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The Garden Notebook....
June into July
Garden Notes:
Harvest Now:
Last Winter-Planted Garlic and Storage Onions (White, Red and Yellow)
Kale, Spinach... and remaining greens that are not bolted and bitter
First Crops of Summer Beans (pole and bush green beans, romano beans, lima beans)
Last Raspberries
and first Blueberries and Blackberries
Tiny new Potatoes, perfect
for first potato salads for July 4th
The First Crops of fresh TOMATOES and Peppers!
ALLLLL those
summer squash and cucumbers......
Sweet Corn and Melons.....
And everything else in the garden!
Plant Now:
Second plantings of beans
Continuous plantings of fresh summer herbs: Basil,
Dill, Cilantro
Replacement plantings of cucumbers and squash if you have borer
problems
Seed starts of Collards, broccoli, cabbage, kale for September plantings.
Order Now:
Now is the time to order garlic,
onion and shallot sets for September planting.
Order or organize your seeds of fall/winter lettuce,
greens, green onions, carrots and root veggies.
Do Now:
◊ Keep up with garden watering. The single best predictor of success
in growing tomatoes, peppers and melons is consistent watering and good mulch to keep the roots routinely moist.
◊ Keep up with weeding. It's easier to weed when the plants are young.
Weeds significantly reduce crop yields, by as much as 50%.
◊ Prune. What?! Yes! Prune
suckers out of your tomatoes, top the terminal buds from indeterminate growers and get rid of low hanging leaves and non-producing
branches that touch the soil - that's the main way viral diseases are transferred to the plants. Deadhead your post-bloom
flowers, take blooms off herb plants and generally keep the garden neat.
◊ Clean your tools.
It's true. As you work, dirt and disease build up on your garden tools. Wash them off, clean with alcohol
and then oil. Sharpen the edges of pruners, trowels and shovels and weeders. You'll be amazed
and how effortless it makes garden work to have clean, sharp tools!
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Garden Planning
Gardeners develop a schedule for their plantings, often based on a combination of what grows best
in any given month or weather and what they like to eat. Since most vegetables are annuals, the yearly planting cycle
becomes the base for all garden planning. Especially for gardeners who only have - or who only choose to use - a small
area for vegetable gardening, planning ahead is essential. The goal is to have vegetables fresh from the garden as close to
year around as possible. And here it is possible!
Some varieties are best sown directly into the ground.
Others are best started ahead of time, in the house or greenhouse - even purchased already started from a garden center or
grower. If you have a planting schedule that works well for you, please share it and we'll compile them into
a generalized master planner for our area. On of the most useful planting & harvesting schedules I've seen -
and one that works surprisingly well for our area, even though it's out of Kansas State University - is the one in this
guide:
KSU Gardening Guide
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