Gardening Jobs in August - Picking Fruit

Harvesting your fruit crop in August – what to do in the garden this August

There is a tonne to do in the garden in August; now is the time for harvesting quite a lot of your vegetable and fruit crops. There’s the Onions, garlic & shallots to harvest, it’s time to gather your plums and damsons and even towards the end of the month you might be able to collect early fruiting apples and pears.

As well as all the lovely harvesting to be done, there are also a few general maintenance jobs that need to be carried out.

Here’s our run down of the top 5 gardening jobs that need to be done this August.

Blueberries: our blueberry plants produce lovely and tasty blueberries around august time. How to know when they are ripe for picking? Simply try and roll the blueberry of the stem, if it doesn’t come off easily it probably isn’t ripe yet. If the berries are still white then you can tell that they are not ready yet. Place them in a bucket, or your mouth: simple

Delicious Blueberry Fruits to make your very own smoothies with.

Plums & Damsons: We have two Damson Trees in my garden and I can remember getting up on a ladder with my grandad picking huge bounties of Damsons in late August. We’d make jams and some rocket fuel like damson wine for the year ahead, brilliant. Plum Trees and Damsons Trees will be producing their fruit around this time of year so make sure you get harvesting it. Again, as with the blueberries, when the fruit is ready to be picked it will come away without much effort.

Figs: Fig Trees will be producing lovely figs come august fingers crosses. Figs taste equally amazing, whether straight from your fig tree and still warm from the sun or dried. Our Brown Turkey Fig Trees will fruit later on in August. Ripe figs are a little soft too touch, make sure you don’t pick unripe figs; once picked they will not ripen off the tree.

Gooseberry: Gooseberry Trees produce lovely Gooseberries in August. Gooseberries are a little unusual fruit, but are a firm favourite at village shows etc. You can also make fantastic jam with your gooseberries and they can make a fine wine I am told!

Gooseberries...Great for making jam with

Blackberries and Raspberries: If you have bought a blackberry gifts or raspberry plants, you will be pleased to know that they should start producing some lovely fruit at this time of year. Make sure you pick them early before the birds have them all and you could be making tasty jam for the year ahead, or better yet enjoying the fruit straight from your plants.