Spilling the beans
It’s easy to think of July as month when you don’t do too much in the vegetable garden. Depending of course on the size of your plot you can still be sowing summer and winter salad crops, spring cabbage and root crops. Parsley can be sown for a winter supply. It may take a bit of time to germinate – up to six weeks for seedlings to appear, so be patient.Other herbs will be ready to harvest and dried or frozen. Beetroot, carrots, turnip and kohlrabi should be ready as well and towards the end of the month fresh runner beans, French beans and some varieties of broad bean. Tomatoes will be hungry now and need feeding with a tomato fertiliser. If you happen to have a potted citrus tree you can feed that with the same. Keeping everything watered is essential. Water tomatoes steadily because uneven watering leads to the fruit splitting.
All the beans and salad crops need plenty of water. Winter celery can be earthed up. It’s handy to put paper collars around the plants to keep soil out of the hearts. Shallots can be lifted when the leaves turn yellow and left in the sun to dry.
- Pick globe artichokes
- Harvest autumn planted onions
- Sow lettuces, spinach beet, Swiss chard
- Plant out leeks sown in mid-March
- Nip out side shoots on tomatoes
- Mulch beans and salad crops
- Protect potatoes from blight
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