Jobs for your vegetable garden

Early Summer

Harvest:

• Asparagus, spinach, spring cabbage sprouting broccoli, lettuce, radish, salad onions.

Sow - Indoors:

• Early in the period, aubergines, cucumbers, marrows, melons, peppers and tomatoes.

Sow - Outdoors:

• Beans - french and runner, winter greens - kale, savoys and sprouting broccoli and cabbage, carrots, lettuce, beetroot, suede and sweet corn. At the end of the period sow ridge cucumbers and marrows.

Plant:

• Indoor raised beans and sweet corn under cloches and celery outside.  Plant brussel sprouts and other winter greens as soon as they are large enough

Cultivate:

• Pull soil up around potatoes, covering the emerging young shoots if frost is imminent. Maintain regular hoeing and apply much of well rotted compost to retain moisture in the soil.

Protect:

• Tender crops with cloches or fleece at night if frost is forecast.  Keeps a watch for greenfly and use a protective spray if that's your thing.

Mid Summer

Harvest:

• Finish cutting asparagus and start picking broad beans, cauliflower and peas. Continue gathering cabbage, lettuce spring onions, radish and spinach.

Sow - Outdoors:

• Swedes, beetroot, carrots, lettuce, peas, turnips, french and runner beans.

Plant:

• All tender vegetables such as aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes and marrows outside. A few late potatoes can also be planted. Continue to plant leeks and winter green vegetables.

Cultivate:

• Support crops like runner beans and tomatoes by erecting stakes and strings. Continue thinning out seedling to the required spacing and hoeing to eliminate weeds.

Protect:

• Broad beans from black fly attack by pinching out the growing tips of the plants infested with this pest. Place nets over peas if birds are eating the peas in the pods.

Late Summer

Harvest:

• Most crops - e.g. dwarf beans cabbage, cauliflower, globe artichokes, peas, carrots, turnips, lettuce and early potatoes and shallots.

Sow - Outdoors:

• Spring cabbage at the end of the period, also carrots , lettuce, radish and turnips

Plant:

• complete winter green transplanting

Cultivate:

• Apply liquid fertiliser to beans, celery and tomatoes every ten to fourteen days for the biggest crops. Water occasionally, (or well in hot dry weather)

Protect:

• Potatoes in warm damp weather against blight by spraying with copper fungicide. Give some shade to emerging seedlings and crops like melons in very hot sunshine, by using cloches that have been painted white.