JOA GROWER offers advice for gardeners as the days are long and the so are the lists of things to be done.
WELL here we go again its summer already, where does the time go? I hope you’re all spending lots of time on your vegetable plots. It doesn’t seem to matter how many hours you do, you could always do with a few more! Early June is a good time to direct sow some of the more tender crops, and by direct sowing I mean straight into the ground rather than into pots or trays. Prepare your soil by raking it until the soil is loose and crumbly. Courgettes, squashes, outdoor cucumbers, peas, French beans, and runner beans can all be sown in this way. Carry on earthing up maincrop potatoes. If you’ve been plagued with the dreaded blight, remove all the affected leaves and bin them (but not in your compost bin). You will still get a crop, it just might not be quite as big as you were hoping for. By removing this foliage you may stop it reaching your tomato crop, which really couldn’t survive being stripped of it’s leaves. While on the subject of tomatoes don’t forget to keep on tying them to their stakes or supports. You don’t want any accidents at this stage of their growth. Continue to keep a look out for side shoots that will need removing. These are the small shoots which grow immediately above a leaf not to be confused with the flower trusses which appear half way between one leaf and another. Now is also the right time to increase feeding your tomatoes and also most other plants. Always water first before adding a liquid feed otherwise on very dry containers or pots it will just run straight through, and organic fertilizers are usually expensive or have taken you long time to prepare from nettles or comfrey. (By the way, we now sell our very own concentrated ‘Comfrey Liquid’ – no need for big barrels of smelly leaves soaking for weeks on end.) Isn’t it nice to see all the butterflies about, all except the white ones that is! Better known as cabbage whites. Be vigilant and remove the small bright yellow eggs or caterpillars which appear on the underside of brassicas leaves as soon as possible, and protect your crops with a fine meshed netting. Every year on our stall at Totnes market we attract a lot of cabbage whites, fluttering around our vegetable plant packs, the most we ever had was about 30. I think a few people may have gone home with some unwanted guests that week. Towards the end of July you may want to start thinking about your winter vegetable crops such as leeks, winter cabbages, kales and of course my favourite purple sprouting broccoli, plan where these will go as and when you harvest and clear beds. Give the brassicas plenty of distance between plants, approximately 30- 45cm and then you can interplant with things such as lettuces or kohl rabi which is one of the faster growing brassicas. These will then be picked long before the kales and broccoli are ready.
Would you like some salad with that?
HARVEST time is here (well for the early crops anyway), so start digging your
early potatoes as and when you need them. Just like digging up treasure, kids
love helping with this job. Don’t forget early spuds won’t store, so eat lots of
new potatoes and salads that will use up all the tasty produce you should have
by now. There will be plenty of lettuces, chard leaves and spring onions to pick.
And don’t forget young, freshly picked broad beans are lovely raw in a salad.
Peas and mangetouts are just like flowering sweet peas the more you pick the
more they will produce and what a nice snack they make when your pottering
on the plot. My daughter’s favourite!
Garlic will be starting to die back towards the end of July so try and harvest
before the tops disappear completely, otherwise you might never find them until
they start popping up next Spring when its too late.
Right that’s me done for now, things to do, I’m off to pick