Progress

August heralds changes in the garden and non-more so in the vegetable garden. Crops are harvested and eaten, crops fail, sometimes there are gluts that need to be frozen. Sometimes there is just enough to be eaten and enjoyed straightaway. 

Oddly perhaps, August is the time we plan for successional crops to see us through winter. Beds become vacant and crops such as lettuce germinate more successfully in the cooler late summer temperatures. 

Sprouts, parsnips and leeks are long haul crops, but black Tuscan kale, 'Cavolo nero', grows quickly and, planted out now, can be picked and eaten by late autumn through to winter and into spring. 

We sow the seeds in mid June and pot up into 3-inch pots where they sit in the cold frame, covered in netting. The netting is to try (usually in vain) to limit damage caused by the cabbage white butterfly, whose larvae strip the leaves of most brassicas. But netting is no substitute for looking, and the most effective method of limiting damage caused by cabbage white butterflies is to regularly check the underside of the leaves for the telltale orange eggs. 

P.S. Potato update: the potatoes that had blighted foliage were lifted this week. The harvest was smaller than usual, but the potatoes were perfectly fine. 

(Potatoes survive the blight)