Careful Watering
June can be a very warm month, which, along with the long hours of daylight will ensure growth spurts, and while there can be thundery downpours, ensuring your garden gets just enough water is a delicate balance. The best time to water your garden this month is either early in the morning or in the evening, so you can keep evaporation to a minimum. But be careful not to overwater as this will encourage plant roots to stay close to the surface, whilst you want them to go deep down into the soil. One way of retaining water is mulching, so do this wherever possible. Shredded bark, wood chips and straw are good mulches which nourish the soil as well as locking in moisture.
Soft fruit
The soft fruit in your garden should be cropping nicely. This can include early raspberries, and some varieties of gooseberry. Your delicious strawberries should be fruiting heavily this month, but by fixing any plant runner or new shoots to the ground you will encourage new plants to come for next year. For later fruiting bushes, cover with nets to stop birds eating your emerging fruit.
Vegetable sowing and planting out
There is a lot to do in the vegetable plot this month. Home grown beetroot is delicious and a versatile vegetable in the kitchen where it makes fabulous soup. It is also great in salad and delicious baked or roasted. Sow beetroot seeds in light soil made up of plenty of well-rotted manure or compost. As the seedlings come through, thin out to around 10cm apart. June is also the month to sow your carrots, radish, kale and more lettuces for continuous cropping salad.
Everyone loves Brussel sprouts with their Christmas dinner, so planting out the seedlings this month, spaced out around 50 to 60cm apart will ensure December cropping.
Weeding
Weeding is an almost constant gardening chore this month with weeds growing as fast as your precious plants. Hoeing weeds is an effective way of keeping them at bay without using harmful chemicals, and it is good exercise. A good all-round tool is the traditional Dutch Hoe which has a flat wide blade, but there is also the Oscillating Hoe, the Draw How and for weeding pots and containers, the Hand Hoe.
