All the hard work is starting to pay off, the allotment is producing plenty to take home to the kitchen. Beans and courgettes will need picking daily; blanche and freeze beans to avoid a glut or waste, try to pick courgettes before they become too big and watery. As space becomes available, over wintering crops such as leek, kale and purple sprouting broccoli can be planted out.
- Keep watering tomatoes (especially greenhouse varieties), pinch out side shoots as they appear and growing tips once 4 or 5 trusses have formed. Keep feeding. For ripening tomatoes, tie in main stems to extra canes to support heavy trusses.
- Cut to the ground all the summer fruiting raspberry canes that have borne fruit, tie in the new green canes for next years fruit.
- Pick courgette flowers for stuffing or frying
- Keep sowing salad leaves, radish and lettuce
- Sow or transplant spring cabbages
- Plant out the last of kale and purple sprouting broccoli
- Sow Pak Choi
- Harvest main crop potatoes, keep earthing up rows to prevent tubers turning green
- Begin harvesting sweetcorn
- Keep cutting sweet pea flowers to bring indoors, remove seed pods to encourage more flowers
- Ventilate the greenhouse
- Water regularly
- Harvest onions if ready, allow to dry before storing
- Propagate strawberries by gently pushing rooted runners into the soil or small pots of soil. Sever the runner from the adult plant as the runners put on growth and develop a stronger root system.
- Pinch out the tops of climbing beans to prevent them becoming top-heavy and to encourage new growth lower down
- Harvest regularly and enjoy!
Allotment Haven 