What to do at the allotment in July

What a difference sunshine makes,

all those little seedlings that were reluctant to grow in the recent cool weeks, have finally taken off.

the chard has finally started growing well

There’s less to harvest at my allotment than I hoped there would be, moving house in February is a distracting process. It also took me a while to work out how to start seeds off without a greenhouse, but everything is on the way now, the cold-frame has been my saviour here.

What to do at the allotment in July:

Sowing:

Sow the last lot of carrots and beetroot during this month.

Weeding:

Keep weeding, this becomes a mantra at the allotment, try and get them while they’re small.

Onions and garlic:

Dig up and dry onions and garlic, onions are ready when the leaves turn brown and collapse over, garlic is ready when the top leaves are brown and the lower one are still green.

what to do at the allotment in jury-garlic harvested

hard-neck garlic

onions with radishes growing in between

Tomatoes:

nip out the main growing stem on tomato plants pnce there are four or five bunches of fruit, the side-shoots that grow between the main stem and the leaf stem to stop also need pinching out it, unless your growing tumbler-type tomatoes in a basket.

I used to grow tomatoes in a greenhouse when we lived in our old house, so it’ll be interesting to see how they get on living outside. They won’t need watering as much when it rains, though apparently they’re more susceptible to tomato-blight.

tomatoes growing in one of the raised beds, rather embarrassingly there are weeds growing on the paths.

Climbing beans:

Cut off the top of bean plants once they reach the top of the wig-wam or they’ll just keep growing.

Raspberries:

Pull up rogue raspberry canes that are growing away from the main lot before it all turns into a thicket. My autumn raspberries are on their final warning having not produced much fruit for the last couple of years.

Grapevines:

Cut back shoots on grapevines leavinng just two leaves beyond each tiny bunch of grapes. This lets the sun get to them and reduces the volums of plant, so all the energy goes into grape growing.

Plant out

baby leeks into their final growing position, make a wide hole and drop the leek plant in and fill the hole with water, the soil eventually falls in making it firm & secure.

Feed:

tomato, peppers and chilli plants with a liquid feed of liquid tomato fertilliser or diluted comfrey brew. These have pleny of potassium ( K ) in them which is exactly whats need to promote flower production, tip some on flowering plants in pots too.

Prune:

cherry and plum trees cutting out dead or diseased stems once you (or the birds) have harvested the fruit.

Gooseberries and redcurrant need a summer prune now, cut new stems back to five leaves to let light and air into the plant.

Prune blackcurrants lightly, they’ll need pruning again in winter.

This is the newest section of the allotment that we took over early last year when it was waist-high in nettles and bind-weed. After months of being covered with cardboard and tarpaulin and then dug over to remove the roots of those pesky weeds, it’s finally starting to produce vegetables.

I’ve been told by people at the allotment that it’s been untouched for at least twenty years, so it’s good to see it producing potatoes and there’ll be squash and courgettes later on, without having to use any chemicals.