The Vegetable Plot - July

Success with salads 

Who doesn’t like a good salad straight from the garden? Successional sowings of lettuce, endive and summer spinach will keep the salads coming. As tomatoes swell, they will benefit from a layer of well-rotted compost around the plants if you are growing them outdoors. Feed tomatoes when the first trusses set. 

If the weather is dry, most vegetables will demand plenty of water and plants in growth will need feeding. Mixing a concentrated feed or soluble one with the water covers everything. And so, to harvesting. If you were busy in the vegetable garden earlier in the year you will be reaping the benefits of your home-grown lettuces, radishes and early potatoes. 

Along with French beans, carrots, marrows, broccoli and cauliflower. Celery from late sowings can be planted out, as can winter greens and leeks sown in March. If you have a greenhouse, it is good to dampen it down on hot days, but don’t spray the plants or fruit. Those droplets of water make very fine little magnifying glasses.   

• Feed and train cucumbers
• Pick courgettes before they turn into marrows
• Harvest shallots when the leaves turn yellow
• Grow herbs in sunny spaces
• Keep watering