- Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden.
Now, it may be June but my sowing season is far from over.
So in this video I'm gonna show you
15 must sow crops in June
as I go about and catch up on some garden tasks.
So we're gonna kick off the first crop with coriander.
This is something that I sow new batches of every two
to three weeks until around mid-July,
and then I'll start transplanting them into a poly tunnel.
But it's a beautiful herb,
and this is starting to want to seed,
which is great 'cause I can enjoy
those really precious green coriander seeds.
You can either sow them directly
or start them off in modules.
The next crop to sow in June is dill.
It's becoming one of my absolute favorites,
and it does grow a little bit like a weed,
but it is so fantastic
and it adds a lovely texture to the garden.
But one thing it does do is it also self seeds.
So if you sow some dill now and let it grow
and let it flower and die back down naturally,
this is what you'll be able to enjoy next year,
a self-sown forest of dill that you can lift
and transplant anywhere you want in the garden.
Free food.
The next crop to sow in June is actually your carrots.
Now, this dill, which we were talking about last time,
was self-sown,
and I'm just gonna harvest that, look at that,
for a bit of free food.
But yeah, start sowing a bunch of carrots
because kind of by mid to late June,
it's usually the last opportunity to guarantee
really nice harvest towards late summer, early autumn.
The next crop is also a root vegetable
and it's one of my favorite, it's beetroot.
Which you can eat the leaves,
you can treat it a little bit like Swiss chard
or like a spinach substitute.
But beetroot is such a great crop
and it really does hold quite well during winter,
and I was still harvesting them in January and February.
And that's something you can enjoy,
especially if you start sowing a load of beetroot
either directly in rows,
or in modules multi-sown this month.
If I could dedicate a whole garden to peas, I would,
because they're one of the sweetest,
most amazing snacks that you can possibly grow.
They are suitable for containers as well.
This is Kelvedon Wonder.
It's just an absolute trooper
kind of workhorse of a variety for me.
And it's something almost any pea
that you can actually sow in June,
especially in the first half of June.
I'm doing my final big round of pea sowing this month
and they're absolutely stunning.
If there's anything on this list that I recommend you do,
it would definitely be peas,
because sometimes, if we just stick to the spring sowings,
the pea season can be over a little bit prematurely.
So, making sure that you start off the load in June,
means that you can really extend that
and enjoy their flavor.
The next crop to sow is actually kale.
Kale is a extremely hardy plant,
and unlike some of the other Brassicas,
you can actually plant it quite late in the season.
I've let all this kale flower and it's now run to seed.
Now the smaller seed pods are actually really delicious.
They're a really nice snack.
They're a bit like a little mini bush bean
or dwarf French bean,
but what I'm doing I'm just gonna clear these out,
chop and drop.
But kale is a great crop,
a great Brassica to sow this month,
and you can either do it directly in the seed bed,
like I like to do, and then transplant it,
or you can sow them in pots,
keep them in bigger pots,
and then when you start clearing
parts of the garden in late summer,
you can then transplant these mature kale plants
out into those positions to grow.
The next crop to sow in June is courgette,
also known as zucchini.
It's such a fast-growing, maturing crop.
I'm growing here a yellow courgette,
I'm just gonna plant it in this bed.
Now, the main thing is to bear in mind
is that courgettes are really, really, really productive.
So don't have too many plants 'cause you'll be overrun.
But if it is something that you've forgotten
or you might only have two plants,
you might want to consider having one extra
and extending the cropping season.
Another great crop to sow in June,
it's probably the perfect time of year
to start it is kohlrabi.
It's a really fast developing kind of Brassica
weird root stem vegetable,
and it adds a lot of interest to the garden,
especially if you grow something
like Purple Delicacy for the color,
but it really looks like a vegetable
that's come from outer space,
a weird extraterrestrial vegetable.
But start sowing it this month.
It does bring a lot of color,
and also a lot of nice flavor to your kitchen.
You might be surprised to hear that the next crop to sow
or kind of, in this case, plant, is actually potatoes,
especially the variety Sarpo Mira,
'cause I found it to be really good
in terms of blight resistance.
But I'm just harvesting some of the first
of the early potatoes.
Here we are, right at the end of May,
are we're getting this stunning crop.
However, in June, when June hits,
I'm gonna be planting all of these first early buckets
with Sarpo Miras and they're gonna be
kind of my core crop over winter.
The next must grow crop is actually fennel.
This is bulb fennel, but this is actually from last year,
on its second year,
and it's about to send out a load of lovely flowers.
And you can use normal bulb fennel,
just like the herb fennel, for the fronds here.
But June is a really nice time
to actually start off your fennel
because actually, if you start them too early,
they actually run the risk of bolting
if you say sow them in March or April.
And that's something that you can actually avoid
by sowing them in June.
And they're fast to mature,
one of the tastiest vegetables you can grow,
and I'm gonna be growing probably five times
as many as last year.
The next crop is kind of a two-in-one,
it's both Swiss chard and perpetual spinach.
I've got some ruby chard growing here
at the end of this raised bed,
and it's starting to come into its own.
It's probably, I mean, I could harvest it now
and use it like a smaller leaf
but I am gonna let it grow
and start using the stem, et cetera.
But this is a crop both Swiss chard and perpetual spinach.
It actually works really well direct sown,
just like you would for spinach or lettuce.
You can start them off in modules as well,
this is what I did here.
However, if you've got a little bit of space,
like a little patch, sow a row of Swiss chard,
and it will feed you so much food from a very small space.
The next crop, which I'll also include as a group of crops
to start off in June,
is kind of the last chance to do all of your runner beans
and climbing poll beans or French beans.
This here is District Nurse, it's a heritage climbing bean,
and I'm popping it around this wigwam here.
And I like to start them in nice
kind of deep module tray cells,
these come from Containerwise,
because they do like and need
a lot of root space to get started with.
I would sow them directly,
however, voles and mice will always find a legume
planted directly in this garden,
hence why we start them off in modules like this.
The next crop is something I've been meaning to sow
for few seasons now, 'cause I grew it a few years ago
and I loved it and I kept on forgetting about it.
But, not this year.
I bought six seed packets of it to make sure
that I had enough,
and it's called celtuce, also known as stem lettuce.
And the thing that is so nice about this,
it separates it from what I found
when I grew it all those years ago,
was that it didn't want to seed as quickly as lettuce
and the stem was so nice.
It's kind of like a celery/lettuce hybrid.
And you could use the stem in stir-fries and all sorts.
And if there's one thing that's slightly funky
but you should try growing,
and you should definitely try growing it in June,
or sowing it, it's definitely celtuce.
Give it a try and let me know what you think.
If it sounds like I'm right next to a football stadium,
the farmer next door is moving all of the sheep
and it seriously sounds like a packed out Wembley Stadium.
But I'm just actually capturing and grabbing some
of these chive flowers because they're such a nice thing
to either sprinkle over salads
or you can do a vinegar infusion with.
And one of the other crops to sow in June
is actually turnips.
I'm not a massive fan of turnips,
but, if you are a little bit put off by turnips,
the best way to enjoy them
is to sow them round about now
and harvest them in about eight weeks time
when they're about the size of a golf ball.
The turnip-y flavor, it really isn't there,
but it's actually a really pleasant, refreshing,
crisp root crop that you can do quite a bit with.
The 15th must sow crop is actually dwarf French beans
or bush beans like I have in front of me here.
And this video will show you why you're not growing
enough of them in your garden this summer,
and also how quick and easy they are to sow and grow.