The great thing about deciding to grow your own is that you can pretty much start any time of year. We used to think that, once Summer was underway, it was all just about maintenance and then harvest, but there’s plenty you can still plant.
Sowing:
You can still sow seeds for those salads designated as Autumn and Winter salads, and you can sow seeds for turnips for later on in the year and cabbages to harvest in the Spring of 2011.
July is also last call for sowing carrots, French beans and Runner beans. These last two are climbers, and are beautifully ornamental, as well as being space-saving by virtue of being ‘vertical crops’. Think fences, walls, arbours … or make your own ‘pyramid’ out of garden canes.
Planting out:
If you have seedlings for leeks or any of the brassicas (brocolli, cabbages, cauliflower) for eating this Winter, now is the time for transferring them into their final positions.
Maintenance:
Keep your containers / beds evenly watered (preferably using collected rainwater), avoiding letting everything dry out for days and then flooding (this will yield cracked / split produce). Also avoid watering when the sun is hot, as a lot of water will be lost to evaporation and produce can get scorched.
Keep the weeds back, and very importantly, consider ’stopping’ cordon tomatoes and climbing beans.
This means, for tomatoes, once the fourth or fifth truss has developed (branch groing out from the main shoot with fruit clustering on it), go one or two leaves up the main shoot and cut it off there. To ’stop’ your climbing beans, cut off the main shoot when it reaches the top of its cane / trellis etc. ‘Stopping’, like pinching out tomato ’side shoots’, forces the plant to focus its energy on producing robust fruits instead of lots more shoot and foliage.
Keep on stealing (and eating, of course!) leaves from your lettuces to encourage regrowth.
Harvest:
Now is definitely time for harvesting Broad beans, Beetroot, Carrots, Lettuces / Salads, Peas, Peppers, Potatoes, Radish, Spinach, Tomatoes, and early planted Turnips.
BEWARE when you pull up carrots if you’re not pulling them all up in one go – the smell of broken carrot greenery attracts carrot fly which could ruin the rest of your crop.
As always, we’d love to hear how you’re getting on with your growing, especially if you’re a newbie. And if you’re an old hand, do let us know if we’ve missed any top tips for this time of year.
Categories: seasonal eating
