In my garden - August 2026

August is always the month that draws me into the gardens. Like a primeval internal clock, something wakes up and says “Time to prepare beds and sow seeds”. Perhaps this is the time of year our distant ancestors started looking for fertile spots to scatter seeds in hope of coming back and harvesting food later in the year.

The gardens are steadily expanding and improving. I have 28 beds ready for use this season with another 4 that have been mulching under tarps for 12 months or so. Of these, 3 are in permanent asparagus, and one in berries on a support.

We have had some pretty hard frosts over the past 2 weeks which has knocked a few over-wintering plants back a bit. The carrots tops look like they have been shredded. Most notably, the asparagus had just started putting up some impressively thick spears which have been completely turned to mush by the frosts. Even protection with row cover wasn’t going to stop that freeze. Since then, no new spears have come up so I am hoping the crowns haven’t been damaged under the soil.

Onions and garlic are looking good though, they can withstand freezing, and the brassicas are holding up pretty well. Even putting on a bit of growth.

The first late winter planting of broad beans has gone in.

The strawberry bed has been prepared and the plants are ready to pop in now. This year, I dug up all the strawberry plants around May and potted them into polythene bags to prevent them getting buried under weeds and strangled. This has worked well and some of them have stubbornly kept fruiting all winter, despite my efforts to remove flowers and fruit.

Celery, which did exceptionally well last season is still hanging in there. Although it is more of a haven for slaters that much good in the kitchen. I did try dividing and transplanting some plants but that has not been overly successful. Still hanging in there so we will see how they go as we come more into spring.

Seed potatoes have been purchased and are chitting in the shed ready for planting towards the end of this month. We do get some late frosts, sometimes right through to November, so potatoes are always make me a bit anxious, with row covers ready to go on at any time. Still, we have just about used up all of last season’s supply now and I do find that if I can protect the early planted potatoes from the frost they tend to produce a lot better than those planted later in summer.

In the late summer this year I collected native seed from various flax plants, ake-ake, titoki, lemonwood and karo. These have all germinated well so I look forward to planting those next winter. I also had a lot of volunteer stonefruit trees come up in the vege patch from seeds that had been discarded into the compost. So these were potted up with the thought that, even if they don’t produce fruit, a tree is a tree. They are free and take minimal work so not a great loss if they don’t work out.

Taggasaste trees also need to go into the ground ASAP which should provide a bit more shade over the summer months.