A gardening expert has revealed the five vegetables she chooses to start growing before the end of August, with some growing in time for serving as part of a Christmas dinner. Summer is coming to a close, and many gardeners will be putting away their equipment over the next few weeks. However, seasoned gardeners across Britain will continue to grow things all throughout the year, even as we move into winter.
One expert has shared the five vegetables you can start growing now, even as temperatures start to drop after a particularly hot summer in the UK. Skilled gardener and TikTok content creator Louise’s Kitchen Garden has shared the five vegetables she will start growing this month. In a post that received more than 16,000 likes and over 230,000 views, she tells Brits that it’s their “last chance to sow lots of veg if you want to be growing all through the winter and have some early harvests in the spring”. “I’d really recommend making the most of your space year-round, and also it’s such a good excuse to go outside and get some fresh air in those colder months,” she says.
The five vegetables she starts growing in August are:
- Potatoes
- Carrots
- Spring onions
- Brassica oleracea (kale, broccoli and cauliflower)
- Hardy salad leaves
When it comes to the potatoes, she says these will likely be the potatoes you serve with your Christmas dinner.
The gardening enthusiast says: “I would recommend growing them in grow bags.
“You can then put them into a greenhouse to protect them from any frost, or you can even cover them with fleece, which will extend the growing period”.
For the carrots, she says you should sow the seeds directly into the ground. Hardy varieties might be best, as they can withstaned frost.
Like the potatoes, you could be having these carrots with your Christmas dinner.
If you sow the seeds for kale, broccoli and cauliflower now, you will get a harvest as early as December and through to spring, she explains.
The skilled gardener grows them in pots and pots them up as they grow. As soon as her summer plants are done, such as her tomatoes, she then puts them in the ground.
The spring onion variety she plants is called White Lisbon, and it is “extremely hardy”, meaning it will withstand frost.
She explains how they are a great filler plant as they don’t take up much space, and they act as a good pest deterrent because of their smell. Similarly, she chooses a hardy variety of lettuce to start growing coming into the colder months of the year.