Find out what gardening tasks you need to keep on top of in the garden in July.
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Gardening Tasks For July
July is a wonderful time of year in the garden! Plants are in flower, producing harvests, or are about to. If you are lucky, you might be enjoying your first fresh tomatoes of the season!
Let’s talk about some things to do in the garden in July to help keep the garden growing!
Keep Harvesting
As the weather is heating up, many plants are going into production thick and fast. Check cucumbers, beans, zucchini, eggplants, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, blackcurrant, gooseberries, and goji berries daily and harvest if ripe for the perfect flavor. Cucumbers, beans, zucchini, and eggplant will produce more flowers and fruits if they are picked regularly.
Read more about berries to grow in your garden in this related post.
Fall Seed Starting
If you are in subtropical areas like Florida or in the deep South, later in July you want to be starting your veggie seeds indoors again then transplant them out when fall temperatures arrive and start to cool. If you are in the northern states, get out your transplants ASAP for your fall garden so they have time to establish before the first fall frost. Don’t forget your cover crops and green manures that will sit in the ground over winter!
Add Compost Side Dressings
If you have compost that is finished, add handfuls around the base of plants to help feed the soil and the plant and act as a mulch. If you have no compost, side-dress with a little homemade liquid fertilizer made from comfrey or, an OMRI listed organic fertilizer and mulch with materials that will break down and feed the soil. Great mulches include straw, shredded newspaper, and leaves.
Collect Seeds
As you are checking the garden, if you spot ripe seeds it is a good time to harvest them if they are ripe. The drier, warmer weather of July means the seeds will dry and mature for many plants like peas, lettuce, dill, and beans.
Harvest lettuce when you can see the downy fuzz opening and look like a dandelion head. If you have plants that were overwintered for seed saving like kale or cabbage and Swiss chard, these seed pods will be starting to turn golden or a creamy tan and drying out. Harvest the brassica seeds before the pods split open.
Expand Your Garden
If you have been well and truly bitten by the gardening bug in your victory garden then now is a good time to expand your growing space. You can solarize the soil by watering the area then spreading a clear plastic sheet over the area of your new garden bed and weighing the sheet down and leaving it for 6 weeks.
The clear plastic acts like a greenhouse and heats up the ground fast in the middle of summer. This kills off weeds and some pathogens in the soil. Pathogens are those bad microorganisms that cause disease in your plants.
Check for Pests & Diseases
Check your garden regularly for signs of pests getting out of hand. Use a soap spray or a strong jet of water to knock aphids off your brassicas and the tender, soft parts of your plants if you find them clustering together in large numbers. Wear a sturdy pair of gloves to pick off caterpillars or hornworms off by hand.
If your plants are showing signs of diseases, mulch around the base of the plants and remove the affected leaves and throw them into the rubbish or garbage, not into your compost heap. Pull those plants which are the worse affected and throw them into the trash. Give your plants space and airflow to help reduce diseases and stop overhead watering if you can. Water at the base of the plants to reduce the spread of disease.
Get The Best From Your Plants
Help your plants grow by helping give your plants what they need! Hill soil up around potatoes and carrots to protect them from the light and to stop them from going green. Weave in beans and tomatoes along a trellis or stake them in if they are getting unruly. And to help keep them off the ground for fewer diseases and easier harvesting.
Prune tomatoes to help airflow and tomato production.
Water
With the weather being hot, your plants will lose moisture. Water close to their roots and water deeply at least once a week. Deep watering will encourage roots to grow longer and grow down into the soil rather than growing up top near the soil level. Drier climates will need more frequent, deep watering. And don’t forget a couple of inches of mulch to help retain the water in the soil where your plants can use it!
Show me pictures of your garden and let me know what you’re growing and harvesting over in the Facebook group
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It is the beginning of August when I have read this post but still thank you so much for sharing these tips. I planning to buy a 8×12 greenhouse for sale in my garden to give a proper look to the whole of it.