- EP287 What To Sow In August & Other Gardening Jobs : Seed Sowing Success for August Gardens

Welcome to your essential guide for August gardening success! As summer peaks and the first harvests fill our kitchens, smart gardeners are already planning their next moves. This episode unpacks exactly what you should be sowing now to maintain productivity through autumn and beyond.

The transition from July to August brings significant changes in the garden. I've just returned from holiday to find dramatic growth (and sadly, some losses in the heatwave), reminding me how crucial proper planning becomes this time of year. While summer crops like tomatoes, potatoes, and onions reach their prime, the spaces they'll soon vacate offer perfect opportunities for late-season plantings.

August represents a strategic shift in our sowing calendar. Though the list of suitable crops has shortened since spring, this month offers unique advantages for establishing winter-hardy varieties. Cooling temperatures and decreasing daylight actually benefit many plants, extending their productive periods before bolting. I walk through comprehensive recommendations for successional crops (spring onions, spinach, loose-leaf lettuce), winter salads (mustard, tatsoi, rocket, claytonia), herbs (coriander, chervil, dill), and substantial vegetables (Florence fennel, kale, spring cabbage). For polytunnel gardeners, I share my experimental approach to pushing traditional sowing calendars with protected crops of carrots and beetroot.

Beyond sowing, August demands vigilance with existing crops. From proper tomato maintenance and blight prevention to protecting ripening fruit from birds, I cover the essential maintenance tasks that ensure continued harvest success. Remember—the secret to year-round productivity isn't just what you plant, but when and how you plan. By thinking six weeks ahead and continuously filling gaps, you'll create a garden that provides fresh harvests in every season. What will you sow this month?

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Post-Holiday Garden Update
• 9:07 Current Garden Harvests and Progress
• 16:42 August Seed Sowing Guide
• 19:18 Winter Greens and Extended Harvests
• 22:08 Ongoing Garden Maintenance Tasks
• 24:33 Final Tips and Next Episode Preview

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

How's it going everybody, and welcome to episode 287 of Master my Garden podcast. Now, this week's episode being the first Friday of August, we're doing the usual seed sowing guide for the month ahead and kind of looking at what seeds we can be sown and other gardening jobs, and this one is the first. This episode is the first one that I've actually recorded since coming back from holidays. It's yeah, I was the first two weeks in July, released the episodes as normal, but I was on holidays during that time and, yeah, in my own garden lots changed in two weeks and there's kind of as I've done for the last couple of years once I know I'm going away at a particular time. I kind of stopped sowing for a couple of weeks prior to that, because I suppose the onus is on someone else to mine them then. And I did have some. I did have some sort of winter crops, so I had some savoy cabbage, a couple of trays of savoy cabbage, a couple of trays of purple sprout and broccoli, spring onions and a couple of other bits that I'd sown from seed. You know, a while ago they were ready to be planted out, or nearly ready to be planted out when I got back and during that first week of July I think, there was really warm weather here and when I came back they were all crisped in the tunnel and fit for the bin. So, yeah, that's exactly why I don't't, you know, I don't sow too much or plant out too much at that time. So that means I kind of end up with a little bit of a gap not too much, but a little bit of a gap. Um, and then the first week first week back is really catching up and trying to get your tomatoes back into check, because again I have somebody that waters them a little bit when I'm gone, but not much. So it's just basic care to keep them alive. Obviously, that warm weather caught them out in relation to the little plug plants, but the tomatoes were fine, they were growing well, but just a huge amount of side shooting and cleaning up to be done.

Speaker 1: 2:21

I suppose when I got back, that's all back in check now and, yeah, sowing has started. I had to go off and actually buy some trays of plants to sort of replace the ones that got crisped up. But the important thing, I suppose, is to keep sowing and to keep something in the in the pipeline as as we move through the seasons. You know say that the whole time that the the biggest challenge is utilizing the space all year round and that's where many of us fall down. And August is a great month generally because it's probably the month where anything that is available to harvest has sort of is has and is coming into fruition at this stage. So you know, june is kind of when your real harvest starts. I know you will have some prior to that, but you're sort of bulkier. You know the more of your of your harvests are coming in, your first of your brassicas are coming in, your cauliflowers or broccolis and so on, and that continues through July and August. Then you know that's matched in with certainly some potatoes, tomatoes, onions. You know there's lots of harvest and of course those harvests when they come out they're going to leave spaces and voids and this is where we need to have to be sowing and to have crops coming along behind it so that we don't have these gaps and that we're able to continue to produce. Doesn't have to be big amounts, but we're able to continue to produce a little bit all the time.

Speaker 1: 3:58

On the harvesting front, you know some. As I said, a couple of weeks when I'm away is great because there's been like some serious growth obviously when I was away and seemed to have kind of a nice combination between some nighttime rain and then warm temperatures. So definitely you know there's a lot of crops. They're going really really well. So just to kind of give sort of an overview of what is happening, carrots absolutely burst out of it while I was away, to be fair. So when I was leaving they were reasonably sized, not a huge amount of leaf growth up on top. You know it was small and the carrots themselves were forming but they were quite small. But in the two weeks they have grown really really well and I'm not harvesting them much. I've just taken a few here and there but they're after getting so much bigger now they're fit to harvest now as nice little sweet ones and I'll continue to harvest them over the next couple of months. Parsnips they're doing really well, flying out of it actually A couple of different batches of onions, just one batch of red and white ones.

Speaker 1: 5:09

That was the first sowing from seed that I did there, ready to harvest. They've just fallen over, still have loads from the polytunnel, so no shortage of onions at the moment. Turnips actually coming in at the moment. Cauliflower had a lovely batch of broccoli just before I went and they were forming a tiny little head when I was going as in about the size of your thumbnail, for example, and in the two weeks I expected that when I got back it'd be kind of a nice size and kind of a decent size to harvest. So clearly, when I was away there was huge growth because when I came back they were all gone to seed Big yellow flowery heads on them in the space of two weeks. So that was a huge, huge burst of growth and that's, you know I think I've said it before the likes of broccoli and cauliflower.

Speaker 1: 6:06

They're a lovely crop to have but I just don't feel that they give enough for for the amount of effort and space you know you're getting. You're getting this one harvest. You get a glut together if you, you know, if you saw a tray of six or a tray of nine, you get this glut and then you, you know, you can obviously freeze them and so on, you know, chop them up and freeze them and blanch them and all those things, but you get a glut together and for what? For the space to take up, I just don't know that there's enough. You know there's enough return for the effort. If you have no shortage of space, they're grand. But there's much more beneficial and much more crops that give you much more longevity of harvest, which I'm kind of always trying to aim for. So, like you know, salads and so on. So, yeah, that's kind of what's happening in the garden. It seems to be going.

Speaker 1: 6:57

It's going to be a great year for apples, particularly A couple of fruit trees that I planted a couple of years ago. You know there were small trees, enough going in, like two or three year old trees. They're fruiting really well. There's one particular tree and I think I counted 45 now it's still a small tree. It did get pruned in the springtime specifically for fruit and it's, you know, it's doing really well 40 something apples on it. Hopefully they'll all start to ripen. So far, no damage from wasps or anything like that. It's going really really well. So, yeah, they're doing brilliantly. Raspberries they've been really good. Same, I suppose, a lot of fruits have been good this year. So, yeah, all of that is doing really well. Broad beans are doing really well.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Just kind of going through the beds here in my head as I'm thinking, uh, british queens ready to harvest out the ground. I've already taken the ones out of the pots again, probably because I was away and they didn't get the attention that they might have otherwise. They were beautiful, are beautiful, still eating them. A tiny bit small, although not overly happy with the, with the size of the potato, but in terms of taste, fantastic. Yeah, couldn't fault them from that point of view. But the ones in the ground, they're going to be really heading in that direction now. So I'd say, within the next week or two I'll be harvesting those. They're. They're good to eat at the minute but I'm just allowing them to fill out because I don't need to harvest them just yet. So they're still filling out. No sign of blight on them. Touch wood and yeah, I'll get, hopefully get a decent, decent batch of a harvest off them.

Speaker 1: 8:39

Rhubarb just saying that to somebody yesterday. What a what Rubeb is, you know, harvesting off it from months now and just for the sake of I think it's three, maybe four square metres, and just constantly harvesting off it for heading for four months, four or five months now I suppose, and looks like it's going to continue for another good while. So Ruber is a brilliant, brilliant crop to have, just in terms of longevity and in terms of you know what I was saying with the cauliflower just, you can get so much more out of it. I love these ones that you get continuous harvest for, you know, not much effort. That's kind of what the name of the game is.

Speaker 1: 9:26

So, looking ahead to what we're going to sow for the month of August and the list has shortened again as we go into August so, as we say, may is the biggest month in terms of sowing seeds and what you can sow, and then it starts to dip, dip, dip all the way through. And yeah, we's. You know we're reducing quite a lot now this month again. But to run through the list, as you know, as we always do, what we can sow is some of our sort of successional crops. So spring onions, that's going to continue to be sown.

Speaker 1: 10:01

I am switching later this month to a winter variety. So you know I'll still do probably more, one more sowing of just your standard white Lisbon, and then later in the year or later in the month, I would do a sowing of the winter varieties. Um, they're important because when I get to the end of the month I'll do a big sowing. I plant them into the polytunnel and I'll harvest basically for the whole winter there. So I can sow a lot of seed. They don't run, they're not gonna. They're not gonna run to seed, they're not gonna bolt, they're just going to be there available to harvest for months and months on end. So I can do a lot of the sowing at that stage and essentially guarantee that I'll have spring onions all through the winter, and that's kind of a good way of doing it.

Speaker 1: 10:47

Spinach can still be sowed again as we move now into into august, and particularly as we move towards the end of the month, there's going to be less need to sow that as regularly because we are getting, you know, we're getting to the stage where temperatures are going to be starting to drop down. There's going to be less sunlight and as a result, it's not going to bolt quite as quickly. So spinach again as we get to the end of the month, we'd be able to do a little bit of a bigger sowing there and that will help to give us sort of longevity in our harvest. Next one that we can sow is radish, and we are going to you know, we're going to go to a winter variety here and again I'll probably do one more sowing of the standard variety and then later in the month we'll switch to a winter variety Lettuce. Again, I'm going to continue sowing that.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Looking for, if you are sewing lettuce, look at this stage of the year, forget about your icebergs and anything that forms a really tight head. You're looking for loose, loose lettuce like butterhead, you know, little gem, those type ones. You're looking for something that's kind of leaf farming rather than than head farming. At this stage of the year you can switch, then very much switch to your autumn stroke winter salads, and what we're looking at there is things like mustard, tatsoi, rocket, the claytona, you know any of those type winter salads. And again, heading towards the end of August, you can sow quite big batches of those because you will be able to harvest over a longer period of time. Small and often it's not going to be run into seeds. So you can do, you know, big sowing that's going to essentially get you all the way through the winter, more or less all the way through the winter. So definitely be sowing that. They're invaluable at this stage of the year because when you're able to harvest these greens at that stage of the year, it's, as I say, invaluable, and you can still sow cress.

Speaker 1: 12:42

Then there's some of the herbs that we can sow. Coriander you won't again, because, a little bit like spinach, because temperatures are dropping, daylight hours are dropping, you won't have to sow it as regular. So coriander is, you know, as we mentioned, all through those summer months when daylight temperatures are long. You're going to get a kind of a short window of of harvest from the time you sow till the time it runs. The seed is quite short, but that'll extend, you know, over the next few months and as we get later into the, you know, into the august and into september. A sowing of coriander again, a good sowing of coriander at that stage will get you nearly all the way through the winter again. So the the frequency at which we have to sow from now on is is reducing and we can do sort of bigger, bigger sowings because we're able to get longer periods between sowing and harvest out of it. So that's, you know, it's really important and it sort of makes life a lot easier at this stage of the year in terms of keeping up and making sure that we have all these gaps filled.

Speaker 1: 13:46

Another one that can be sowed this month is florence fennel it's not one that I've grown before, probably will grow this year, though um, it's one that I've been thinking about for a while, so I think I will have the space to do. It can stick it into polytunnel as well. So I think I will will grow that, but that can be so this month. Kale again, it can be, it can be sown that. And there's a couple of the calabrese um or a couple of the brassica family, calabrese and spring cabbage. They can be all sold later in the month and these are ones that for me personally here I'll plant them into the poly tunnel. They'll do. They'll put on a little bit of growth now.

Speaker 1: 14:26

For the next month or two there'll be no harvest, but then early next year. So as soon as the temperatures start to rise, as soon as a little bit of growth starts to kick in, you'll get a really early harvest of calabrese, cauliflower, spring cabbage, all from the polytunnel, if you're doing it outside, spring cabbage spring cabbage will be will be fine. So you're going to plant that out. You know, maybe in september time it'll put on a little bit of growth, then it'll sit with leaves on it. You'll have to make sure that you're protecting from, particularly from pigeons, all over those winter months. But then come next spring, as soon as there's a bit of growth, that'll form a really, really early pointed head and yeah, it'll be your first sort of harvest of cabbage next spring, of kind of spring cabbage. You'll have your red, you'll have your red cabbage, you'll have your savoy cabbage, sort of through the winter and the early spring. But they're those, you know, those earthy, red and savoy cabbages. The autumn sown spring cabbage is one that will give you that kind of first, you know, that fresh cabbage taste. It's a different taste. You're getting that York York style cabbage and they can be sowed. They can be sowed in the month of August, leave them towards the end of the month or the middle to end of the month and then plant them out a few weeks later. What else can be sown?

Speaker 1: 15:49

I'm still going to do another sowing of carrots and again all the books will say it's too late, can't be done. But I'll be doing a sowing of carrots and a sowing of beetroot in the polytunnel. May or may not work, I suspect it will. Temperatures are good. There'll be a little bit of minding on them. But yeah, I just want to want to see. Can I get a sort of a half decent crop early next year from the polytunnel? There'll be a bit of minding on them. But yeah, I just want to want to see. Can I get a sort of a half decent crop early next year from the polytunnel? There'll be a bit of minding on them, potentially over the winter if they do start to form into, you know, into an actual carrot, might have to mind them a little bit from pests over the winter time. But yeah, I think it's worth a shot and no, no harm in trying and, as I say, I have a little bit of space there to use up anyway. So why not?

Speaker 1: 16:32

Some other leafy things that we can sow this month pak choy and chard Again, they're really useful, again, harvesting, just as you know, you can harvest the pak choy, obviously as a head, using stir fries and so on, but the chard I'll just allow it to grow, harvesting outer leaves, and so you're getting a little bit of sort of winter greens. It to grow harvesting outer leaves, and so you're getting a little bit of sort of winter greens. That nice stem has the beauty of having a crunch to it, but also the leaf is a little bit like spinach and yeah, it's a really really good sort of winter green to have, ideal in stir fries, stews, just satay, you know, even with something basic, you know, tomato and egg it's, it's really, it's a really nice uh. Chard is a really nice uh. Char is a really nice vegetable to have and really versatile, can be used for so much and hardy. So if you're planting it outside it'll be perfectly happy just growing away there, getting a small bit harvest off it again. Just protect, if you are, you know, if you have a lot of pigeons around, protect it from them. But other than that, that'll, that'll work away there.

Speaker 1: 17:31

Um so, and yeah, that's kind of it, there's not much more that we can be sowing this month. So to kind of run over it again, you're looking at your successional crops still, your spinach, your spring onion, your lettuce, switching to your winter autumn, winter greens, the likes of tatsoi, mustard, clayton, claytona, rocket, all those Cress can still be sown. Some of the herbs coriander, chervil, dill, parsley, any of those can still be sown Florenceveil, kale, beetroot and carrots just I'm going to try one personally in the polytunnel, packed chai can still be sown. Chard, and then your spring cabbage and potentially cauliflower and broccoli, again planted into the polytunnel at this stage and they potentially will give you an early crop. And that's kind of the list. There isn't much else that we can be sown in the month ahead. In the edible garden there is some flower seeds that we can definitely be sowing, you know, starting from the end of this month, some of your biennials. I'll do a proper list, a seed sowing guide for flowers, a seed sowing guide for perennials and biennials. That you know it likes wallflowers and a lot of the perennials can be sowed, sort of September time, august September time. So I'll do a proper list on that.

Speaker 1: 18:52

Other jobs that are kind of ongoing at the moment is you're you're still going to be harvesting quite a lot, but also it's still going to be about plant care and keeping an eye out, vigilance for pests and so on. Um, tomatoes, keep watering them on a regular basis. You'll probably need to be watering them two to three times a week. Remember the tips from earlier in time water to the base, so not watering onto the leaves of the plant. If possible, water in the morning time. That will allow the plant to dry out during the day so that you're not carrying, you know, damp through the night, and then that means that you'll have less vulnerability to fungal diseases, particularly so removing all your leaves from again we're talking with tomatoes and the likes of courgettes any leaves that are discolored, any leaves that are showing any sign of disease at all, remove them. Remove them from the house and continue to feed, continue to water, but making sure you keep the environment as dry and as airy as possible. So ventilate your tunnels, leave the vents open, allow airflow through that house, making sure that you're keeping up with your pruning of your tomatoes. Just again to help with airflow, to help with ripening. Keep an eye out for things like aphids and whitefly as well.

Speaker 1: 20:15

Blight on tomatoes, blight on potatoes, keeping an eye out for all those things, especially main crop potatoes. As I said, most of you will have your early potatoes harvested already. Potentially some of your secondarily still in the ground, but definitely a lot of your main crops, or all your main crops, are still going to be in the ground and they're going to need a good bit of protection. Over the next month or two. We're still getting these warm temperatures, kind of clammy temperatures, and again, that's conducive to blight. So just keep an eye on that. Keep on top of that.

Speaker 1: 20:44

Uh, slugs not a little bit mixed? Some people are saying they have kind of big problems with them. At the moment I'm not seeing too much activity here, but potentially there could still be a problem. The fact that it has been relatively dry, generally speaking, over the last few months means that the slug levels are probably a little bit lower than they would have been over the last few years. Still keeping an eye out for caterpillars on your brassicas, all those things. So Still keeping an eye out for caterpillars on your brassicas, all those things. So just keeping an eye out for those things.

Speaker 1: 21:15

Be vigilant on fruit as well, as they become ripe. I saw somebody yesterday nearly crying in their polytunnel. They had a beautiful couple of bunches of grapes that were ready to go, or nearly ready to go, but not quite ripe for eating, and they opened the doors to allow ventilation and the birds copped it and got in and took every grape out of the house and yeah, that's a little bit frustrating. It's understandable, but it's a little bit frustrating. So just watch out for that, especially outside. On raspberries, black currants Most of you will have them harvested at this stage, but any of those crops, just keep an eye because, as we mentioned before, you won't be the only ones that will be keeping an eye on them.

Speaker 1: 21:57

The birds will be watching and as soon as they're ripe, they'll be taking their share of them. So, yeah, they're all kind of all the jobs that you can be doing this month, all the seed sowing that you can do. It's, um, yeah, slightly a lot reduced list actually, but there's still so much benefit, so much benefit. And continue to sow because you know, as we've mentioned several times, you have these beds, you have these spaces, you will have harvest coming out and you want to continue to utilize that space and the only way to do that is to keep crops in them and to keep, you know, to keep something on the go all the time. You mightn't get full harvest, you know, for the winter months you mightn't be. You know, in terms of being self-sufficient you're not going to be or anything like that, but at least you will be utilizing that space, you'll be keeping plants in the ground, keeping that ground covered with plant material, and you'll still have fresh harvests that are going to be really, really welcome, particularly over these autumn and winter months. So don't forget to keep sowing, keep planning, keep looking ahead, keep your eye two months down the line, six weeks down the line, to see where is a gap going to come and what can I get in there. And that's really how you start to, I suppose, create a garden. That's giving something to you 12 months of the year, more or less, and you know it extends. It extends the benefit beyond those few months where we sort of get out early, get our plants in and then get our harvest in June, july, august, and then we're done. Make sure we're extending that and make sure we're taking advantage of the space when we have it. So that's this week's episode, rather short episode.

Speaker 1: 23:41

Next week's episode is a really exciting one. So some of you will have heard me talking in the past about a really good documentary. Was on Netflix I don documentary and was on netflix I don't think it's on netflix anymore called kiss the ground. It's a brilliant, brilliant documentary and I have josh tickell on next week. He's the producer of that and there's a trilogy.

Speaker 1: 24:01

So there's the second one, um, the second one, which the name won't come to mind now, but and the third documentary in that series is coming out in 2026 and we're chatting about that. But really, really brilliant documentary, one that I've spoke about before, really worth catching up and, as I said, next week I talked to the producer of that and josh tickell. So brilliant, brilliant interview and some, really, some really interesting stuff in it. You know, if you're interested in growing food, if you're interested in food production systems, it's really worth listening to. But in terms of this week's episode, that's your seed sowing guide for the month of August and that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.