by Rose Harvie
So, welcome all gardeners!
Here we are in the middle of June, and time to assess your gardening progress – whether you just have a few pots, a large allotment or garden, or help others in a community garden.
By now, most of your vegetables should be sown or planted; but it is still not too late for some – salad crops, winter brassicas, leeks, and any left-over main crop potatoes.
Keep ‘earthing up’ your spuds, and when they start to flower, investigate carefully to see how the crop is growing.
Early potatoes should be ready around July.
Salad crops like lettuce and radishes can be sown in odd corners and spaces, and will keep giving a crop until autumn.
Outdoor tomatoes, courgettes, and sweetcorn, should all be sown in individual pots in a greenhouse, or propagator, for planting out later.
Now is the time to sow late brassicas – winter cabbages, broccoli, kale, and cauliflowers.
These seeds should be sown indoors, either a greenhouse, or sunny windowsill.
Sow thinly, in a small seed tray or margarine tub filled with multi-purpose compost.
Prick them out into larger trays or multi-cell seed trays when they are about an inch tall, to allow them to grow on.
When they are about 10 cm tall, and look healthy and strong, plant them outside in rows, at least 2/300 cm apart.
You should protect your brassicas from several ‘enemies’.
Slugs will eat them, so either use brassica mats or just use squares of thick towelling or thin carpet.
Cut a cross in the middle and carefully place around each brassica plant.
Pigeons can also be a problem – I use large plastic drink bottles, cut in half, and placed over each brassica plant.
Leeks can be sown the same way as brassicas.
When they are about 10/20 cms tall, use a wooden ‘dibber’ to make a row of holes about the same depth and drop a leek in each one.
Don’t forget to fill the hole with water!
Strawberries, raspberries, and redcurrants all need protecting from birds by covering with netting.
Be careful how you fix the netting so birds don’t become trapped underneath.
Strawberries need hay or straw carefully put round them, to protect from slugs.
If you have grown courgettes or outdoor cucumbers, plant them about 1 metre apart, again protecting them from slugs and birds.
Sweetcorn does not seem to suffer from pests but it should be planted in a square, NOT a row, as it is wind pollinated.
Your composting system should now be very active.
Ask neighbours to keepgrass cuttings; collect horse manure and seaweed.
Comfrey should be ready for cutting and adding to the heap, only add kitchen waste if you have no rat problems!
Weeds, apart from ‘mare’s tail, docks, and ground elder, can be added.
When the first NZ box is filled, turn the contents into the next box, and continue until the end of season.
Happy gardening everyone!
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