August Jobs

Plants & Flowers

• Keep deadheading container plants to ensure the display continues, water daily and feed each week - tomato food is ideal

• Take cuttings of tender perennials e.g. salvia, osteospermum, pelargoniums to increase stocks

• Add late flowering perennials to your borders e.g. aster, sedum, Japanese anemones

• Leave the last of the sweet peas to forms seed pods and collect when dry

• Sit down with a cuppa (or something stronger!) and browse through bulb catalogues. Order early to get the varieties you want

Fruit & Vegetables

• Harvest tomatoes as they ripen. There is nothing nicer than a tomato eaten straight from the vine, warmed by the sunshine

• Keep sowing catch crops such as spring onions, lettuce and radish as space becomes available

• Remove all the bulky foliage of broad beans once they've finished producing and put on the compost heap. Leave the roots in the ground as they'll supply nitrogen to the soil

• Remove any raspberry canes that have finished fruiting by cutting them at the vase. Tie in new canes produced this year to their support - these will fruit next summer. Leave autumn fruiting varieties until winter

• Cut all the young stems of gooseberries, red currants and white currants back to five leaves from their base

Wildlife

• Provide shallow bowls of clean water for birds to drink and bathe in. Hedgehogs will also be grateful in hot weather

• Allow some herbs to flower e.g. marjoram for the bees

• Rescue dehydrated bees in hot weather with a syrupy feed of three parts sugar to one part water

• The Peacock, Red Admiral, Comma and Small Tortoiseshell all favour large sunny patches of stinging nettles for laying their eggs. Grow them in a dustbin to stop them spreading

• Provide a nutrient - rich dish of fermenting fruit pieces for butterflies, such as sliced banana and pineapple