AUGUST

FRUIT

·         Pick fruit as soon as it is ready.

·         Continue to prune restricted forms of apples and pears.

·         Begin pruning over-vigorous trees

·         Support heavily laden branches.

·         Protect fruit against birds.

·         Immediately after watt trained peaches and nectarines have cropped, prune out the shoots which have borne fruit and tie in replacement shoots.

·         Prune plums and damsons after fruiting.

·         Prepare new strawberry beds, and plant out rooted runners.

·         Continue to prune and tie in rasps.

·         Continue to train in blackberries.

·         Apples - spray against bitter pit.

·         Late August, spray stone fruits after cropping against bacterial canker if necessary.

·         Gooseberries and currants, spray for leaf spot and mildew if necessary.

·         Strawberries spray for mildew if troublesome.

LAWNS

·         Same treatment as for July.

·         Grass overgrown after holidays, lift height of cut and gradually bring it back down after several mowings.

·         Last month to feed with a nitrogen rich fertilizer, and for weed killing.

·         Seed sowing at the end of the month can begin.

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The above helpful advice has been reproduced by kind permission of Will Hart, whose experience includes working for Blackburn Rovers FC (as a groundsman at their Training Ground, Academy and Ewood Park), for the Sultan of Oman (at his French residence in Fontainebleau, south of Paris) at the 1999 Martell Grand National at Aintree and for a variety of different sized local gardens and estates.  Impressive credentials I am sure you will agree!