June 2024 Seeds weeds harvests

Photo above 1st June 2024, shows about half of Homeacres garden. Time input 100 hours weekly, sales were £860 in the last week of May.

This post published 2nd June is advice for the garden. Please sign up to my newsletter if you want emails with more information about No Dig and what is happening in the world. The latest newsletter is 1st June.

Speed is on!

Growth is now fast. Use every opportunity you can to keep up with any jobs you spot when out in the garden. A lot of summer gardening is reacting to what has happened, such as dealing with weeds. Remove or hoe them when small, see photo below.

June is also a month of delightful new harvests, such as broccoli, broad beans, peas, courgettes/zucchini, beetroot, and carrots. I'm especially impressed by the growth of my courgette plants, considering the lack of sunshine in May. I see it as testimony to the possibilities of super healthy soil, thanks to no dig.

My no dig online course has all the information you need, about starting right with your soil, and improving it. Vegetables are some of the most difficult plants to grow and healthy soil is vital.

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Succession sowing

In early June, I'm sowing beetroot in module trays, three seeds per cell and thinned to four plants per cell. These can be planted later say spring onions, or between lettuce. Then harvest any time from September and they potentially grow large, which is good for winter storage. In no dig soil with no fertiliser, they do not get woody.

I'm also sowing a few more carrots after many failures this spring, following slug damage. Transplants of all vegetables have survived well, but new growth from carrots seeded in the ground has often not survived. Carrot seedlings are small and weak initially.

Find many more summer sowing ideas in my Timeline.

Garlic

A major harvest in June, and once they are ready, it's best not to delay. Otherwise the outer skins start to rot and that allows soil to come into the bulb, between each clove. You are not waiting for the tops to go yellow or fall over, but if they do, it's best to harvest immediately! Otherwise outdoor harvests are around solstice time.

If you have any under cover space, it's worth growing a few garlic from October planting, to harvest this week if not already. The big advantage is less rust on leaves and larger harvests. Plus they grow in such small spaces because the leaves are so upright, and you can grow with them alongside almost any other winter plant that does not get too big.

Find more details in my Garlic Guide.

Slugs and snails

May has been difficult! Having spare transplants has helped, see video.
If it continues to rain in June, there will be even more of an explosion of molluscs, and that is hard work to deal with. Patrols at dawn or dusk with a knife are one way to keep the population lower.
Lay old wood on the ground and collect what you find underneath in the morning.
Beer traps work, but need constant maintenance.

The one thing I do not do is spread any slug pellets. These are poisonous to soil life and end up poisoning birds. Even the ones called organic have poisons holding them together, called chelates. Nematodes are an option that works but are very expensive and with obsolescence after six weeks, so I never use them either.
Habitat reduction is my choice.

New book

I'm excited to share with you that this book appears on 5th September, and here is a general pre-order link, or you can pre-order signed copies from me.

I worked closely with the publishers to distill my lifetime experience of making compost, into as few words as possible. There are no photographs, and some gorgeous woodcut images by Jonathan Gibbs. It's smaller than any of my other books except for Myths, I hope you will enjoy it.