Days in June are very long and should be relatively warm so growth in the garden is exuberant especially in a wet area like Helensburgh.
Tips for June
- Towards the end of the month, first early potatoes may be ready. This should be when the flowers open, or scrap around the top to feel the size of tubers. They should be about the size of an egg.
- Water your potatoes if the weather is dry.
- Continue to hoe regularly around the garden and in between the crops already sown. Growth of weeds is very high at this time of year.
- Tender crops like courgettes, sweet corn and outdoor cucumbers can be planted outside. Sweet corn does better in a block to aid fertilisation.
- Check around the garden for damage from pests and disease and treat accordingly.
- It’s really important to keep up with the planting of leaves for salad. Beetroot, radish and spring onions can be planted regularly to ensure a succession.
- Plant up baskets and tubs now the danger of frost has passed.
- Harvest radish, early lettuce and salad leaves.
- Sow over wintering brassicas such as sprouts, savoy cabbage, kale and purple sprouting. If sown too early they will bolt before the winter. These crops planted out in July will sit in the ground until required over winter.
- Net any brassica plants to keep the cabbage white butterflies from laying their eggs on the leaves. Use a fine mesh net and keep it up off the plants with stakes or hoops.
- In the herbaceous border give late flowering perennials such as Aster and Helenium the Chelsea Chop to improve flowering.
- Crops in the greenhouse will benefit from a weekly high potash feed.
- Thin emerging carrot, lettuce and annual flower seedlings. Successional sow to ensure a continuity of cropping.
- Planting a few French marigolds around the greenhouse doorway helps to keep whitefly away from your tomato plants.
-Slip clean jam jars over ripening strawberries to keep birds from stealing the fruit. This will also aid ripening.
- Keep removing the sideshoots from cordon tomatoes.
- Sow biennials such as foxgloves and sweet william now for flowering next year.
- Tie in sweet peas and climbing roses to supports as they grow.
- Have a check around gooseberry bushes looking for sawfly caterpillars. They start by eating the lower leaves and work their way up the plant. Pick them off by hand or spray with a suitable organic insecticide.
- In a dry spell, water pots and baskets, either first thing or last thing at night to obtain the maximum benefit of the watering.
- Use the least used piece of garden equipment, the bench or seats, to admire your garden or allotment.