Long days and lots of lovely fresh, tasty, healthy, eco-friendly, plastic-free, homegrown food to harvest and enjoy! Lots of pleasurable things to do in the food garden in July!!
Here is a list of things to do in the food garden in July:
- Keep on top of your weeds (mulch, hoe, hand fork, strim, or sickle). The long warm days will bring up lots of weeds and it’s best to catch them quick before they have time to set seed.
- Feed your compost heap with all appropriate waste materials. Aim for an equal mix of nitrogen-rich green materials and carbon-rich brown materials. Turn every one or two weeks.
- Make sure you water your plants if they need it. Newly planted crops especially need to be well watered until they establish and all crops in pots will require more watering than those in the ground. The best times of the day to water are in the early morning or evening. Be generous with watering of leafy crops such as rocket, lettuce, chard, and spinach as they are prone to bolting (setting seed too early) if they get too dry. Raspberries also like lots of water if the weather is dry.
- Earth-up potatoes or mulch with grass clippings to stop any potatoes nearer the surface going green.
- Sow lettuce, carrots, swede, turnips, radishes, French beans, spinach, kale, chard, cabbage, beetroot, kohlrabi, mizuna, pak choi, rocket, cauliflower, runner beans, dwarf beans, spring onions, cress, scallions, chives, basil, lemon grass, parsley, dill, mustard, chervil, coriander, oregano, parsley, mint, thyme.
- Make succession sowings (different batches of the same crop sown every few weeks to ensure you have crops throughout the season and not just in one glut) of fast growing crops such as carrots, lettuce, French beans, peas, spinach, and rocket.
- Net fruit crops to protect from birds.
- Prune stone fruit trees, such as plums and cherries, if they need it.
- Prune blackcurrant bushes that have been harvested. Blackcurrants bear the most fruit on newer branches, so identify the oldest, darker branches and cut away, low to the ground. Leave the strongest, newest wood as these will bear fruit next year.
- Tie in sunflowers, sweetpeas, etc.
- Pinch-out the top of tomato plants to direct more of the plant’s energy into producing flowers/fruits. Remove any leaves growing below the lowest ripening fruit trusses to improve air circulation and prevent diseases. Leave 5 or 6 trusses of fruit per plant.
- Watch out for slugs, snails, aphids (greenfly and blackfly), carrot fly, sawfly, apple scab, and potato blight. Tackle blackfly on beans by pinching off any affected growing tips and encourage ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings which eat aphids like blackfly and greenfly. Check for cabbage white butterfly eggs under brassica (cabbage, kale, broccoli, cauliflower, etc) leaves. Check for sawfly larvae on gooseberries and red and white currants. Spray off with water or pick off by hand if you find any and encourage predators and other natural enemies of sawfly such as birds and beetles.
- Make liquid feeds to add nutrients to your plants and soil. You can use a variety of different materials to make feeds: compost, comfrey, seaweed, grass clippings, nettles.
- Harvest (depending on location) lettuce, mustard, sorrel, chard, spinach, rocket, watercress, beetroot, broccoli, kale, radish, artichokes, kohlrabi, cauliflower, leeks, courgette, cabbage, peas, first and second early potatoes, broad beans, runner beans, green beans, turnips, squash, onions, garlic, cucumber, tomatoes, peppers, wild strawberry, strawberries, raspberries, currants, gooseberries, basil, dill, chives, parsley, chervil, oregano, tarragon, rosemary, thyme, sage.