At the height of summer the garden can be unwieldy. If all is going to plan, your plants will be growing enthusiastically and your veg patch will be offering up crops that need harvesting most days. It’s the apex of the growing season but it can feel overwhelming at times. So I find it helpful to focus my energy on a few key activities at this busy time.
I’m often asked for advice on watering, yet there’s no easy answer to this question because, as with so much in the garden, it depends. How much water is determined by the weather (principally the temperature), whether it’s rained and how breezy it is, because wind can be drying. If I’m not sure whether watering is necessary, I stick my finger into the soil to check if it’s moist – in its fourth season of no dig, my veg patch is fairly moisture retentive. A generous drink a couple of times a week is preferable to a little-and-often approach.
Depending on the quality of your soil (or how long your plants have been growing in containers), you may need to offer some supplementary nutrients to your crops. Homemade comfrey feed (made by submerging the leaves in water until they’re rotten and stinky, then diluted to the colour of weak tea) or organic liquid seaweed feed drenched on the roots of your plants will provide them with the potassium they need to flower and fruit. If you grow mainly leafy crops, nettle feed (made in the same manner as comfrey feed) is rich in the nitrogen they need to grow.
Tomatoes, aubergines, cucumbers and many more of our summer crops need to be pollinated in order to bear fruit, and this process – while mostly undertaken by our pollinating insect friends – is one we can have a role in supporting. My garden is filled with floriferous plants, grown to encourage pollinators to join me in the garden in the hope that they find my flowering crops. If you suspect your crops aren’t being pollinated (undeveloped fruit is a tell tale sign), you can intervene yourself. By gently shaking tomato plants as you pass by, you can help the pollen transfer from anther to stigma (or do it manually with a small paintbrush). This is especially helpful for plants with separate fruit producing and pollen bearing flowers such as courgettes, and should guarantee a bountiful harvest.
This point in the growing season is also when I prune certain vigorous summer plants. By “stopping” my tomato and squash plants (cutting the stems to halt new growth), I encourage my plants to focus their energy on the fruit that has already set for the remainder of their life cycle. This way I’m more likely to reach autumn with ripe fruit instead of lots of undeveloped squash and green tomatoes.
