What to Do in the Garden Mid-June? | Terra Potager

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• Learn to Harvest All Year Round
• Shop
  • Our Calendar/Almanac
  • Our ACD Greenhouses
  • The Vegetable Garden Review
  • Order Seeds
  • Gardening Products, Fertilizers
  • Online Course 'I Succeed with My Tomatoes'
• Vegetable Garden Tips
• Topics
  • Successful Seedlings and Plants
  • Soil: Amendments, Fertilizers, Compost
  • Vegetable Garden Techniques
  • Pests in the Vegetable Garden
  • Growing Vegetables
  • Flowers, Aromatic and Medicinal Plants, Biodiversity
• Connect
• Contact

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Do you want to learn how to grow your own vegetables? With the Terra Almanac, you won’t forget your sowing: just open your file, check the current month, and you have all the sowings to be done (explained in detail), which will allow you to produce vegetables all year round.

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Hello friends of Terra,

June is generally a pleasant month in the vegetable garden, symbolizing hope: summer has not yet settled in, the soils are generally still moist, the crops are growing, and they are healthy, much to the delight of the gardener. Let’s see together what to do in the garden this season!

What to Do in the Garden Mid-June?

The bulk of the sowing period is behind us. Nevertheless, it is still possible to sow many varieties. The challenge during this period remains managing the humidity/heat balance: some varieties only germinate with difficulty at the high temperatures we have experienced in recent days.

The Sowing

Sow Swiss chard, beets, storage carrots, escarole and frisée chicories, cabbages (broccoli, heading cabbage, and cauliflower), zucchini, beans (this is the optimal time!), arugula (beware of flea beetles!)…

On the aromatic side, continue to sow basil (in containers or directly in the ground), thyme, flat or curly parsley, chives, sage, and oregano. Perennials will be planted in the ground next spring or this autumn.

You can start a last series of melons if your climate is not too cool. Also, consider second series of cucumbers and tomatoes (by taking cuttings from suckers).

The Planting

Depending on your region, continue planting basil, celery, frisée and escarole chicories, cabbages (the same as above, depending on the varieties), cucumbers, squashes (we are reaching the last limit), pattypans, and zucchini, leeks.

What More to Do in the Vegetable Garden in June?

Weeding for Non-Mulched Beds

Weeding is the operation aimed at eliminating weeds from the cultivation beds, to reduce competition with our crops, especially for water at this season. Hoeing aims to break the surface crust that has formed on the cultivation beds, either due to bad weather or repeated watering. The loosened layer thus recreated limits the evaporation of water stored in the soil. Once these operations are completed, mulch your soil, ensuring it is sufficiently moist (either from rain or after a thorough watering). This will slow the development of most weeds, promote the integration of runoff water, and especially, limit the evaporation of this precious resource, water, in conditions recently experienced by some regions (constant wind and heat). Watering chores will be spaced out!

Hilling Potatoes

Hilling potatoes involves bringing soil to the base of the plants when they reach 10 to 15 cm, up to the first leaves. You will achieve a better yield, and tubers will generally be larger than if you grow them on mulch. A second hilling will follow two or three weeks later. At this time, do not hesitate to mulch your crop to preserve moisture. And in case of prolonged drought, watering (without wetting the foliage!) will ensure more numerous and better-developed tubers.

Similarly, hill the sowings of beans to improve their stability and facilitate root development, thus ensuring better harvests with more pods!

Go Further:
• Hill Potatoes

And Other Activities...

Regularly check your rows of tomatoes, every week. Remove suckers (which you can recover for cuttings) not directly at the axil, but 1 cm above to avoid stagnant moisture at the scar, trim the lower branches in contact with the ground to prevent the appearance of fungal diseases, and possibly remove the cat heads at the floral clusters, stake the plants to prevent them from collapsing.

Go Further:
• Prune Tomatoes

Harvest your aromatics before the heat peaks, to prevent them from drying out too much and losing their flavor qualities. Preferably harvest in the morning. Preserve them by drying, so you can enjoy them in the off-season to enhance your salads or other sauces!

On the vine, if you wish, lighten the number of clusters forming if it is too high, to obtain more beautiful grape berries. Limit the number of shoots to concentrate the plant's strength on ripening the clusters.

On fruit trees (apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, etc.), do not hesitate to reduce the number of fruits in case of excessive abundance, by removing the smallest, the misshapen ones, those under attack by pests, etc. The fruits will be larger, healthier, and your harvest will ultimately be more abundant.

We don’t talk about it much, but the season for the most significant harvests is approaching. This is the fruit of all your investments from the first part of the year that you will harvest and be able to savor. Depending on the various vegetable varieties you have planted, you should plan to dedicate time to picking, gathering… and even more for cooking them, or even preserving them!

Managing Drought in the Garden

Many regions experienced exceptional drought in May/June. This is a really delicate period for sowing and planting. Add to this the northeast wind, and you can be sure that nothing grows, or with great difficulty.

The gardener must, as usual, adapt according to their context and soil:

• Clay soil: retains water well and has good capillarity that facilitates the rise of water stored underground.
• Sandy soil: retains water very poorly and dries out very quickly.
• Loamy soil: with its very fine texture, it is very sensitive to compaction. After rain or repeated watering, it is necessary to intervene to break the crust that forms.

The best solution to improve the water storage and retention capacity, regardless of your soil type, is to regularly enrich it with organic matter.

To limit erosion, whether by leaching, due to sunlight, or due to wind, several solutions are available to the gardener:

• Cover the soil to limit erosion. It will be less exposed to direct sunlight, wind gusts. Rain will be softened, and there will be less runoff. Soil coverage can be done with "waste" plant materials (grass clippings), crop residues (peas just removed, for example), surface composting with your peels and vegetable scraps, or with wood chips, straw, hay, …
• Do not tread on your soil! In case of compaction, your soil becomes a real concrete surface. In this case, quickly and regularly use a cultivator to break the channels through which water rises by capillarity.
• Shade your crops: install fruit hedges to protect from sun and wind, shade structures for about ten days (using crates, for example) at the time of sowing and transplanting, or more long-term using reed screens, for example.

Go Further:
• Manage Droughts and Heatwaves in the Vegetable Garden

June is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful months in the vegetable garden. The days are the longest, the evenings the most pleasant. What a joy to end a beautiful day of labor in the garden with an evening among friends around an aperitif (in moderation!) accompanied by fresh produce straight from the garden! Enjoy, garden as you love, and see you very soon!

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Want to Go Further?

If you are interested, we offer a bit of additional reading 😀

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This magazine is aimed at all gardeners who love nature, wishing to produce part of their food while promoting life in their garden, like us.

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The magazine is a PDF document of about 80 pages that includes many exclusive articles on permaculture and natural gardening. How to save time, grow the right plants, make the right associations, adopt the right reflexes… in short, easily improve your daily life and your garden to enhance your quality of life, simply. Their motto is: cultivate your daily life!

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