August in the Makkelijke Moestuin

High summer in the vegetable garden. Lovely weather, daily harvests and plenty of time to enjoy being outdoors.

At this time of year, you sow vegetables to harvest right up to winter. So you can still get started too. 😀

Read about getting started in August.

Early August in the Makkelijke Moestuin office garden — *Early August in our office garden*

Already growing in August?

Already growing? This month, you can enjoy plenty of summer vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes and beans.

Everything grows quickly and produces lots to harvest. Often so much that you can barely keep up with eating it all.

The trick is to care for these vegetables so you can enjoy them for as long as possible.

At the same time, sow any empty squares straight away with vegetables you can harvest well into autumn and even winter.

Harvesting lots of cucumbers from the Makkelijke Moestuin in August — *Lots of little cucumbers :-)*

To help you do that, we put together a special seed bundle for autumn.

This good-value bundle contains twelve vegetable varieties you can sow from early August, and some even later.

They are all easy to grow and, of course, delicious.

With these seeds, you can harvest in autumn and early winter. Some varieties will even give you harvests throughout winter, or extra early in spring:

If you want to keep harvesting different varieties of Salanova leaf lettuce for a while yet, you can still sow the seeds indoors briefly before moving the seedlings outside.

They are even better value right now:

Salanova lettuce set (4 varieties)

A set of 4 Salanova lettuce varieties.

~~€13.95~~ €6.98

Tips for August*

1. Check regularly that your soil mix is still moist enough.

If you have water reservoirs, keep them well filled. At this time of year, check every two weeks that the soil is not dry from about 5 cm below the surface.
Without reservoirs, you will need to water often: preferably every day in sunny, dry weather. Also check that the mix just below the top layer is still moist.

2. Harvest on time and generously.

This is not just good for dinner: it also gives you a longer harvest. Plants you harvest leaves or fruits from will keep producing more.

Harvesting from the Makkelijke Moestuin every day in August — *The climbing beans are growing above the trellis*

3. Harvest older leafy vegetables completely to clear their squares.

Sow vegetables there that can cope well with the autumn cold.

4. Watch out for slugs and snails in damp weather: there are plenty around now.

You will also see lots of small white butterflies. These are cabbage whites, which like to lay their eggs on vegetables in the cabbage family.

5. Keep an eye on your tall plants and give them support when needed.

Tie the climbing courgette to the trellis regularly, along with your sunflowers and tall tomatoes.

You can easily weave cucumbers and pumpkins through the trellis.

Place a few bamboo canes around low-growing tomatoes to stop them falling over.

6. Tomatoes, courgettes, pumpkins and cucumbers are hungry plants.

Give them two tablespoons of MM plant food every 4-5 weeks.

* In short: follow the advice in the MM app, which covers all these tips. 😉

A full Makkelijke Moestuin raised bed in early August — *Full squares*

Can you still sow seeds now?

Many people think there is hardly anything left to sow at this time of year, but that could not be further from the truth. For some vegetables, this is the ideal time.