Five things to plant in August for a garden that peaks in January
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
We're deep in planning for January 2027, which means we're spending a lot of time in other people's gardens asking a lot of questions. Some of what comes back is too good to sit on until the gates open.
So we'll share a bit of it here as each season turns. First up, August, and what to be doing right now if you want a summer garden worth walking through. Kristy Plumridge grows at Green Hills Farm in Yarragon South and sits on the Creative Harvest committee. Over to her.
By Kristy Plumridge from Green Hills Farm
August is a quiet month in the garden, and that's exactly why it matters. What you put in the ground over the next few weeks is what you'll be carrying inside by the armful in January.
It doesn't take much. At Green Hills Farm we're already in the greenhouse getting seed containers ready, and most of what follows will fit on a windowsill, in a pot, or along a fence line. Here are five things to start now, and what we've learned about each of them.
1. Tomatoes, chillies and basil, started from seed
This is the big one. Sow now and you'll be planting seedlings out after Melbourne Cup weekend, once the frosts have finished, and picking through summer.
We're prepping our seed containers in the greenhouse this month. If you don't have a greenhouse, a windowsill does the job. Keep it out of direct sunlight, keep the water up, and pot each seedling on into something larger as it grows. Seedlings that stay too long in a small pot never quite catch up.
GHF TIP: Grow what your family actually eats. It sounds obvious, and it's still the thing most of us get wrong. Nobody at our place is much chop with hot chilli, so we don't bother with a row of them. We grow jalapeños, because taco night is a fixture and they get used.
We also seed save every year from the best of our tomato crop, and we always let a few basil plants go to seed so we have our own supply on hand. Chillies are one of the easiest things going to save seed from. Once you find a tomato or a chilli your household loves, saving its seed is simple, and it means you never have to hunt for that variety again.
2. Seed potatoes
Potatoes are close to the easiest crop in the garden. You put them in the ground, you cover them with soil, and a few months later you dig up dinner.
At Green Hills Farm we grow ours in 480mm black plastic containers to keep things contained, usually three or four on the go at once, each one marked at the front with what's in it. Plant into well mulched soil and cover with a thick layer of straw. That straw is doing more work than it looks like it's doing, holding moisture in as the months warm up. Potato growing bags work just as well if you'd rather buy something purpose made.
GHF TIP: Varieties are the whole point of growing your own. Ours are Gippy Golds, which come from Thorpdale just up the road and are still the best roasting potato I've found. Then Kipflers, and always something fun, like a Sapphire with its purple flesh or a red skinned variety. You won't find most of these in a supermarket, which is exactly the reason to grow them.
3. Peas and snow peas
Peas go straight into the ground, no seed raising, no transplanting. August is a good time to sow them.
The only thing they really need is something to climb. Peas will scramble up almost anything, so use your imagination. We use old reinforcing mesh at Green Hills Farm, and in one part of the garden, an old bed frame that's been there so long it's part of the furniture. At home, a simple wooden trellis pushed into the bed works fine and barely takes any space.
GHF TIP: Snow peas rarely make it as far as the kitchen at our place. Plant more than you think you need.
4. Salad greens and Asian greens
Salad greens are the constant at Green Hills Farm. There's always a batch coming on, all year round.
They're slower through winter, but the trick isn't speed, it's rhythm. Plant five or six seedlings every three to four weeks and you'll have enough to keep a kitchen going without ever planting a lot at once. When one batch starts to tire, the next is ready. It's a small system and it takes about ten minutes each time.
GHF TIP: Start that rotation now and it carries you right through summer, when salad is the thing you actually want to eat.
5. Strawberry runners and bare rooted berry canes
Berries are some of the most productive plants we grow. Our strawberry patch runs 20 metres and gives us more than 100 kilograms a year, and our raspberries are Chilcotins, which fruit twice, once in early summer and again with a beautiful autumn flush.
You don't need 20 metres. Strawberry runners do well in hanging baskets and pots, and a few canes along a fence will feed a household.
If you want that second flush, the variety matters more than anything else you'll do. Chilcotin is a floricane, which means it crops in summer and then comes again, smaller, in autumn. Chilliwack, Nootka and Willamette do the same. Autumn Bliss is the one a lot of people reach for and it's an excellent cane, but it's a primocane, so you get one heavy autumn crop instead of two flushes. Worth knowing before you buy, because you can't change your mind about it in March.
GHF TIP: Go to a good nursery for these and buy them in person rather than by mail order. You get to see the roots before you commit, and they go in the ground fresh instead of after a week in a postal satchel. Rowe's Nursery on Landsborough Street in Warragul stocks runners and canes and grows most of its own stock, which is worth knowing if you'd rather buy plants raised in our conditions. Bulleen Art and Garden in Melbourne is the other one I go to. Whichever you choose, get your runners and canes in the ground within a couple of weeks of bringing them home.
And then it's January
Here's the part nobody tells you about gardening. Some of this will work brilliantly and some of it won't, and that happens to every gardener, no matter how long they've been at it. We've had tomato years at Green Hills Farm that were a disaster and zucchini years where we begged people to take them away.
That's the useful bit, actually. Come January you'll know what thrived and what sulked, and you'll have a list of questions.
Which is when the gates open.
Creative Harvest returns on Saturday 23 and Sunday 24 January 2027, our tenth year, with private food gardens opening across West Gippsland. Every one of them is a working garden with a real gardener in it, and the number one thing visitors tell us they come for isn't the gardens themselves. It's the conversation. Asking the person who grew it how they got that crop out of that soil.
So bring your questions. If your tomatoes went nowhere, someone will have an answer. If you had a glut of something and didn't know what to do with it, someone will have three ideas. Gardeners love giving this stuff away.
Plant something this month. We'll see you in January.
About Green Hills Farm
The garden at Green Hills Farm has opened for Creative Harvest across multiple years. Its organic garden and orchard supply local kitchens and food businesses with fruit, vegetables, garlic, herbs and edible flowers. It also hosts an accommodation holiday home called The Ridge House if you are looking for a Gippsland Getaway. Drop Kristy and email at hello@theridgehouse.com.au
Kristy is the owner and farmer at Green Hills Farm and is on the Creative Harvest committee.
