In this weeks episode John looks at what to sow in the month of June. These episodes prove very popular as a mean of keeping people on track with their sowing to ensure ongoing harvests into the autumn and beyond.
How do you keep your vegetable garden thriving all summer long? This week on Master My Garden Podcast, we promise to transform your June gardening routine with essential tasks and expert strategies. As May's intense sowing period winds down, we'll guide you through managing space as early crops are harvested, and we'll highlight key crops such as spring onions, spinach, lettuces, and radishes that should continue to be sown. It's also your final opportunity to sow parsnips and another round of carrots. For those looking towards autumn and winter, we'll explore the best varieties to plant now, including Savoy cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, and Calabrese, and we’ll discuss whether direct sowing or module trays are more effective for your garden.
But that’s not all! Our comprehensive summer vegetable planting guide will provide the optimal sowing times for summer favorites like radishes, turnips, spinach, and salad leaves. We'll share best practices for herbs such as coriander, basil, parsley, and dill, and highlight the advantages of using polytunnels for year-round cultivation. We’ll walk you through essential care routines for potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and peas to ensure a bountiful harvest. Plus, don't miss our preview of the upcoming Bloom Festival, Ireland's premier garden event, featuring incredible show gardens and inspiring displays. Get ready for a wealth of practical advice and inspiration to keep your garden flourishing this June and beyond.
In this weeks episode John looks at what to sow in the month of June. These episodes prove very popular as a mean of keeping people on track with their sowing to ensure ongoing harvests into the autumn and beyond.
How do you keep your vegetable garden thriving all summer long? This week on Master My Garden Podcast, we promise to transform your June gardening routine with essential tasks and expert strategies. As May's intense sowing period winds down, we'll guide you through managing space as early crops are harvested, and we'll highlight key crops such as spring onions, spinach, lettuces, and radishes that should continue to be sown. It's also your final opportunity to sow parsnips and another round of carrots. For those looking towards autumn and winter, we'll explore the best varieties to plant now, including Savoy cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli, and Calabrese, and we’ll discuss whether direct sowing or module trays are more effective for your garden.
But that’s not all! Our comprehensive summer vegetable planting guide will provide the optimal sowing times for summer favorites like radishes, turnips, spinach, and salad leaves. We'll share best practices for herbs such as coriander, basil, parsley, and dill, and highlight the advantages of using polytunnels for year-round cultivation. We’ll walk you through essential care routines for potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, and peas to ensure a bountiful harvest. Plus, don't miss our preview of the upcoming Bloom Festival, Ireland's premier garden event, featuring incredible show gardens and inspiring displays. Get ready for a wealth of practical advice and inspiration to keep your garden flourishing this June and beyond.
how's it going, everybody, and welcome to episode 228 of master, my garden podcast. Now, this week's episode, we're looking at what to sow for the month of june, particularly focusing on the veg and edible garden, I guess, and it's something that proves popular every month. So I suppose it's a reminder for people as to what to do. I suppose June is it's a month where we're kind of transitioning. So May has been, you know, the month where you'll do the most sowing. It's where the biggest variety of vegetables and herbs can be sown, and June, I suppose, that list gets slightly condensed and it'll condense quite a lot further as we go on from here. It's a month as well where your veg beds tend to be quite full, so a lot of your crops from earlier sowings may not be quite ready yet for harvest. Some of them, certainly by the middle of the month, will be harvesting and space will become available, and it depends year to year. It can be slightly different, but this year is kind of looking like, you know, first, good harvest will sort of be the middle of June, heading for the end of June in some cases. And that space, you know, when they, after you've you've created that, the space from that harvest. You're going to need something to go in there. So we're going to continue to sow this month, obviously a lot of the successional stuff the spring onions, the spinach, the lettuces, you know that sort of thing, the radish, all of that, anything that we're sowing successional. We'll continue to sow for this month and for a few more months going forward. Then there's other things that certainly end of May into very early June you might get away with a sewing of parsnips and you'll get another sewing of carrots done this month, things like that, but after that a lot of these will start dropping off the list as you start to run out of time before the end of the season. So, yeah, there's opportunity, lots of opportunity, and it's about managing space and continuing to sew and even if you don't have the space today, so into module trays and then have something ready to go in in certain parts of the country, obviously early potatoes. By mid to end of the month you'll be starting to harvest those you know outside, but potentially in certain parts of the country. Certainly not here, but in certain parts of the country. Yeah, certainly not here, but in certain parts of the country. Yeah, and you'll want something to be going into that space. So we'll go through the list anyway and we'll, you know, look at what we can sow this month and it's a busy month generally. You know there's lots to be doing within the garden anyway. But in terms of sowing we're looking at again spring onion is on the list and we're still sewing that, you know, multi-sewing that into a module tray or, if you have the space, directly sew that into your ground outside or into the polytunnel or greenhouse, and at this time of year I I prefer to direct. So it just takes out a little stage, makes things a lot easier and I will direct.
Speaker 1:
Sow kind of once a month a good sowing once a month of spring onion. Then cabbage, and at this stage you're very much switching to autumn stroke, winter varieties, and so you're looking at the likes of savoy cabbage, autumn varieties that you get like autumn king and so on. You're switching to those. At this stage of the month you may not have the space, you know, to go directly in yet for those. So you're still, you're still going in module trays and then planting them out in kind of four weeks time and that's sort of the the way to go here.
Speaker 1:
Purple sprout and broccoli now this is coming onto the list kind of for the first time. I might. You might have saw it some last month, but this is kind of where the best time of the year to sow it. Now, the thing about sprouting broccoli whether that's purple sprouting or green sprouting, it's a really long-term crop. So this is something and this is where I suppose people who are growing for the first time kind of get caught out with this. It's something that you sow quite late and it stays in the ground for a really long time and you actually won't get the harvest off it until, you know, end of November, early December, january, february that's kind of your harvest period on it.
Speaker 1:
Now it's a really at that time of of the year it's a really nice and welcome harvest, really delicious, obviously. But as well as that there's not a huge amount else in terms of that type of vegetable at that time of year. So it's a really welcome, as I say, vegetable at that stage. But it does need a lot of space, you know, between each plant. It'll take a good bit of minding. You'll have to watch it from the you know the cabbage, caterpillar and and and that, as you move across this to the sort of late summer and into the autumn and later in the time. Then slugs and snails. You'll have to watch for that because as other crops come out of the ground that'll be still there and to be quite, can be quite attractive to them. So just watch for that. But it's a really welcome crop and it's one that's really worth sowing, even even even a small amount of it. That'll give you something around christmas time into early january and even into early february. So that's purple. Purple and greenspout and broccoli.
Speaker 1:
Then you're on to calabrese and again you're switching to autumn varieties. Here you're looking for late, you know, late um maturing varieties and that's going to give you crops right up into the autumn. And cauliflower is the same thing. Again switch into autumn varieties. So some of the earlier ones you know won't be that suitable and so you're again switching to autumn stroke, winter type ones at this stage. Spinach, we're direct sowing, continuing to direct so that it's. You know that's your part of your successional sowing. You'll do that regularly.
Speaker 1:
Next one on the list is leeks. So again switching to autumn and particularly winter varieties at this stage. And they're a brilliant one to follow on. Say, when you take out your early potatoes, get your leeks straight in afterwards and any spots that you can get them in, you know, over the next while get them in. So I'd sow those in a module tray, multi-sown. So three or four seeds per cell and then four to five weeks time you're gonna, you're gonna plant out those and they'll give you a harvest right at the back end of the year and into early, early next year if you have the space for them. Do a lot of sowing of the likes of leeks because you can harvest those, you know, over a long period of time. So the last of my leeks I've left in the ground. They're pretty much gone to seed but we're actually still eating them so they're still harvestable. They're take a bit of cleaning at this stage, but we've been, we've been taking some leeks off them all the time for the last good few months. So it's really worth, you know it's really worth doing a good big sowing of those.
Speaker 1:
Next on the list is radish, again part of your successional sowing. So you're going to be regularly sowing that, you know, along with your spinach, along with your turnips, along with some of your salad leaves, and regularly, so it'll mature quite quickly. I, as I said before, drop it off, off every now and again because I like it for a while. Then I get a bit fed up a bit, so I take it out for a while, then I reintroduce and then I kind of like it that way. Turnip, then is another one direct sowing into the ground and, again small enough and a little bit like the radish as well, will mature quite quickly and, yeah, it's a really, really quick one. This is kind of going to be the last month. Maybe this month and next month be the last month for sowing those, that's your milan purple tops and so on.
Speaker 1:
Swede, this is really the last chance to do this and you'd want to be doing it in the early part of the month. You can direct so, if you want, on these. Just make sure you tend them out to sort of, you know, 20, 20 to 30 centimeters to allow them to mature fully. If you're going to module trays one to two seeds per cell and then plant them out four weeks afterwards but this is the last chance and you want to be doing it early in the month of june. Lettuce again, continue to sow. Direct sow is plenty good at this stage as well. Don't forget. You can use, you know the likes of your cut and come lettuce so you can cut it and then continue to. It'll continue to grow and you don't have to sow that then as regularly. But if you are harvesting the full and complete head, use it and sow it as part of your sort of successional, your successional crops.
Speaker 1:
Then, beetroot, again it's a winter variety that we're looking for here, and definitely early part of the month is the last chance to sow. Um, well, up to up to mid-month is your last chance to sow beetroot directly outside. And again it's one bit like the leeks that I said earlier. I would sow a good bit of that because when it, when we get on to the later stages of the year, that'll hold quite well in the ground and you'd be able to harvest it over a long period of time and it'd be nice to have that sort of fresh harvest over, as I say, over a long period of time. Then, looking into the salad leaves, so we're looking at I suppose, switching the mix a little bit this month we're looking at the more autumny type leaves, so things like rocket lettuce, mustard and so on, and so you can sow them in a module tray or directly.
Speaker 1:
So again, at this stage of the year I'm direct sowing those, not bothered with the, you know, with the sowing into trays at this stage for as much stuff as possible, into trays at this stage for as much stuff as possible, and then on to some of the herbs. So coriander again, sort of succession, he's on that shervel and dill basil. I've one sewing done at those. I will do another sewing in a couple of weeks time, maybe mid to end of the month. That will give me two sewings of basil and that'll give me kind of a harvest pretty much from, I suppose, early july, early july right through to hopefully up to october or thereabouts. That's sort of the time frame that I'd be looking to have fresh basil from parsley again, two to three seeds in a module tray. That's your curly broccoli or curly parsley or your flat leaf, doesn't matter. And you know again, for me I only do one sowing at that once a year.
Speaker 1:
They're a biennial plant. Plant them into the tunnel. So about three or four plants, plant them into the tunnel, then replace them the following year. So you always have sort of two batches. One set of plants will be heading for two years old, the other will be a year old and you always have fresh parsley all all year round and yeah, it's a great way of doing it. If you have a polytunnel or if you have to keep them covered outside, you can have it pretty much 12 months to a year.
Speaker 1:
Pak Chai, you're sowing. You can kind of sow every month now for the next few months in a cell, so every month, and then you're planting out, kind of four weeks later you can use, you know, break off leaves as required or you can harvest the whole head, but pak chai is a good one from now on, then charred again. For me I do kind of one sowing a year, a little bit like what I said with the parsley three or four plants and that kind of does me for 12 months to a year. So I'll have one set of plants on the ready to come forward and another one that's sort of finishing cucumber you can still sow. I don't sow in June. I have my sowing done, planting out into the tunnel pretty much in the next coming days and yeah, but you can still sow this month if you want.
Speaker 1:
Just you're looking for lots of heat at this stage and this will be the last chance to do it in June. Same goes for courgettes again. I won't be doing another sewing, have having my sewing done. But June is your last chance and there's still lots of time, if that's what you want to do. Sweet corn the same thing, last chance in June, pretty much up to the end of June. You'll get away with it. Um, but that's what you want to do. Sweet corn the same thing, last chance in June, pretty much up to the end of June. You'll get away with it. But that's you know. This is the last month and these will all drop off the list going into July.
Speaker 1:
French beans and climbing beans you can do three to four seeds in a pot or you can directly sow these now temperatures have come up enough, so directly sown outside. Temperatures should be up enough at this stage to do that and again you'll be able to do that again on the next sowing, even next month. Pumpkins and squash again this month. So sow one, one seed into a kind of an eight or ten centimeter pot and they'll grow and germinate quite quickly and you better plant them out quite quickly as well. Peas these can be sown this month as well. June's kind of the last sowing. You know, once we get towards the end of the month. We won't be sowing peas again. And then we're looking at celery. Same thing, just remember, with celery just to surface sow the seeds don't cover them. And again, last sowing will be this month. So I've some celery sown, not a lot, and I'll do kind of a reasonably big sowing now in June. When I say reasonably big, I'll probably do maybe 10, 12. And I'll aim then to be just harvesting leaves as I, as required, or stalks as required, and hope to drag that out as long as possible by doing that. So that's, that's kind of what I am for there.
Speaker 1:
Carrots at this stage, last sowing in this month. But you're definitely switching to the likes of an autumn king, autumn varieties, stroke, winter varieties and ones that you can leave in the ground. So again, you can do a big sowing of them if you have the space and allow them to sit in the ground and just harvest as required right through the late autumn and into the winter and just keep an eye on them, that they're they're keeping and restoring, and all that in the ground. But the last of the carrots that I took out of the ground here a couple of weeks ago were perfect and you know, no storing, no digging, no, sorry, no digging and storing elsewhere. I was just storing them in the ground and digging them as required. You know, really really simple parsnips. As I said already very last, sowing this month has to be early in the month and direct sowing again. If you have the space, do a big sowing of these and then you'll be able to harvest over a long period of time. The last of my batch are running to seed now. They're they're not harvestable, they're just gone too hard, but I have been eating them all along up until a week ago, so they've been perfect all along, just running to seed now, and I probably should have harvested them, you know, a month ago, before they ran to seed, and would have been able to store them a little bit longer. But no, I didn't, and but still after getting a really long time out of them and happy with that, and so that's kind of.
Speaker 1:
You know more or less the list of vegetables. You can see there's quite a few have dropped off this month. You know certain ones that need that long sort of season to need that long season to mature. Some of them have dropped off this month and and we're switching to more of your, your regular stuff. Next month's list will be substantially smaller. So that's why I'm saying the month of june. Things settle down a little bit in terms of seed sowing and there's still lots to be done. So much be done. But this month is kind of a nicer month because the pressure of May has come off a little bit and we really are. I suppose we're looking at a month where we're, I suppose, harvesting and tending to the vegetables, keeping an eye out for slugs and snails, keeping an eye out for carrot root fly, things like that and snails, keeping an eye out for carrot root fly, things like that, and, you know, tending to vegetables. We're, we're getting our first harvest, our good harvest this month, and it really is. You know, this is a good month. So, yeah, there's, there's lots going on and uh yeah, so it's a really, really good month in the garden.
Speaker 1:
Other jobs that we can do this month so potatoes and the last of the main crop potatoes in certain areas can be planted up. I would say most people have them in at this stage. I certainly have they're. They're grown really well. I earthed them up the other day so stocks were coming up pretty, pretty well, so I earthed them up. That'll. You know, that'll sort of keep the weeds down by just earthing up every so often. It'll allow them to develop stronger, bigger as well. It'll protect them a little bit, hopefully, from slugs, which is something that I had a major problem with last year. Uh, so that's what I'm hoping there. But if you haven't got your main crops in, you can certainly do that in the earlier part of june. Get them in as soon as possible then.
Speaker 1:
You're looking at, you know, in the polytunnel. Keep supporting your tomatoes, feeding them regularly. So once you get them in your regular feed of seaweed, cucumbers, the same beans, the same peas, the same inside, keep stringing them up, keep supporting them as they grow and keep driving them on at this stage because you want to get them, you know, get them as big as possible, as quick as possible. Now. Keep aeration through your tunnel, especially as we get these warm and wet days. Keep aeration in your tunnel. That'll avoid any sort of potential buildup of diseases down the line. So that's something that you want to watch out for.
Speaker 1:
And also keep on top of watering, particularly in your, your tunnels. We are still getting, you know, showers and rain, but at this stage the sunshine can be quite intense and in a polytunnel or a greenhouse that can be damaging very, very quickly. So just stay on top of your watering as well. Continue to sow your successional crops, particularly, and anytime you have space from a harvest that you've just done, make sure you have something to come along and fill that space and that'll keep you, I suppose, harvest that you've just done. Make sure you have something to come along and fill that space and that'll keep you, I suppose, producing crops and you know having harvests right through into the autumn and winter, and that's really important. You know, taking all our harvest out through June and July and then not having anything to come afterwards, it's a waste of space, you know. So utilize that space to the max by having having more crops on the on the go and in the pipeline. So yeah, that's that's kind of your sewing guide for for may, as I say, or for june, and as I say, next month will be substantially, will be substantially reduced.
Speaker 1:
June is a very busy month, month in general, and this weekend sees the kickoff of Bloom, which would have started yesterday. So Bloom Festival this year runs from May the 30th so Thursday, may the 30th to June the 3rd, so bank holiday weekend here in Ireland. I suppose it's the biggest garden festival in Ireland by a long ways. This year, looking at it, there's 22 show gardens, you know, across all categories small, medium and large and this year it's seen. You know there's 22 show gardens and you know across all categories small, medium and large and this year it's seen. You know there's a lot of garden designers back leone carlinius is back this year. Oliver and let's you man from alvinus nurseries are back designing a garden this year. Gavin saunders and steven mackill have a garden above and beyond which is, you know, a garden on a balcony sponsored by New Leaf Compost. And you know a lot of, a lot of established names are back this year in bloom on the show garden side. So looking forward to seeing those over the weekend.
Speaker 1:
And then on this, you know the speaker stage of some very good speakers. You have Fianna Nul smith, jimmy blake, nile mccauley, all previous guests of the podcast. They're all speaking at the show over the couple of over a couple of days. Just keep an eye on the timetables and the speaking speaking timetables to to see the times that each of them are on. But very, very good speakers. And then you have other people as well. Mary reynolds is on the, on the stage as well, and Monica Alvarez, who's the one of the judges on Supergarden. She's speaking on on one of the stages as well. So lots of really interesting speakers.
Speaker 1:
There's the show, gardens, there's obviously the you know the the plant nurseries are all there, the sundry suppliers are there, so it's a great weekend and, obviously, being borbea, there's a food element as well which is really worth checking out, even from a gardening point of view. There's nothing like going in there and a little bit of tasting. So, yeah, bloom back this weekend and really looking forward to going there myself. So, yeah, if you can get their tickets available on bloom's website are, and that's where they're saying you should, you know, pre-book if possible and order online if possible and bring your ticket to the gate, but obviously you can. You can just arrive as well and hopefully there's there's tickets available when you get there. And yeah, look, looking forward to that Promises to be a great weekend.
Speaker 1:
Looking ahead to next week, we've a really exciting episode Episode and one I'm really looking forward to and coming up for me. Next week I'm doing a talk on growing your own food at the Buds and Blossoms Festival, and that's Sunday, the 9th of June in Spink Community Grounds. It's about five minutes from Abbey Leakes Town, not too far away from Haywood Gardens. So anyone talking about or coming to do you know a day out, there's lots to do in the area. The event itself has three speakers, myself being one, and then we have Carol Wright, who's Carter Bridge Gardens, and then Frances Tophill from BBC Gardener's World is there and I think she's talking about her new book, which is 12 months in a small garden. So there's lots in the pipeline for that day Again, lots of plant stalls and a really good family day, family day out as well.
Speaker 1:
Actually, there's lots for kids to do there. So if you're coming with the family, there's lots, lots to do. Good days, fun, lots of gardening, gardening talks, gardening people gardening nurseries and, yeah, really worth checking out. So that's, uh, buds and blossoms and it's on sunday, the 9th of june, and first speaker who's? Myself on it, I think, one, one o'clock in the day. So, yeah, great, great day out and something I'm definitely nervous about, but looking forward to as well, kind of my first and first time to talk in front of a big group like that. So looking forward to it and uh, yeah, that's pretty much this week's episode. Hope you enjoy bloom this weekend and looking forward to seeing some of you, or maybe a lot of you at next week's buds and blossoms. That's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.