August is all about transitioning to the warm season crops. It’s bittersweet as I love the cooler season veggies but the kids are getting a bit sick of snow peas and greens.
In this video I am going to be planting out my August bed as part of my rotation to always have something to harvest.
Full disclaimer here it is very rare that we will get a frost, so if you’re still likely to get one hold off on the frost sensitive crops, perhaps go back and check out our July planting video instead. I would just swap out the broccoli with either swiss chard, kale or even a cabbage.
Be preparation
A lot of our back garden is still out of action as I roll out the wicking beds due to the tree root situation. We’re even talking about pulling some of the garden beds up and moving the aquaponics to this area instead.
I’ve put in a new birdies garden bed in our front garden. I love these beds as they are so easy to put together and I don’t need any help to do it. The hardest part is putting the trim on the outer edge. These beds do last forever, we have some of their original beds that a friend gave me over 10 years ago. I just gave them a freshen up with paint and they still are going strong. This one is one of their smaller beds, and the configuration I am doing is a .9 metre wide. by 1.3metres long.
Need help deciding what type of garden bed works for you check out this post.
I have one more planned in this area, where I am growing a straw bale garden (Dirt Lovers can access my instruction video here on how to create a straw bale garden). I’ll wait for it to finish up and use the remaining bale as a base to fill the bed.
To fill this bed I put some old spent banana trees from a tree we just harvested. I then topped up with some soil from one of the gardens we’re emptying out the back. This bed will drop quite considerably as those tree trunks break down but it should work well to help the bed retain moisture.
You can check out my tips for filling up raised beds on the cheap here.
Planting our bed
In this raised bed we'll be planting out based on our Dirt Lovers subtropical planting plan for August.
Here we'll be sowing seeds for:
- Cucumbers
- Zucchini
- Beans
- Beetroot
- Carrots
We'll be sowing seedlings for:
- Swiss Chard
- Lettuce
- Rocket
- Pakchoi
Cucumber Seeds
Here we’ve got a trellis on our southern side for our cucumbers. I was torn as to what side to put it on as this bed is protected from the fence on the east so I could have put the trellis on the eastern side and it wouldn’t have affected the sunshine. The cucumbers I am going with are just a lebanese muncher, it’s a good little cucumber that grows quite well for us here. I’ll plant seeds direct, 2 plants for this space 30cm apart, 4 seeds per hole. One for the mouse, one for the crow, one to rot and one to grow. If all 4 germinate I will snip off two and let two grow. If you don’t like cucumbers you could do climbing beans in this position.
Zucchini Seeds
Now I normally plant a grid of about a dozen corn here, but I decided I want to get zucchini before the cucumber fly and humidity set in. I actually find zucchini really challenging to grow here over summer so I’ll be happy if I get a nice crop before the humidity really steps it up. Cucumber fly are terrible here for us, it looks very similar to the QLD fruit fly but they sting cucumbers, pumpkins and zucchini when the fruit are tiny. My kids will be disappointed I am not planting corn but I’ll get some in next month. You could go with a determinate tomato in this position.
Zucchini do grow quite huge so it will look bare for a little while, and they do tend to wander. A lot of people like to train them upward but Ive found it far too windy here they tend to snap if i do that. I am going with a cocozelle, it’s a green striped variety, it’s my favourite one to grow. Again 4 seeds per hole but I will only let one grow.
Bush Beans Seeds
Around the edges here I am doing a mix of bush beans, Pioneer, it’s like a flat green pod, very prolific. Strike, which is a round green pod, cherokee wax is a yellow variety & royal burgundy a purple one. Similar to peas I do two per hole, but give them a bit more space apart, about 20 cm. I prefer planting bush beans on the edge of garden beds as they tend to sprawl a little bit, and they can easily just hang over the edge and not impede on anything growing nearby.
Swiss Chard and Rocket Seedlings
I was late getting my July seeds in the green house and then we got that awful cold snap that just slows everything down a lot of my seedlings are a little bit too small. So instead of spring onions I am going to pop in some rocket and pak choi in their place. The beauty of having fast growing space fillers on hand is once they are done the space will be free to fill with the spring onions. So next to my zucchini I am going to do a row of swiss chard with rocket in between.
Beetroot Seeds
Next up I am going to sow a row of Beetroot. This variety is called cylindrica, these are great for making sliced beetroot preserves as they grow like a long tuber as opposed to the typical round ones. I find them really great to grow over summer, they’re a bit more resilient as they dig deeper for moisture. I know these are slightly out of date seeds so I’ll start some that I know are good in the green house so if they don’t grow I’ll have something to go in their place. It’s not a big deal I have my space fillers on standby but I am really keen for some decent beetroots this year.
Lettuce Seedling
My cos lettuce were too small but I had these buttercrunch ones left over from last month, so I am going to do a row of these with some pakchoi.
Carrot Seeds
The final row in this bed is Carrots. I am going with two fast growing varieties - Paris market - it grows like a little ball and the kuroda. These two I consider my carrot varieties for beginners, especially if you’ve struggled with growing carrots in the past, they are the fastest growing ones. Now remember to keep them moist, if at any point the seed dries out they won’t sprout and with the warmer weather we’ve had lately it’s a good possibility you’ll get low germination if you’re not babying them.
Potatoes
I have some potato seeds for sebago and desiree. I usually like to plant these in July but they hadn’t chitted yet, hopefully the humidity holds out until december so we can get some before they rot. I am going to do towers with these, as they are both indeterminate varieties they will require hilling as they grow. I am starting with 30cm base of soil with the straw on the outside. One thing we did notice with potato havests those that had myco gold inoculation did far better so I am making sure I add a bit of that in each hole. The last time i tried a tower it failed astronomically so we’ll see how we go. I am also going to throw some in grow bags as well as 1kg of seed potato turns out to be a lot of seed.
Seed raising for upcoming planting
Now over to the green house for our seedling planting for the future. My flowers are looking good, I can probably start planting out some of these cosmos.
I have some new pots that I am trialling, whilst I love my soil blocker sometimes it’s just a little too messy and I really don’t feel like getting messy, which is when I just recycle punnets from things I’ve bought over the years. They are all starting to disintegrate now so I invested in these mini wini’s. they are actually root pruning they have this little slit on the side and a bigger bottom to stop the seedlings from becoming rootbound, it’s similar to the soil block. I’ll let you know how it goes but they look very sturdy. I got a large which is great for, tomatoes, cucumbers,melons and zucchini, the medium which is good for corn, swiss chard, broccoli, capsicums, chillis and beans and then the small for your basil, lettuce, celery, onions and beets.
Lettuce Seeds
With the weather heating up I need to have lots of lettuce on standby as it bolts quickly. I am going with some red salad bowl and green oakleaf.
Spring onion seeds
Next up is spring onions, we always want spring onions about. With spring onions I do 10 seeds per hole.
Beetroot seeds
We’re doing the spare beetroots. I am going to pop the dark red detroit in here in case my old cylindrica ones don’t germinate.
Watermelon seeds
I want to get some watermelon in now, I am only going with two plants as I have no idea where they will go just yet. They are tricky to grow here, with fruit fly and also they tend to split if they get too much water all at once which tends to happen when the rains start. I have had success with wicking beds though so i think I’ll find a spot in the new wicking bed we’re about to setup. I was going to turn it into my strawberry and chilli bed, but a couple of watermelons might do Ok in there with them.
Cucumber seeds
I also think my cucumber seeds I planted out the front might have been a bit old so I am going to do some backup ones, here i am going with a Straight Eight which is just your stock standard cucumber with the thicker skin. My snow peas are also close to finishing on the arch in my front garden and I am going to plant the Suyo long cucumbers there when they are finished. They are a great variety, they grow super long.
Tomato seeds
Now we planted some tomato seeds a few weeks back and they didn’t all germinate, probably because I didn’t listen to my own advice and check the forecast before planting and we had our coldest week of the year. So I am going in with another variety of tomato, the pink thai egg, it’s my favourite to grow in a pot as it handles the flood and dry of life in a pot. They are a semi determinate variety so they will ripen all at once, which I don’t mind as I can throw a net over the entire plant to prevent fruit fly. They are a good mid size tomato, a little bit smaller than a roma, and they ripen pink rather than red, hence the name.
I am prepping for a new biennial bed and I want to get in some new eggplant, chillis and capsicums.
Eggplant seeds
Eggplant I am going with the standard black beauty and also the little greek Tsakoniki that has a variegated looking fruit.
Chilli seeds
For chillis’ I am replenishing the jalapenos’ as our current ones are going on 3 years. I am also going to do a little thai birdseye and a standard cayenne.
Capsicum seeds
With capsicums we’re going with the corno di torro, it produces a long fruit. And some YOLO wonders which are standard looking capsicums.
And that’s it for our seed sowing in the green house. I think I will go back and plant some basil as space fillers as well.
Butternut pumpkin seeds
There is something to be said about the success you get from compost pumpkins and find that if you can grow them next to your compost bin you’ll always have better success. I’ve got this one inside a bed where the soil is terrible, we bought from a landscaping place to fill it and it’s just turned into a hard gloop of clay no matter how much organic matter we add to it. that, and it’s one of the beds that get the tree roots inside it. So I am just going to plant some butternuts on the edge here and see what happens.
Anyway that’s us sorted for the month. Thank you so much for watching and I’ll see you next time.
