🌱 Weekly Update for Members

Last week I mentioned that we will not be stocking any Christmas seed potatoes this year, so you may have to start looking around the garden centres very soon before they run out.

🥕 Harvesting Now

Harvesting should be in full swing with:

• Broad beans
• Early potatoes
• Beetroot (early thinning’s)
• Carrots (early thinning’s)
• Peas

If you have spare space and are not planning to grow more flowers or veg, consider sowing green manures.

🌿 Green Manure Explained

Green manure refers to fast‑growing crops sown to cover bare soil, then dug in while still green.

It helps to:

• Boost soil fertility
• Improve soil texture
• Prevent erosion
• Suppress weeds

💡 Quick Tips

🌽 Shake

Shake your sweetcorn to encourage good fertilisation, helping create fat, kernel‑filled cobs.

🍅 Feed

Feed hungry crops including aubergines, peppers and tomatoes, especially those growing in pots.

🌳 Mulch

If the weather is hot and dry, make sure young fruit trees are well watered and mulched.

Drought can kill young trees.

🔍 Watch Out For

🍅 Tomato Troubles

• Blossom end rot: Caused by calcium deficiency due to irregular watering.

Look for a dark patch at the flowering end of the fruit.

Keep plants consistently watered.

• Brown tomato leaves: Often fungal diseases (like blight), watering mistakes, or nutrient issues.

Remove damaged leaves and water only the soil.

🌬️ Moulds & Mildews

Often caused by poor ventilation.

Keep airflow good in greenhouses and polytunnels, avoid crowding, and remove affected leaves.

🌼 Sow Now

Vegetables:

Basil, beetroot, carrots, chard, chervil, chicory, dill, Florence fennel, French beans, radish, pak choi, spring onions.

We also have a winter spring onion variety that, if planted now, will be ready early spring.

Others to sow now: spinach, kale (cavolo nero), turnip, radish.

Flowers:

Pansies, lupin, delphinium, foxgloves, sweet William, wallflowers.

🏆 WHGAA Garden & Allotment Produce Show

Keep checking which of your flowers and vegetables will be good enough to enter the show:

📍 Caroline Haslett Primary School, Faraday Drive, Shenley Lodge, MK5 7DF

📅 Saturday 5th September

We currently have a TV celebrity awarding the prizes — someone most of you will know.

It was suggested I mention the name in Morse code, but that would be too easy.

🎄 Christmas Potatoes

If you are planning to grow seed potatoes during August for a Christmas harvest, please note:

We will NOT be stocking them this year.

🌷 Autumn Bulbs

Arriving from late August:

• Amaryllis
• Hyacinths (for Christmas flowering)
• Tulips
• Narcissi
• Daffodils

Autumn‑planting onions and garlic are due in mid‑September.

🏷️ 10% Monthly Offer for July

All Tomato Feeds

🌻 Happy Gardening

Mick Goodman

Membership Secretary