July in the garden is a bit of a double edged sword, Mother Nature shows her skills in both the vigorous growth of your vegetable crops and the vigorous growth of weeds. While you marvel at how quickly green beans climb up their supports, you must also marvel at how an area you weeded 5 minutes ago becomes overgrown with weeds again.
At the beginning of July, there are still many important crops to be planted, such as green and green beans, peas, beets, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, cauliflower, chicory, endives, kohlrabi, pumpkin and zucchini. You can also grow a wide range of lettuce varieties throughout the summer, including all types of lettuce, leaf lettuce and lettuce, chives and radish.
If you include seedlings, you will have an even wider range of options, plants such as broccoli, purple broccoli, Brussels sprouts, fall, summer and winter cabbage, cabbage flower, celery, celeriac, fennel, the kale and leeks are ready to use now. so there is still plenty of time and opportunity in the season.
Sow seeds in a trench in dry weather:
As you may know, I prefer to grow almost all crops in modular trays for later planting because I have more control over the early stages of growth. If you sow directly, and with certain plants you will not have a choice (carrots and parsnips), the following tips may be useful.
Compost retains moisture better than soil, so when sowing seeds in a dry climate, it’s a good idea to dig a drill bit 2 inches deep and fill it with potting soil. Your seeds will thank you for easy root growth anyway, but the compost will stay moist longer after watering and give your seeds a better start.
Weed the garden on sunny days:
If, like me, you don’t like spraying herbicide everywhere, you’ll need to keep paths and beds clear with the help of a hoe. If kept on top, hoeing is very easy as immature weeds are very easy to remove. If weeds are allowed to spread their seeds, they will be a headache for many years. The opposite is also true, if you prevent the spread of weed seeds you will find that your garden will be easier to maintain each year.
If you dig in sunny, dry weather, you also don’t need to pick up weeds because they will quickly wilt and die in the soil. Digging the soil surface will also reduce evaporation in dry weather, which is useful for reducing the amount of water needed in the garden.
Rich abundantly:
It is better to water thoroughly in the morning if necessary than small doses during the day because deep watering will be much more beneficial.
Deep watering encourages deeper roots, which will make the plant more resilient if the soil dries out, while shallow watering encourages roots closer to the surface. Shallow roots make the plant more vulnerable because the top layer of soil can lose moisture very quickly in hot, dry climates, leaving the plant wilting. A light watering on a hot day will also have little effect, as much of it will evaporate anyway.
On days with high evaporation, the roots of large-leaved plants may have difficulty maintaining moisture lost through leaf transpiration (the equivalent of plant respiration), leading to wilting. Watering may not help because lack of moisture in the soil is not the problem, it’s just that the plants’ water transport system has reached its limit. You will notice that if the day is cloudy or as night approaches, the leaves will recover as the demand for moisture decreases.
Garlic, leek and onion rouille
If you grow garlic, leeks or onions, rust, a fungal disease, is likely to appear on the leaves now. There’s not much you can do about rust, it’s more common with poor air circulation so wider spaces can help, but I’ve found it’s more or less inevitable in my garden.
Rust in the later stages of growth does not bother me as it does not affect the garlic bulb or onion and therefore will not reduce yield much. Rust spots reduce the efficiency of the leaves, so this is more of a problem at first as bulb growth will be limited. At first you can remove affected leaf potions that will slow it down, but once it sets in, it’s a matter of living with it. It’s worse when it rains, so all you can do is pray for the sun.
Fruit harvest:
The berry harvest begins in July with currants and raspberries, watch out for the birds who love them as much as we do!
Tomatoes also begin to ripen in July with cherry tomatoes and cocktail tomatoes beginning to roll, followed by larger tomatoes such as beefsteak, black tomatoes, and other ribbed tomatoes.