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Each month, receive tips on the top jobs needed in your garden as well as a wealth of information on a range of gardening topics. From sowing seeds to picking fruit, each month get access to information on the care and maintenance of your flowerbeds, vegetable plot and lawn. As with your own gardening diary, the journal is split into separate sections, each covering a different area of garden care.

Friday 1 July 2022

The Vegetable Plot - July

Straight and marrow 

It’s time to pick your courgettes before they turn into marrows. Unless, of course, you want to grow marrows. A marrow is a cucurbit, from the same family as cucumber, melon, squash and courgette. So your courgette is a marrow picked early. But you already knew that. 

There’s nothing like fresh straight from the garden and successional sowings of lettuce, summer spinach and endive will let you cut and come again for a continuous supply of salad. If you were hard at it sowing earlier in the year, this month you will be harvesting French beans, broad beans, globe artichokes, carrots, broccoli, potatoes, radishes and possibly: marrows. Tomato plants growing outside will benefit from a layer of well-rotted compost around them and you will be feeding and training cucumbers. 

Plant out winter greens and March sown leeks. Plant celery from late sowings. Keep watering. If you’re damping down the greenhouse on hot days, don’t spray the plants or fruit. The water droplets act as excellent magnifying glasses in sunlight. 

  • Harvest shallots when the leaves turn yellow
  • Dig up garlic when the tips turn colour
  • Grow herbs in sunny places
  • Feed tomatoes when the first sets appear
  • Feed plants in growth and thin seedlings 
  • Continue successional sowings






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