Head gardener Benjamin Pope and gardener cook Aaron Bertelsen is here to make sure your garden looks great all year round. Here they explain the things you should be sowing and planting in the hot month of July - there's more than you might think!
Don't miss our suggestions of the best flowers in July, what gardens to visit and the gardening jobs for the month.
What to sow and plant in July
With summer in full swing, it’s easy to be seduced by the abundance of flowers and produce. Though as a gardener my mind looks to the seasons that will soon follow.
Sow wallflowers
Now is a good time to start off wallflowers for early spring interest, sowing in seed trays or modules before planting in the ground – where I find they mature better into healthy, strong plants than if grown on in pots – and then transplanted to containers in late winter. For bright and bold combinations, I go for cultivars, such as ‘Scarlet Bedder’, ‘Sugar Rush Purple Bicolour’ or ‘Sunset Orange’, though the softer ‘Sunset Apricot’ and ‘Sunset Primrose’ are charmingly sophisticated.
Runner beans, salad leaves, radish, turnips and carrots
For the plate, another sowing of French or runner beans, along with salad leaves, radish or turnips will prove fruitful this season, though looking ahead I start to sow fast-maturing carrots, such as ‘Nantes 5’ and winter-cropping endives and kales. Sowing chard ‘Bright Lights’ now will provide both colour and nourishment through winter, while onion ‘Rossa lunga di Firenze’ can be cropped early as a spring onion or will swell and stand through winter to be used for delicately flavouring dishes.
Benjamin Pope
Turnips
Along with peppery salad greens, turnips are ideally suited to a high summer sowing, as they too are popular with flea beetle. In the past, they were often dismissed as cattle food, but now – rather like my beloved pumpkins – they are having a moment in the limelight and I for one am very happy about this. They are particularly delicious when young and tender, so sow them regularly and harvest when they are just a little bigger than a golf ball. I like to roast them whole, tossed in a little olive oil and salt.
I find turnips do best sown direct. Sow thinly – I pour some seeds into the palm of one hand and use the fingers of the other to pick up a small pinch and sprinkle it on to the soil, trying to avoid the seeds clumping together. Water regularly and consistently to stop the roots from splitting. Try to avoid sowing
turnips in the same soil as last year, as they are susceptible to club root, a soilborne disease. A four-year gap is ideal, if you can manage it. Alternatively, they will do very well in a good-sized pot, but you must be diligent about the watering.
Aaron Bertelsen
Here's more on great flowers to plant this month
