Hit the Dirt; Late Season Chores

Hello and welcome to another hit the dirt. Well June is quickly drawing to a close with the dawning of another month. I put a good time to check in again with my garden calendar to see what is happening in the July garden July usually is the month we can finally say goodbye and good riddance to the pesky black flies for another year. A cause for great celebration for us who love to garden. It is also the month that our plots really start to yield up their bounty. Rewarding our efforts with fresh sweet peas broccoli cauliflower greens new potatoes raspberries early cabbage or perhaps some beans and maybe even some tomatoes towards the end of the month. But of course it is hardly the time to just sit back and reap the fruits of our labors. There is still much to be done. Keeping up with the weeds watering and deadheading the ornamentals are important July maintenance tasks will pay off ritually in the big harvests of late summer and fall. Big dividends will also be reaped from giving the heavy feeders supplemental feedings this month side dressing with a little manure and or seaweed tea should give them a welcome boost. At this point in the growing season for many crops we can become more interested in keeping the soil moist than having it warm up

further. So it is a good time to apply a mulch to crops like tomatoes and peppers. It is also a good idea to check on any mulch you put around the cool weather crops. Early this spring to see if it needs replenishing. I like to use shredded leaves as well as straw for my mulch is. Continued plantings are another item on my July garden agenda even up here in Maine. It is still not too late to get a variety of crops in for this season. A final sowing of beans and carrots can be made early in the month. Peas in beets can be direct seeded in Chinese cabbage sown indoors. Up until about the middle of the month. Spinach kohlrabi and turnips for the fall garden. Can all be sewn up until the end of the month with a good chance for success. Succession plantings of greens and radishes can be continued throughout the month. Many of these crops will not germinate as well in the hot summer soil. So a helpful tip is to sow the seeds slightly deeper than suggested for spring plantings. Since the soil will remain a bit cooler and moisture further down you might also want to spread a very thin layer of straw or

grass clippings over the sowing to prevent the soil from rapidly heating up drying out and crossing over in the hot sun. In addition it's a good idea to water the Foro thoroughly before planting. July is a good month to start looking ahead to next year as well. Building up the soil fertility is always high on my agenda. Those whose crops begin finishing up this month I'm quick to clean up the residues and so will cover crop. I also like to get some big compost piles started this month so they will be ready to use in my potting mix next spring and to enrich the ground for next year's early crops. And for those who like to save some of their own seed July can be a busy month for hand pollinating and isolating blossoms to ensure varietals purity squash corn tomatoes peppers and many other crops are in bloom this month. If you grow a number of different varieties of any of these crops that you want to save seed from. It makes good sense to take the time to do a bit of isolating and pollinating. If you are set on keeping the varieties true to seed even normally self pollinating plants such as tomatoes and peppers can have a

fairly high degree of crossing if pollinator activity is high. One last reminder I've jotted down for July is to keep an eye on the garlic depending on the season it will be getting close to ready for harvest towards the end of the month. What about two thirds of the leaves have turned yellow and withered. I like to pull up a few plants to check on bulb formation. If they're well formed with nice skins I figure it is time to harvest waiting until the tops of completely die down like onions may result in bulbs which have opened up and started to come apart into several cloves. The garlic plant should be dried with the tops on out of the sun for about a week. Cure them. Then they can be cleaned and trimmed or braided. Ah yes July looks to be a good month in the garden doesn't it. Well good luck until next week when I will join you again for another hit the dirt.