Organic matters
A well prepared vegetable bed with lots of organic matter dug in is all you need to plant out celery, celeriac and outdoor ridge cucumbers early this month. The organic matter helps to retain water as well as supplying nutrients. You may have already started earlier in the season by sowing most of your brassicas, but you can still sow turnips, kohl rabi and calabrese now for an autumn crop. And sowing is what you can do a lot of in June if you want a bumper vegetable harvest.
French beans in rows 45cm (18”apart) at 15-22cm (6” to 9”) spacings. Peas, runner beans, squash and sweetcorn can all be sown now in prepared beds. Sow salad crops, lettuce, radishes, beetroot and pak choi and in between sowing, there’s weeding to be done. Out with the hoe again.
When outdoor tomatoes show the first flower truss, they can be planted out. Watering. Hot and dry weather calls for plenty of watering for thirsty crops such as lettuce, celery, tomatoes and radishes. Feeding.
It’s feeding time for vegetables in full growth with a fertiliser, liquid manure, or if you are growing organically, make it an organic fertiliser. By now you could be picking main crop broad beans and peas when they produce mature pods. Towards the end of the month, sow endive and chicory for winter salads.
- Stop picking asparagus and rhubarb to give the plants time to develop for next year.
- Lift early sown salad and early potatoes
- Continue earthing up potatoes
- Plant out winter greens, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, kale, savoy cabbage
- Continue succession, sowing for a continuous supply of salad crops and root vegetables
- Stake Jerusalem artichokes