Sarah Raven’s August Notes from Perch Hill

09.08.2023 - 10:31 / theenglishgarden.co.uk / Sarah Raven / The English Garden

Unparalleled in their August marvellousness at Perch Hill are of course tomatoes. The smell of the stems and leaves that lingers after pinching is almost as good as the taste of the fruit. We grow groves of tomatoes in the greenhouse here, and these are sometimes supplemented with the hardier and more reliable ones growing in a sunny spot in the garden. And we plant lots of basil in amongst and through our tomato jungle. 

I love the volume of colour from all the nasturtiums, dahlias, salvias and other edible flowers reaching their late-summer peak, along with the wild bird food provided by the sunflowers, amaranths and grasses. Together they create carpets of general froth and floweriness.

August is also the month that our birch and hazel frames, covered top to toe with climbing squash and beans, erupt through these carpets of colour. It’s now that the potatoes are emerging from the ground like presents and we’re harvesting our maincrops. ‘Axona’ and ‘Pink Fir Apple’ we may leave until later, but the early maincrops, ‘Ratte’ and ‘Belle de Fontenay’, are lifted now and stored in paper or hessian sacks somewhere cool and dry so they can be eaten through autumn and winter. Unlike the earlies, they don’t lose flavour or texture in storage.

There are baskets of cucumbers, which once they start coming, do so thick and fast. I like the look of their big lily-pad leaves studding the hazel frames over which they grow. We often end up making cucumber pickle to cope with the glut, but if you grow the mini varieties (like ‘La Diva’ or ‘Petita’) they’re easy to get through – perfect just-picked when they’re still warm and at their sweetest, and then dipped into hummus or baba ghanoush. 

We’re eating sweetcorn a few times a week. You can