Help your crops cope with heat

Sow it now

You may find you’re in the kitchen as often as in the garden at this time of year, but there’s still plenty to sow. Veg growers always have one eye on what to pick next, so namby-pamby summer salads have had their day – they’ll only get too hot and bolt if you sow them now, wasting your time and resources.

What you need for this time of year is the spicy, sophisticated flavours of late-season salads. Mizuna, mustard, Chinese cabbage and pak choi are tough and resilient, growing best as the days get shorter. Sow in pre-watered drills or into newspaper modules ready for refilling beds and containers after the summer bonanza is over.

Add a row of subtly peppery mooli (winter radishes), for satisfyingly fat, long roots, and perhaps some chicory (sugarloaf chicories are less bitter than most and grow like big Cos lettuces). Sow in containers or direct in the ground, a few seeds every 30cm, then remove all but the strongest seedlings to grow on.

Sow winter radishes, which mature slowly, for harvesting from autumn onwards

Old cattle troughs look far better than plastic water butts and make filling your watering cans easier – just dip them in

Plan ahead

Mint, marjoram, basil and chives are growing faster than you can use them, so harvest the surplus and freeze them now, so you’ll have winter supplies of fresh herbs on hand. Chop finely and mix into a paste with olive oil, then pack into ice-cube trays and freeze. Decant the cubes into plastic bags once frozen – one cube equals about a tablespoon of fresh herbs.

High summer is also a stress test for rainwater-harvesting systems. If you’re finding yourself turning on the tap more often than you’d like, bolster your storage capacity now to catch any summer downpours and improve your resilience next year. Second-hand cattle troughs are usually cheaper than water butts and are plastic-free. They hold huge volumes of water and come in a range of sizes. Make simple wooden lids to keep the water clean, and just dunk your watering cans for an instant refill.