GROW YOUR OWN
A Sikh temple garden where everyone is welcome; grow your own chips and dips; herbs used in magic potions; DIY flamingo hoopla; and your questions answered.
Make the most of the seasonal glut!
Your garden should be pumping out crops over the next couple of months, so make the most of the glory days and eat, pickle or preserve as much as you can. You can make almost any fruit into jam – just half fruit and half sugar will usually create something perfectly serviceable. If you are trying to cut back on sugar, you can make jam using less sugar than that, but be aware it won’t set as firm or keep as well. You can also stew fruit without any sugar and freeze it. Tomatoes can be blanched and peeled and frozen whole too – use them in any recipe that calls for tinned tomatoes.
You can still plant summer crops.
Plant seedlings of lettuce, basil and even cherry tomatoes, and direct sow basil and dwarf beans up north, and coriander, lettuces, radishes and rocket everywhere else. Pop in another round of spuds too. It’s also not too early to start the crops you will want for winter: including swedes, carrots, beetroot and parsnips. They will grow slowly but should be ready to eat by the time winter comes. It’s also a good time to start any winter brassicas you plan to grow, including cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli and brussels sprouts (down south). It’s a bit late to sow leeks, but seedlings planted now will be ready this winter.
Check your ties and plant supports.
The stems of heavy-fruiting crops such as tomatoes, eggplants and capsicums can easily break under the weight of the crops, so add extra bamboo stakes to support any particularly laden branches. My garden always starts out looking tidy and professional, with each tomato and eggplant growing in a straight line on a single stake… but by now I have usually given up and rogue branches are tied to any handy support structure I can find!
Keep picking and snipping.
Pick the edible foliage from soft herbs like basil by nipping out the growing tips. This helps keep the plants producing leaves – left alone, especially as it gets hotter, they tend to flower and stop producing the leaves you want. Pinching out the growing tips also encourages a more compact and leafy growth habit. Cut back perennial herbs such as chives, oregano, mint and sage now too and they should burst back into new growth.
Deadhead for more flower power.
Cutting spent flowerheads off summer annuals and perennials helps trigger new flowers – if you leave the flowers to stay on the plant and the seeds to mature, the plant is prone to stop flowering for the year… or worse in the case of annuals, keel over and die!