August is the month to whip away any failures with vegetables, to tidy up the scraggly, weedy bits and start again for autumn. There will be neat patches of salads and greens for winter pickings in no time to make up for the runner beans that failed to run or the courgettes that got slugged.
Clear away any debris and hoe off emerging weeds. It’s worth waiting a couple of days between hoeing and sowing, as you often get to clear another emerging batch of weeds. When the window for sowing is short, that kind of competition should not be tolerated.
For this reason, if there is a lack of moisture in the soil I water only the part with seeds on it and cover it with dry soil to act as a mulch, locking in that moisture. Then I wait patiently till I see my nice patch of green before I water again. I am not one for straight lines or regimented patches, but at this time of year I order myself to be a little less scattered so I can weed easily.
As for what to sow, it’s the usual late-summer suspects: oriental greens, cool-season lettuces and greens, and a few quick-growing storage types. I like to make several successional sowings of mizuna, mibuna, rosette-forming pak choi (tatsoi) and komatsuma (oriental mustard). I also sow these in trays that I will pot on and plant up in the polytunnel when the tomatoes are over. I make several sowings of coriander for the polytunnel – unless it’s sheltered, it rarely lasts long outside in the autumn.
I line bare path edges with a sowing of curly parsley and in warm, sheltered spots I sow flat-leaf Italian parsley that is not nearly as hardy.
Kohlrabi and winter-hardy radish can also be sown. The hardiest radishes are the storage types, either ‘German’ or ‘Black Spanish Round’. These are a peppery lot and you can easily get very slap-happy with sowing too many. They germinate too fast, and there’s only so many slices of blow-your-head-off pepperiness anyone wants to eat in winter. On the other hand, I can never quite get enough of the cool, clean taste of mooli (those long white radishes), but they are not frost hardy, so sow to your heart’s content but be prepared to cover or lift if it’s a hard winter.
As for cool-season lettuce, I stick to ‘Winter Density’, a hardy little gem that stands well, and the traditional French variety ‘Winter Marvel’. I also sow lamb’s lettuce and miner’s lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata): if you allow these to self-seed in spring they’ll do all the hard work for you.
