What I'm sowing in July | see description for full details

so i'm in the back garden today and i'm doing some planning at the moment for what i'm going to sew in july so i thought i'd take you through that um sewing database and a lot of my thoughts now are directed at winter and spring in fact quite a lot of my winter stuff is in now and so actually more of my thinking now is about what i'm going to grow for an abundant spring but also of course i'm thinking about autumn so a lot of long-term planning in gardening so i've got my little database here on my ipad and i'm going to take you through uh what's going on in spring so let's take a look so first up on the list are potatoes now i've got a lot of potatoes in the ground at the moment i think i've got 40 tubs of potatoes and those are mainly my last few second earlies and my main crops so what i'm sowing this month in july are my salad potatoes that we're going to start harvesting sometime in november probably and we'll harvest those all the way through until april we leave them in the compost so they'll die back sort of october time just take the tops off and yeah just leave them in the containers stacked up i normally just put them in my mini greenhouse because i'm not using it for anything at that time of year and i just leave them in there in the compost nice and moist and as i say when we harvest them in april they're pretty much as good as they are in sort of october november time they just keep really well and they're lovely salad potatoes and that means that we don't have to grow early salad potatoes so our first early salad potatoes come about in the middle of april something like that so not very early at all but it means we have a nice continuity of salad potatoes all the way through the year so next up on the list are marathon and green sprouting broccoli and we we really prefer broccoli i must admit to cauliflower uh it's so much easier to grow it's quicker to grow um the calabrese is a fairly short-lived harvest you know you get the central head and then a few side shoots over the next you know two or three weeks but the green sprouting broccoli can last quite a bit longer so you can get a harvest from that for you know a couple of months probably as we go into winter so that's why i'm growing those two so finally not finally next on my list are the two sean carrots now i really like touchon they're one of the better carrots for leaving in the ground for a long period of time and this batch actually we're going to grow in containers just three containers full and those are the ones we're going to be eating in april and that allows us that we find that in containers because we can keep them out of the drenching rain in winter and out of the worst of the cold we just bring them in the polytunnel and just stack them up and they they just keep a little bit better than the ones outside and as a result and they've got less slugs and things like that and as a result we can get really nice carrots all the way through april and then our early crop of carrots comes towards the end of april may so again we get a nice continuity so yeah we've got loads of carrots in the ground at the moment so these just these viewing containers are just to see us through as i said just that uh really late period um from late march to sort of the end of april um and the ones in the ground do well up until then so no problem at all so next up are a whole range of different kales now again we've got loads of kales in the ground we've got our first early kales which you're going to seed now but they've provided a fantastic kind of early harvest from sort of may through to well i'll probably take them out of the ground towards the end of july something like that because i want to put my purple spreading broccoli in that spot and but i like doing an early crop of kale because it does mean that when everybody else's kale is kind of going to seed my early crop is at its peak and so it means again a nice continuity of harvest and i like black magic is my favorite variety for that early crop sown in january planted out sort of late february march time and as i said you know nice prolific um harvest in in may uh what i also find though is that if i do a crop of kale now and i'm doing quite a nice range i'm doing reflex scarlet uh dwarf green sympathic nero black magic and pentlum brig so it's a nice selection if i do it now then it doesn't go to seed quite as early in sort of april may time um and that's pretty useful because we don't grow a lot of other brassicas at that time of year we do have spring cabbage and things like that but we won't we don't have enough space really to dedicate to growing things like cauliflower over winter we will of course have you know calabrese and things like that but um and purple spreading broccoli so we'll have quite a nice range but really this late sewn kale is going to be our main stay kale harvest into the late winter and through spring so that's the kales so then we're on to spring onions now i don't think spring onions do very well in mid-summer i'm always trying different varieties to see if i can get a decent crop but i am doing something different this year which i'll talk about in august which tries to get me a nice really great salad onion in august but anyway i i keep on trying different ones i'm trying ramrod this year as a summer spring onion as i say i'm not a massive fan really of summer spring onions but i do like them every day so i'm always trying to find something that's good generally what we end up doing in in mid-summer is just harvesting you know young tender red onions uh and chopping those up in the salads that's perfectly good so next one are the charts i'm doing bright lights and rhubarb chard and again these are quite late and i might actually end up direct sewing these so i normally do everything in modules but i'm going to have a bed come free and i've got nothing to plant in it and i'm intending to plant chard in it so i might direct sow them and that'll be nice because charge i mean it does transplant okay although some books say that it doesn't but it does um but i think it maybe it does a little bit better direct seeded anyway this is just an opportunity to see and you know if there is a difference i might do one bed uh planted from modules and one pad direct seeded and just see what the difference is um but these are going to go in a deep cold frame obviously the cold frame lid won't be on in summer but i'll probably put the cold frame lid on and about sort of november time and i find i get twice to three times the yield by having it undercover that i do from the outside beds so charred is fine it'll survive most winters although it can be damaged by if there's a really bad wind chill um but it's all about the harvesting for me it's not about whether it survives or not you know child will survive as i said over winter no problem and come back in spring but i want a nice continuous harvest so a deep cold frame does it for me so next up are a nice batch of lettuces i'm trying some new ones here ones that i'm hoping to grow actually over winter and i'm again always trying new winter varieties of lattice there's no problem with getting great lettuce for the rest of the year but over winter there's not many varieties that do well for me in my environment so anyway i've got quite a range there i've got a lollow i've got trento i've got classic uh grenoble red or red grenoble whichever you want to talk about it and then a new red lettuce outregis which is a pretty corny title growing in space apparently um but anyway i got those seeds for free i've got some nevada and i've got some canasta now i know canasta doesn't do very well in winter but anyway we'll try these um obviously if i don't like them in autumn i'm not going to grow them in winter but let's see what they're like and what else onions right so we grow a lot of maine crop onions but what we find is that we running out of good quality stored onions in april we switch over then to big spring onions we eat those big spring onions through until about the beginning of june uh maybe you know middle of may something like that and at that point we start harvesting these onions that i'm starting now which are tough ball and i really like tough ball they just do so well for me they never go to seed they always give me really great onions towards the end of may and early june and i harvest those and it allows me to get the bed cleared and replanted with something like the winter squash um and yeah they just do great i do one batch in the poly tool and i do one batch outside the ones in the poly to look about three weeks earlier than the ones outside so again it's all about a nice continuous harvest period for me oh one other thing to mention about a tough ball is don't sew all your seeds at once so i think it's a really good idea to sow one batch towards the end of july and then so another batch towards the end of or yeah let's start again we do one batch towards the end of july and one batch towards the beginning of august and i do that just in case there's kind of freak weather conditions that result in one of those batches going to seed you never know which one it's going to be and so by doing those two you're always pretty confident that you're going to get a decent number um and if you get a few extra that's fine so do twice as many as you need there's always spare space in the ground over winter and if you end up with too many as i said you can always harvest them early as you know sort of golf ball size or you can harvest them as spring onions or you can just leave them to mature or you can even let them go to seed because going to seed is no big deal you know you can just chop them up and freeze them or use them fresh so first batch of spring cabbages so i don't like to do any spring cabbages until the end of july and then i'll do another batch in august and i'll probably do some more actually even later on in the season sort of october time and i'll keep those in pots in the polytunnel plant them out in spring helicopter going over here we're just very close to an airport here so we're always getting loads and loads of aircraft flying over which makes video making quite a challenge sometimes that along with the building site which is right adjacent to the allotment which is why i'm making this video in the back garden today so next one tokyo cross turnip so i don't really like doing radishes and turnips in summer for harvest in summer i i just don't think the taste is you know i've been eating radishes since march and to be honest i'm just fed up with them and i like a break but i'd say i don't think the quality is that great in summer either they're easy to grow but you know for me it's about quality so i don't start my radishes until august again the ones i'm going to be harvesting in september but the turnips you can start those now and again we'll be harvesting those in september so towards the end of july i'll start my first batch of turnips and then we'll do continuous turnips until about early middle of september something like that and you can do quite a lot actually in september because they hold in the ground pretty well um so you can still be eating turnips through until december time from that sewing and then we'll restart those again sort of february time for a nice early harvest in late march april something like that so i think that is pretty much everything that i'm going to be sewing in july um and it's a very relaxing time for me to be honest july um and well june july and august we really take a break from gardening in summer uh hence i don't get to make that many videos to me at this time all i'm really doing is watering and harvesting very little planting to do it's very relaxing but then everything starts to pick up with the sewing in august and of course we're doing a lot of sewing getting ready for awesome and winter and spring so with that i think we'll close up my name's steve this is the seaside kitchen garden and allotment channel and i'll see you soon

Channel: Steve's Seaside Kitchen Garden & Allotment

Views: 3,910

Rating: 4.9609756 out of 5

Keywords: allotment, vegetables, all year round, eat your greens, gardening, polytunnel, poly tunnel, self-sufficiency, self sufficiency, season extension, homestead, home steading, kitchen garden

Id: pN7j8bMBNMQ

Length: 14min 11sec (851 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 01 2021