15:15 - 08 July 2011
Sometimes space can be a bit limited in the summer greenhouse as the fruiting crops shoot up into the eaves, but make some room and you can keep sowing right through July and into August. Alternatively make use of cold frames or sow some seed direct into the garden soil.
Take advantage of the warm weather, the long days and the summer sunshine and sow plants that mature quickly or that bolt early in the season. Oriental greens and salads are a great choice for July and can be sown in pots and modules and harvested quickly. Typical mixes include mustards, Mizuna, pak choi, and rocket. Sow some outdoors and some on the greenhouse bench to get a succession of leaves. Many such as red mustard are hardy and can be harvested through the winter months. Sow pots or troughs with corn salad and land cress, these hardy salad crops are ideal for the winter greenhouse and will provide a steady supply of much needed salad and greens. Sow some beetroot in the greenhouse and outside. The greenhouse plants can supply a rich harvest of tasty red leaves for salads and stir-fries and the garden plants should still have time to fatten for a late harvest for soups and cakes and delicious baked beetroots.
Sow hot loving summer herbs such as coriander and basil, but don’t forget to sow some extra parsley too. You don’t need many of these richly fragrant herb leaves to make an impact on your cooking.
Keep sowing runner beans and French beans in the greenhouse and outdoors, especially if you have plenty of seed left over. They won’t start cropping until late August and September but provided we don’t have an early first frost you should be able to go on harvesting right into autumn.
Sow your spring cabbage now for planting out later and sow some chard in modules for planting out or greenhouse growing.
There are also plenty of flowers that can be sown now for next colour next season. Perennials and biennials such as foxgloves, sweet William, verbena, aquilegia, lupins and delphiniums can all be started in pots and modules in July.
Check out your seed store for other plants that can still be sown rather than buying fresh seed and push the boundaries a bit. There’s a lot to be said for late sown crops, even of things that should be sown until May or June, as you never know what the weather will do. When you have a greenhouse you have the luxury of bringing pots of plants undercover to extend their cropping and protect against cold weather and early frosts. Use up open packs of herbs, salads, spinach and chard, sow them thickly for salads, or thinly where they can mature into larger plants and then harvest them hard as often as possible. Freeze any excess in ice cube trays or make your own variations on pesto and stir in herb mixes for winter soups, pies and stir-fries. Use up this season’s seed sowing compost and sow garden harvested seed as well as shop bought seed. Collect and dry garden perennial seed that has set this season. Place it in small open envelopes labelled carefully and allow to dry out fully before storing somewhere cool dark and dry. Many of these plants will self-seed around the garden anyway, so mimic their wild activities, collect the seed and sow it into pots and modules now for plenty of plants next season. Good plants to grow in this way include foxgloves, aquilegia, cerinthe, lupins, hardy geraniums and alchemilla. They will be quite happy grown in pots in a coldframe or under the greenhouse bench.
