Published 02 September 2011
General work
Now is the time to plant out your spring cabbages. If you can, plant where you have harvested your onions or potatoes.
It is also time to plant spring onions for 2012 and Mr Stanford uses ‘white lisbon’.
Earth up your leeks if you’re like Mr Stanford and very fussy about this vegetable. He makes tubes out of stiff brown paper, slips one over each leek then fastens to a small bamboo cane and then draws up a little soil around its base. Mabel does none of this but her leeks look almost as good.
Around the second or third week of this month lift your main crop carrots because if you leave them in the soil much longer the roots will crack. Mr Stanford’s digs his carefully with a fork, cuts off the green tops then stores them in his shed – which is frost proof on account of his little heater.
Lift your main crop beetroot as well; if you forget, like Mabel, it will grow coarse.
It’s also time to harvest your main crop potatoes. Sort them out into sizes and only store those in perfect condition, in paper sacks somewhere cool, frost free and dark.
If you’ve not got your onions out yet, then you must do so now.
Prune your summer loganberries if they have finished fruiting. Simply cut out to the base of the plant for all canes that have borne fruit and train the young canes in their place.
By the third week of September, tomatoes are not likely to ripen any more so pick any with a trace of colour and leave on a sunny window or in a dark drawer with a banana or two. For those that are completely green, make chutney.
Keep hoeing and weeding and thinking about where your scarecrow will go for her – or his – winter holiday; somewhere dry with a good view is essential.
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