Time to prep for cooler months
Trim back berries
Alas, the season for sweet summer raspberries, blackberries and other hybrid berries has come to an end, and once the crop has all been picked, it’s time to prune.
Prune summer-fruiting raspberries by removing old canes and tying new canes into an upright position. Cut away growth that is weak and spindly, and pull or dig out any suckers.
Just remember, if you have dual-cropping raspberries, such as Aspiring or Ivory, which bear fruit in both summer and autumn, don’t prune them now, or you’ll lose your autumn fruit. Just cut them back to ground level in winter.
With blackberries and hybrid berries, remove old fruited canes and tie in the new fresh shoots (their new growth should be much more flexible than the new growth of raspberries).
Deadhead roses
If you stop deadheading, you’ll notice your roses start to produce more hips and fewer buds and blooms.
The rose hips are actually the fruit of the rose and form after flowers have been pollinated. Like most fruit, they contain seeds and, like most plants, once roses produce seed they tend to stop flowering and put all their energy into making sure those seeds – the next generation – mature. So if you cut off the spent blooms, the plant keeps producing roses in an effort to produce seeds.
Rosa canina, the dog rose is one of the best roses for hips. If you’d like to forage for fat red rose hips to boost your vitamin C intake, stop deadheading now. Wait until after the first hard frosts to pick rose hips, then roughly chop and simmer gently in a pot of water for 15 minutes. Sieve through a double layer of cheesecloth (to remove all the tiny irritating hairs inside the hips) then reboil the juice with half its volume in sugar until it reduces to a sticky tonic.
Too hot to work?
Well, ironically, that means it’s now time to plant and sow winter crops. As your summer stars such as tomatoes start to come to an end, and your cucurbits have succumbed to powdery mildew and stopped producing, pull out these plants and start popping in winter veges instead. Most of these need a long time to mature so getting them in this month means they can get established before cooler temperatures slow down growth. It’s getting a bit late to start brassica crops from seed (apart from speedy Asian greens), but you can plant seedlings of cabbages, broccoli, kohlrabi, cauliflower, brussels sprouts and kale. You will need to be on the alert for pesky white cabbage butterflies though – protect seedlings with a physical barrier like fine netting draped over a frame. When the weather cools down, the butterflies will no longer be an issue, so that’s one bright side to the end of summer.
You can also sow leeks, onions and spring onions in trays now and transplant seedlings when 10cm tall. It’s too late to sow celery from seed, but plant seedlings now and keep the water up. Sow carrots direct and thin seedlings when they get to about 5cm. Sow silverbeet, either direct or in trays for transplanting later.