Organic Gardening Magazine

Sowing and planting

If you are sowing carrots, peas, beetroot or potatoes after the beginning of June, revert to ‘early’ varieties, which will produce a good crop in a shorter season.

Don’t forget about successional sowing! It’s easy to stop sowing at this stage and then find that you have no salad crops left to harvest come August.

June marks the beginning of the sowing season for bolt-prone crops like chicories, endives and oriental greens – but if crops do tend to bolt in your garden, it’s safer to wait another month.

Some tender crops can still be sown at the beginning of the month, but time is of the essence; don’t leave it any longer!

Tomatoes, French and runner beans, courgettes and summer squashes can be sown straight into their cropping positions. If slugs are a problem in your garden, however, it’s safer to sow them in pots for transplanting later in the month.

It’s really too late now to sow long-season tender crops like pumpkins, winter squashes, cucumbers, sweet corn, peppers and aubergines – save the seed until April 2008.

All tender crops started in pots in April or May can now be transplanted outdoors, unless you live in an inland or upland area which is at risk from very late frosts. If in doubt, wait another week or so, plant out under a cloche, or make sure you have fleece or sacking on hand – and watch the forecasts!

Pest patrol

Watch out for blackfly congregating on the tips of your broad beans. If there are only a few, squash them between finger and thumb. If there are a lot, pinch out the tips of the plants, blackfly and all, and bin them.

Cabbage white butterflies are on the wing, and laying eggs, from early June. If you can squash groups of eggs now rather than individual caterpillars later you will save yourself a lot of work as well as avoiding most of the damage. Alternatively, cover your brassicas with insect-proof mesh now and you’ll avoid this and most other brassica-related woes.

If you have a pigeon problem, net your brassicas from the outset – or, if you have the space, grow them in the fruit cage.

Watch out for asparagus beetles and grubs and pick them off by hand.

For more advice, see this issue, available to buy online!

Harvesting

Start harvesting early broad beans, new potatoes, peas, baby carrots and beets, and salads as soon as the crops reach an edible size. The harvest will gain pace rapidly, so enjoy those first crops at their tenderest.

Keep cutting asparagus spears until mid-June; then give the plants a liquid feed or a compost mulch and leave the foliage to develop.

Crop care

Wherever you live, don’t forget that a sudden change in temperature will shock plants and check their growth; it may also cause them to bolt later on. Harden them off by putting them outside on fine days and bringing them back under cover at night for a week or so. If your garden is exposed, give new transplants some protection from wind and rain in the early days.

Plant out leeks, winter cabbages and caulis, sprouts, kale and sprouting broccoli. There is still just time to sow late varieties of the latter two.

If you earth up your potatoes, check that the developing tubers are not too near the surface and draw more earth up around them if necessary. Alternatively, mulch the potato patch with a thick layer of grass cuttings, and do the same again later in the month.

Mulch between your crop rows to keep weeds down. Use grass cuttings, leaf-mould or mushroom compost, or create a ‘dust mulch’ by hoeing the surface of the soil to such a fine tilth that it is too dry for weed seeds to germinate in.

Thin earlier sowings of carrots, beetroot and salad crops. Remove every second plant, or two out of every three, and eat the thinnings as ‘baby’ veg or baby leaf salads, leaving the survivors with space to mature.