Oriental Salad Leaves
If you have any gaps in the vegetable garden made from crops already lifted this summer, why not make some sowings of fast growing Oriental salad leaves?  They will be ready for picking in just a few short weeks, especially if you keep them well watered during dry spells.  Our Mustard Oriental Ruby Steaks is quick and easy to grow. Use baby leaves in salads and larger, hotter ones in stir-fries.  Or how about Mustard Spinach Komatsuna?  It gives abundant yields of shiny, round leaves which have a flavour which is part mustard, part spinach and part Chinese cabbage.  It’s great as baby leaves in a salad while the mature leaves are just the job in stir fry dishes. 

Spring Greens
Don’t forget too that this month seed of spring greens or spring cabbage can be sown.  Our Advantage F1 is one of the very best varieties for this purpose.  In fact, depending on when seed is sown it is capable of producing delicious spring greens nearly all year round.  It is hardy and tolerant of most leaf diseases.  Or you may prefer an old favourite such as Offenham 2 – Flower of Spring, which has been around for years, but is still a reliable performer.  It can be grown either as unhearted spring greens or left to heart up and produce good heads next spring.  It’s up to you! 

Do something different with your courgettes
August is one of the most productive months in the vegetable garden.  The main problem is wondering what to do with all the produce!  Many people freeze their surpluses of runner and French beans, but it is not feasible with a vegetable such as courgettes.  Did you know they actually make a delicious summer soup?  If you have a few spare marrows, why not try making marrow and ginger jam?  It is rather different and quite delicious 

The Flower Garden
The flower garden and containers are hopefully ablaze with colour from this year’s annuals. After a rather slower start than usual our bedding plants and tender perennials are now looking at their very best.  Regular dead-heading certainly pays benefits, as the plants will keep on flowering much longer.  A weekly feed with a good quality plant food is also beneficial and gives the plants a little more energy to maintain their displays for us.

It is not too early to start thinking about your forthcoming winter and spring displays.  There is still just time to make sowings of that great favourite – winter flowering pansies.  All pansies give the best results grown as spring rather than summer flowers and there are plenty of outstanding varieties to choose from in the Mr Fothergill’s range.  Our Mariposa Primrose Shades F1 is a most beautiful and unusual blend of soft shades.  Joker Light Blue F2 offers great value at just £2.19 for 50 seeds and it is especially free flowering.  These pansies will flower sporadically during the winter, but they really come into their own next spring, when they will bloom continuously for several weeks, usually until the end of May until next year’s summer bedding plants are ready to go out once again.