hydrated and take plenty of breaks.

One of the good things about growing late crops is that they often need less weeding and watering than veg sown earlier in the summer!

In August, you can still plant some very fast-growing crops for harvest this year. More of what you plant at this time will be about preparation for crops next year.

Fast growing crops to plant now

All of these can be planted in August and should be ready to harvest in autumn:

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Radish

A great project for any garden space, including balconies, is to grow some potatoes for Christmas.

You could grow your potatoes in a compost bag, garden refuse bag or container. Make sure there are drainage holes in the bottom of any growing container.

You should be able to find seed potatoes in garden centres or online in August.

When planting, each seed potato will need about 30cm space. You also want at least 30cm of soil at the bottom of the growing container.

The seed potatoes should produce small, new potato type tubers in around 12 weeks. This will hopefully happen before the first frosts which can stunt growth.

The potatoes can remain in the soil until needed. If there is a hard frost, you will need to protect them. You could do this by bringing them indoors, protecting with horticultural fleece or packing the bags together with lots of straw surrounding them.

You will hopefully get between 5 and 10 potatoes per plant. So, think about how many you would ideally like with your Christmas dinner when planting.

If you have lots of space to grow them, you could even give bags of potatoes as Christmas presents. Gardeners are very generous after all!

In the flower garden, it is a bit late to sow seeds if you are hoping for more blooms this year.

There are a number of flowers you can sow now in preparation for the following year, though, including:

• Marigolds (flowers next spring)
• Cornflowers (flowers next spring)
• Californian poppy (flowers next spring)
• Forget-me-nots (flowers next spring)
• Nemesia (flowers next spring)

If you really want some more flower power in your garden, you may need to buy bigger plants from garden centres or other retailers. This will cost more than growing from seed, but is a guaranteed way to add instant colour and life to the garden.

If you don’t feel like planting anything new this month, there are a few other garden activities you can do:

1. Deadhead. Many of your flowering plants will benefit from removing dead flowerheads, including roses.

2. Weed. Unwanted plants can take valuable moisture and nutrients from the soil. Little and often is a good idea with weeding.

3. Water. One of the main summer jobs is watering. Should a hosepipe ban come in, you’ll have to carefully use a watering can. We have some helpful advice to combat drought in the garden.

4. Tomato care and harvest. Remove any yellow leaves, pinch out side shoots and tie in as needed. You may be lucky enough to be enjoying your freshly grown tomatoes this month!

5. Think about bulb planting. From September, you can start planting bulbs like daffodils and tulips ready for next spring. Spent a quiet summer’s day thinking about what you might like to plant next month!

6. Take semi-ripe cuttings. If you fancy a free supply of plants, you could take cuttings from yours. August tends to be a good time for semi-ripe cuttings, meaning from stems that have partly matured.