August is a reliably unpredictable month. It’s often wet, often cold, and often frustratingly changeable. But this summer is different. In fact, I can’t remember an August quite like this one. The heat and the arid days leave their mark.
The Gardening Year
28 / 08 / 2025
Gill's Summer 2025 Journal & A Delicious Chutney Recipe
When it’s sunny, life feels much easier. Our dog comes back from his morning walk dry and clean, rather than wet and muddy. Coats stay in the cupboard, wellies in the boiler room. The front doors are open all day, the washing line does what it’s meant to do. A gentle breeze cools the midday air, and life seems to pass with less effort, less worry. There’s more time when it’s sunny. Things grow—at least, they do until it gets too dry.
That said, August is a reliably unpredictable month. It’s often wet, often cold, and often frustratingly changeable. But this summer is different. In fact, I can’t remember an August quite like this one. The heat and the arid days leave their mark.
When I look around, I see the signs—both obvious and subtle. The parched grass, the butterflies, the dust kicked up. The bowed oak table, the bronzed cardoon heads, the empty pond, the creeping bramble. The early blackberries and elder. The thirsty trees, the splayed pinecones, the grapes by the window, the basking adder, the bolted mint. Each part of nature reveals in its own way: it’s unusually dry.
The clearest telltales appear in the kitchen garden, where sun and water are the key players in the contest of growing your own food. Many of my summer crops have flourished in the scorched earth. The sage has umbrellaed. The kale hasn’t hesitated, nor the green beans or charlotte potatoes. The tomatoes in the greenhouse have thrived in these conditions, though their close counterparts, the cucumbers, have not. Neither have the young squash plants, the runner beans, or my late radish rows. Carrots look stunted above ground but are surprisingly good below. The beetroot tops are crisp and dull, but the roots themselves are bright, sweet, and earthy.
It’s hard to predict what will thrive and what will struggle. Several years ago, we planted an espalier plum tree just behind the greenhouse, against the eastern side of the deer fence. This year, for the first time, it has given us a crop—and what a crop it is. These are some of the best plums I’ve ever eaten, picked and eaten warm from the tree at a ripeness as close to perfect as I can imagine. They are a true gift of late summer: unblemished, unnibbled, fly-free, waspless, and blushed in both green and red. Alice is making Christmas mincemeat with them, along with sloe gin, walnuts, and dried fruit.
Other plants have also clearly relished the daily sun. The fig tree by the studio is looking promising, though I doubt we’ll pick any this year—the tree isn’t quite mature enough. Still, the signs suggest these figs will be very good in time. The grapevine that creeps across the south facing stonework of the house is heavy with clusters of fruit, now shifting from lime-green youth to deep claret hues. Soon we’ll harvest them in staggered bowlfuls. They are dessert grapes perfect for cheese and cold meats, or roasting with fish or chicken.
Inevitably, the hazy summer days are coming to an end. Sooner or later, autumn will set in, bringing rain and familiar temperatures. But that doesn’t mean we have to let go of the season completely. Some of it can be preserved to enjoy later in the depths of winter.
Recently we invested in a dehydrator, and over the coming months I plan to fill jars with dried fruits, vegetables, leaves, berries, and mushrooms. We’ll dry pears, apples, and rhubarb. I’d like to preserve the last of the tomatoes with garlic, thyme, and olive oil. There’s bean chutney to make, blackberries to freeze, apples to juice, and quince cheese to prepare. Late summer is a wonderful time to be in the kitchen, and this way we can carry a little of summer’s warmth right through into winter. With that in mind, here’s one of my favourite recipes for chutney, perfect as an accompaniment to thick slices of smoked ham, mature cheddar cheese, pork pies, or served next to spicy curries and stews.
Bean and apple chutney recipe
I’ve always been fascinated by any form of preserving. To take something living and prevent it from dying – stopping time, rot. I’m in love with its ancientness and importance. No other form of cookery embodies the symbiotic relationship we once had with nature and the seasons. Preserving was a beautifully resourceful craft, born out of necessity, out of humble respect and out of a temporal understanding of our environment and what it took to survive within it. I don’t make this chutney to survive (things have changed), but I can take part of the summer deep into winter, in a glass jar.
500g (1lb 2oz) runner beans, stringy veins removed and cut into 1cm (1⁄2in) pieces
1kg (2lb 4oz) bramley apples, peeled, quartered, cored and roughly chopped
500g (1lb 2oz) ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 onions, roughly chopped
150g (51⁄2oz) sultanas
2 tsp coriander seeds, bashed
1 tsp caraway seeds, bashed
2 cardamom pods, bashed
350g (12oz) light brown soft sugar
500ml (17fl oz) cider vinegar
1 tsp fine sea salt
Put all the ingredients into a preserving pan over a medium heat. Slowly bring the mixture up to the simmer, stirring regularly until the sugar has dissolved.
Reduce the heat and simmer the chutney for 11⁄2–2 hours, stirring every so often to stop it sticking to the base of the pan. The chutney will thicken as it cooks; you’ll know it’s ready when you can draw a wooden spoon across the bottom of the pan and it leaves a path behind it for a few seconds before the chutney collapses back down. Be extra-careful it doesn’t catch and burn at this point. Remove the chutney from the heat and spoon very carefully into sterilised jars. Seal with the lids and allow to cool.
Store in a cool, dark cupboard for several months before eating – although you can eat it earlier, if you like.
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