Keep your edibles looking tasty
WHETHER you’ve got an allotment plot, raised bed, veg patch or a swanky walled kitchen garden, it’s important to lavish it with attention during the summer months.
Attending to the needs of vegetables, fruit and herbs, and spotting problems before they get out of hand, will ensure these areas remain productive well into autumn.
Watering is essential to keep plants in fine fettle. Failure to keep crops adequately watered can prevent fruits, pods and berries swelling to full size, and lead to some vegetables running to seed prematurely. It can also result in a lack of vigour that makes plants less able to cope with pests and diseases.
In dry weather, watering once or even twice a day might be necessary. Ideally, quench the thirst of plants in the morning or evening using a watering can fitted with a rose sprinkler.
Another option is to snake a porous ‘leaky hose’ around crops, attaching it to a computerised timing device on an outdoor tap. Annual weeds are opportunistic blighters that will pop up continually during the growing season. Apart from looking unsightly, the likes of hairy bittercress, groundsel and other types suck moisture and nutrients out of the ground, and have the potential to hinder the growth of crops by competing for light and space.
It’s important to stop them establishing by removing them as seedlings, spending five to ten minutes every other day tugging them out by hand. Alternatively, despatch them quickly by running a Dutch hoe over the soil, severing the tops from the roots. Do this on a sunny day and leave their remains to wither on the surface.
A great way to prevent weed seeds from germinating is to mulch bare patches of soil with a 4in deep layer of garden compost, wheat straw, leafmould or similar.
Apart from saving you valuable time spent weeding, the material will help to lock moisture in the soil and protects roots from extremes of heat.
Before mulching, clear the site of weeds and water the soil if dry. Spread the material over soil and rake level, making sure you leave a gap around plants. If you have an allotment with large patches of uncultivated soil, cover with landscape fabric. Lift a bit whenever you need to sow seeds or plant something. Check edibles daily for pests and diseases, and get to grips with problems immediately so there’s little or no check to growth. Failure to spot an invasion of sap-sucking whitefly on tomatoes, for example, might mean a reduced crop, while an outbreak of grey mould on one strawberry plant can quickly spread to healthy plants.
With care, many crops will produce a steady flow of produce into early autumn. However, plants will come to a premature halt if you forget to harvest or leave produce to mature. As a rule, it’s best to pick stuff often, when young and tender. If you’re planning on taking a holiday, ask a neighbour to help out.