Market Garden Diaries - August 2025

August is the month where the Market Garden tends to get a bit wild and unruly but with Sally's help this year, we're doing ok!

Traditionally, the courgettes would have officially taken over by now - we'd turn our backs for what felt like five minutes and return to find a marrow the size of Cora (!) but we've done a good job of taking them early this year while they're still small and sweet. We've loved just slicing and popping them on the griddle with some garlic and chilli to have on the side of anything this summer but here's our 'Easy Peasy Courgette Fritters' recipe if you're looking to use some up - they're always a hit with the children and adults alike.

The tomatoes are now ready and they taste incredible - we keep pinching them off the vine and eating them like sweets when we're passing by the poly tunnel though so we're not sure how many of them are going to make it to our kitchens or the veg boxes!

August is the sort of month where every meal starts with the question: “What do we need to use up?” The answer, invariably, is 'a lot'.

It's the month where it's sensible to batch cook and freeze in order to stock up for the rest of the year ... There’s veggie ragu bubbling on the stove, sweet potato dahl in the slow cooker, and beetroot chutney being boiled. Herbs, onions, shallots and garlic are drying in bunches wherever we can find the space. We’ve also taken to quietly popping extra produce in the weekly veg boxes like an overzealous veggie fairy!

The colours are almost too much .... deep greens, glossy reds, mustardy yellows. And the smells as we wander throuh the garden - sweet and rich. Even the soil feels full of life, warm and crumbly beneath your hands. The bees are still busy, though slower now, somehow.

Among the bustle, there’s a sense that the garden is reaching its peak. This is the crescendo before the slow exhale into autumn. You can feel it in the air, a softness creeping in around the edges. The evenings come a little sooner, the mornings feel cooler, and the brambles on the paths up to FossoPLAY, the woodland nursery we have here onsite at Fossoway Stables, are turning black and sweet.

We’re starting to think about and sow for the months ahead: winter lettuces, chard, kale. A quiet act of optimism! And we’ve begun saving seeds ... poppy heads, calendula, nasturtium, ready to scatter again when the time comes.

But mostly, August is for eating, for sharing, for filling baskets and tummies and freezers! For long lunches that spill into the afternoon, barefoot dashes to the herb patch, and one last handful of berries before bed.

It’s a beautiful kind of fullness ... messy, generous but fleeting. We're trying to pay attention to it all, knowing it won’t stay this way for long.

See you in September

~ Fossoway Stables ~