Your vegetable garden in June

Vegetable seedling quiz

Can you recognise vegetable seedlings?
The pictures below show seedlings of the following vegetables:
Carrot, beetroot, lettuce, leek or onion, broad bean, runner bean, pea, cabbage.

Hold your mouse over the pictures to check your answers.

Things to do in the vegetable garden this month

• 
  Buckwheat
  
  
  Fenugreek
  Encourage runner beans to climb up their supports. They twist the other way from most other beans, climbing clockwise when viewed from above.
• Hoe regularly to keep weeds under control. Keep the blade sharp and hoe when seedlings are small and in dry weather for best effect.
• Brassicas crops such as cabbages, sprouts, calabrese etc are favourites with many pests, from aphids and whitefly to pigeons and rabbits. Check your plants and take appropriate measures if necessary. (see the Pest and disease watch section below).
• Sow up spare ground with buckwheat, phacelia, mustard or fenugreek green manures. They’ll help to improve the ground, suppress weeds, make a good ground cover for beetles and other predators and, if you let them flower, buckwheat and phacelia are very attractive to bees – and people. Green manure seeds are available from The Organic Gardening Catalogue
• Fenugreek, also known as methi, is an edible green crop as well as a green manure. Find out more from the Sowing New Seeds factsheet.

• Tomato side shoots can easily be rooted to make more plants. Cut them off when 10cm long, put into a pot of moist, well drained multipurpose compost. Leave in a cool, shady place for 10-14 days and they should have rooted.

• Don’t remove side shoots from bush type tomatoes. Just let them grow.	Pinch out, or cut off, side shoots from tall growing 'cordon' plants.

  Don’t panic about your tomatoes. At this time of year, tomato leaves may yellow, curl up, go purple underneath, develop brown patches or other oddities. The cause is more likely to be environmental than a major disease or deficiency. Check our Tomato Troubles factsheet before jumping to conclusions.
• Keep cutting  indoor cucumbers on a regular basis to encourage the plants to set more fruit.
• Harvest the first beetroot, spring onions, radishes and salad leaves. Don't forget to sow some more for a later crop.
• Some of your early potatoes may be ready to dig this month. Traditionally early potatoes are said to be ready to harvest when the plants are in flower – but not all varieties produce flowers!  Dig up a trial plant 10 weeks or more after planting to see how they are doing. Then dig them fresh, as you want to eat them. There's nothing better.
• Harvest asparagus until the end of the month, then allow the shoots to grow to feed the roots for next year’s crop. Mulch with well rotted manure or compost.early summer.
• 
  Potato flower
  Continue to plant out courgettes, beans, pumpkins and other tender crops. You can also sow them directly for a later crop. A good start makes all the difference to how they will perform eventually. Pointers for planting gives some useful planting hints and tips.

Sowing and Planting

• 
  Sow carrots in June to
  avoid the first generation
  of the carrot rootfly
  
  
  Amaranth can be grown
  for its leaves or seed.
  Click here to find out more.

• Continue to sow outdoors

  M	Amaranth	for leaf production. Broadcast sow until end of July.
  M	Beetroot	early and maincrop; until July
  M	Chinese cabbage	until end of August. Do not transplant; either sow direct or in modules. Some varieties, such as Tatsoi, should not be sown before the end of June, or they will quickly go to seed. Others, such as Joi Choi, can be safely sown in June.
  M	Calabrese	until end of July
  	Carrots, early varieties	until end of July Try some in a container if you've run out of space in the garden. Choose a short rooted variety such as Chantenay or Parabel.
  	Carrots, maincrop varieties	until end of June. Sowings made in June should miss the main flight of the carrot rootfly. See our organic factsheet on carrot root fly. (Online access to factsheets requires members' password. Find out about becoming a Garden Organic member here.)
  M	Cauliflower	mini - until early July
  	Chicory, witloof	until end of July, to grow for forcing to produce 'chicons' in the early spring.
  	Chicory, red and sugar loaf	until end of August
  M	Courgettes, marrows and pumpkins	choose courgettes and marrow varieties that are resistant to cucumber mosaic virus (Defender F1 and Badger Cross F1) where this is a regular problem. Pumpkins tend not to suffer from this disease. Minimum soil temperature 13C.
  M	Fenugreek	For eating fresh leaves. You can find advice on growing and eating fenugreek here.
  M	Florence fennel	For sowing before mid June, choose a cultivar listed as suitable for early sowing; some cultivars are very sensitive to day length and will bolt if sown before the longest day (21st June). Sow until early August
  M	French beans	until end of June, or July for a late crop of dwarf beans under cloches or in a poly tunnel
  	Runner beans	until end of June
  M	Kohl rabi	until August
  M	Lettuce	looseleaf, Cos, crisphead and butterhead. Lettuce, apart from crisphead varieties, germinates poorly when the soil temperature goes above 25C. This can happen in summer. To avoid this risk in hot weather, sow into well watered soil between 2 and 4pm, then cover with some form of shading material for the first 24hrs.
  	Salad onions	to mid June; sow winter varieties from August onwards.
  M	Pak choi	until end of August
  	Peas	maincrop, mangetout and sugarsnap can be sown now, but they do not thrive in hot dry soils. Try a slightly shady spot, and water regularly.
  M	Pumpkin	until mid June
  	Radish, mooli	until end of August
  M	Sweet corn	minimum soil temperature 10C; sow until early June
  M	Swede	until early June
  	Turnip	early varieties until end August; maincrop varieties until August.

  M = may also be raised in modules for transplanting

• Sow in a seedbed to transplant

  M

  Kale (borecole)

  until early August

  M = may also be raised in modules for transplanting

• Planting outdoors

  
  Courgettes
  
  
  Bean plants raised in
  newspaper pots, ready
  to plant out.
  • Cabbage, sprouting broccoli, sprouts and other related crops
  • Celery
  • Celeriac
  • Courgettes
  • Cucumbers, ridge
  • Runner beans
  • French beans
  • Pumpkins
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweet corn

  Always 'harden off' young plants that have been raised indoors, in a greenhouse, or under a cloche, before planting them out. This means gradually getting them used to the outdoors, so they develop a thicker 'skin', before they are planted out. This will help them withstand the cooler, drier, windier conditions outside, and they will grow away quickly.

  To harden off plants, put them outside in a sheltered, not too sunny spot during the day for a few days, then leave them out overnight for a couple more. If the weather is very wet or windy, try and rig a temporary roof for protection.

  Don't plant out frost tender crops until after the last frost. As this is not always easy to predict, have some temporary protection (cloches, fleece, sheets of newspaper) available to cover plants over night if frost is likely.

  More pointers for planting here

Pest and disease watch

Potato and tomato blight

Tomato blight on green
tomatoes

This disease can affect both potatoes and tomatoes. New strains of the disease mean that it can appear earlier in the season than in the past. Follow this link for an update on blight.

Blight thrives in warm, wet conditions. Register with the ‘Blightwatch’ service to be warned, via email, if blight it likely to appear in your area. Sign up to this free service at http://www.potato.org.uk/fab_blightwatch/signup.html

Useful Garden Organic factsheets : DC 17 Potato Blight; DC20 Tomato Blight

Brassica pests

Keep a close eye on your cabbage family crops to try and nip pest problems in the bud. If you are using fleece or fine mesh to protect the plants, make sure that pests haven’t got there before you!

Large cabbage white butterfly caterpillars live in colonies on cabbage family plants, and also on nasturtiums. If you have wasps visiting your garden they may carry all the caterpillars off to feed their young.


Mealy cabbage aphid

Useful Garden Organic factsheets:
PC4 Mealy cabbage aphids
PC12 Cabbage whitefly

Leek moth and leaf miner

Leek moth and allium leaf mining fly are becoming a real pest of leeks and onions. Find out more HERE.

Member JO Walter from Bristol has this advice for dealing with leek moth:
‘When you see the telltale signs of the leek moth - grainy green or white deposits near the base and leaves drooping or even dried out, cut them down to the ground.
If you use a pair of very sharp secateurs you can see whether you have cut low enough; if not you will see a small hole or even a cut through caterpillar. Cut even lower - sometimes below ground level - until the leek is whole and clean.
To prevent the caterpillars hatching, I soak all the cut off foliage in a bucket for a week or two and then put the smelly mess on the compost.
I have done this many years; it is amazing to go back in a few days and find the leeks pushed through and nearly back to their original size!
It is time consuming but I manage 150 leeks in an hour and I think it's worth the effort.’

And from Jack Coaker in Torquay, who has been battling against leek moth for 18 years: ‘When you see the symptomatic little white lines on the leek leaves, crumble soil over the leek plants, so it fills in the gaps between the leek leaves. When the larva meets the soil as it burrows into the plant, it moves back up the plant. Birds will then make a meal of them.’

Beetroot and chard leaf miner

Beet leaf miner damage on
beetroot leaves.

This tiny fly lays its eggs on the underside of the leaves of beetroot and chard. The larvae hatch out and burrow into the leaves where they feed for a few weeks, creating brown blotches. You can see the larvae in the leaf before they drop back into the soil to pupate. There are 2 or 3 generations a year.

Beetroot will usually crop well even with leaf miner damage, but it can ruin a chard crop. Try and pick chard regularly so the pest doesn’t have time to develop to adult hood. Dig the soil over in the winter to expose the pupa to birds.

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