June is the month to sit back and relax! With the long days providing extra warmth and sunshine, you can watch things grow and even start harvesting some of the vegetables for your table! Read on to see what we are planting in our raised beds, potting up and harvesting in June. This post also includes an update on our Project: Tomatoes in the Conservatory!
Gardening Jobs We Do in June:
- Watering is key if the weather stays dry. A water butt is essential for us to gather the rainwater for the dry periods.
- Potting up aubergine and chillies if needed.
- Keep on top of weeding.
- Thin carrots, beetroot and any other root vegetables to ensure they have enough space to grow.
- Pinch out any side shoots from your tomato plants. You can pot these up to create new tomato plants. Increase the strength of the tomato feed once the first truss is setting fruit.
- Plant out cucumber and butternut squash.
- Sow more courgettes and butternut squash for successive crops in autumn. Sow more spinach and salad leaves for a continuous crop, if you wish.
What to Sow and Plant Out in June?
We have all of our vegetables growing now and will not be sowing anything new. However, we sow more spinach, salad leaves and herbs every couple of weeks to ensure continuous harvest over the summer months. It feels great not having to buy any greens over the summer. What is more, we always preserve herbs and freeze a bunch of spinach for winter!
To Plant Out:
If you haven’t yet, plant out all your seedling outside: your leeks, kale, courgettes (if you started growing them inside).
Butternut Squash is now ready to be planted out too. We started out butternut squash indoors in April and they are now ready to be planted out in our raised beds. Choose a relatively sunny spot for your butternuts, with 6-7 hours of sun daily and keep the plants moist. Once they start forming fruit, start feeding high-potassium liquid fertiliser (we use tomato feed).
Cucumber is ready to be planted out in June, provided the temperatures do not fall below 16 C. Your cucumber should be 10-15cm tall when you plant them out. Choose a spot that is rather sheltered, as cucumber does not like draughts. In the May post, we said we would experiment with sowing cucumber directly in the raised beds and as of yet, we have only seen tiny shoots come through (and they don’t look great 🙁 ). We will give you an update in the July post.
What We Harvest in June:
Salad Leaves: Harvest your salad leaves to use in salads. If you cut the outer leaves only, and leave the middle untouched, the salad leaves will keep on growing, so you don’t need to sow more for a continuous crop. However, if you want to eat salad leaves every day, you may want to sow more as you go!
Radish: we sowed radishes at the end of March and they are now ready to be eaten! Harvest your summer radishes young: as they grow larger they become really touch and woody in texture.
Update on PROJECT: Cherry Tomatoes in the Conservatory (+ Chillies & Aubergine)
Baby Cherry Tomatoes: Tomato plants need support as they grow. Up until the beginning of June, we had the stalk tied to a single cane to keep the plant upright. However, now that the leaves are growing large and weighing down, tomatoes need more support. Seb has built a ‘tripod’ around each plant: more on how we supported our tomatoes in the pots, here.
When your tomatoes start forming blossoms, we need to pollinate them by hand, as there are no bees or sufficient breeze in our conservatory. simply tap each flower gently but rapidly to promote the shedding of the pollen 2-3 times a week.
Jalapeno Chillies: When your plants are 20-25cm tall, provide the plants with some support – we tie the stalks to a small cane to keep them upright. It’s important to keep the chilli plants well-watered. Start feeding with a week tomato feed once a week once the chillies start forming.
Aubergine: We have Bonica Aubergine growing in our conservatory. We sowed Aubergine in April in cell trays and potted them up in 9cm pots in early May. In June, your plants should be large enough to transfer them in their final pots (30cm wide). Make sure they are kept in a warm spot. Outs are now in the conservatory full time, as the temperature does not drop below 17 C.
You can find our other month-by-month raised bed gardening guides below:
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