Organic Gardening Magazine

Baskets and pots

Hanging baskets can be placed outdoors now. Give them a good soak by immersing in a large bucket and then let them drain. To help with watering through the season, recycle a small plastic bottle. Cut off the base, remove the top and insert the bottle, top side down, into the compost at the side of the basket or other container. When you water, do it into the bottle, and that way water will be taken down to the roots rather than spilling over the sides, as so often happens otherwise.

Daily watering will be necessary for pots and containers on sunny days. The preferable time for this is early morning or later in the evening when the heat of the sun has diminished.

Feed flowering plants to boost the display with a liquid feed high in potash. Any commercial product sold as tomato feed will be suitable, or make your own from comfrey leaves using this easy recipe. Be warned, although an excellent plant food, the end result is rather smelly!

• More on this in the magazine

The vegetable garden

Plant out runner and French beans into areas already prepared with canes to support their growth. Protect young plants if the weather is windy to enable them to get established.

Plant out courgettes, pumpkins and winter squash into soil that has been enriched with compost or manure, as these are hungry plants. Allow at least one metre/yard between plants – they may look small now, but will soon fill the space available! In addition, allow adequate space for trailing squashes to ramble.

The first juicy peas should be cropping well this month.

Green tomato trusses should start to ripen in late June. Watch out for white rot in garlic and onions and lift in early June if this is a problem. (You can still use the inner part if the skin is peeled off and the bulb washed.)

Continue to make sowings of fast-growing plants to spread the harvest. Suitable vegetables include:
• Radish
• Lettuce
• Beetroot
• Spring onions
• Rocket
• Coriander

• More on this in the magazine

The fruit garden

Protect soft fruit from birds using nets and/or bird scarers.

Watch out for the ‘June drop’ on apples and pears. This is a natural process whereby these fruit trees undergo self-induced thinning, enabling the remaining fruit to grow to a good size. You may need to give your trees a helping hand and do some extra thinning if the natural process doesn’t happen. By the end of the month, remove small, diseased and misshapen fruit, leaving one or two fruits per cluster.

Continue to harvest rhubarb until about the end of the month. After that, leave it to grow on to build up reserves for next year. Standard advice is to remove any flowering spikes that may appear, in order not to weaken the plants. I have to confess that I always like to leave one or two plants to flower – they look spectacular when they send up their tall sprays of creamy white flowers. Besides which, on well-established plants like mine which produce reliably year after year, I wouldn’t mind a little less vigour!

• More on this in the magazine

Wildlife pond

Make sure you find the opportunity to sit and simply watch the pond. Find a quiet, sheltered spot and settle down to watch the display. With a bit of luck, on a sunny day, you will see dragonflies and damselflies as well as all sorts of other creatures that will make use of this resource as either a home or a feeding station.

• Much more in the magazine

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