July 2021
Here we are, in the height of summer. The sun is still high, the gardens are a riot of color, and typically it is quite hot (although we have started the month with cooler temps a quite a bit of rain). If you go off a calendar, it will tell you summer has just really begun, but to me, this is high summer. The days are still stretching out long before us, the sun still high over head, radiating heat down upon our bare skin that compels us to jump in the nearest body of cold water. July is sunshine and heat, tall sunflowers, extra watering in the garden, a lot of harvesting, swimming, and lingering out in the garden late in the last of the evening light.
July marks another moment of transitions in the garden. May and June have a cool lightness to them, all the new green growth, the early season flowers, the every lengthening days, the warm weather and the still cool nights. Everything is rushing with growth in late spring speeding toward summer. But there is softness too, along with the growing excitement and the racing energy. But July is not soft, it is bold and sultry. In my garden, bold and richly colored blooms rule the month, zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers, dahlias, roses, snap dragons, calendula, echinacea, rudbeckia, etc. The veg garden and the soft fruit orchards are bursting too, a time of harvest and feasting stretching out before us.
Harvest, harvest, harvest, that is our montra in July. There is a constant flow, weeding, watering, deadheading, cutting back, harvesting, reseeding and replanting. But also as July goes on we begin to feel it, the sunlight a little less each day, the sense that summer’s end is on the horizon, maybe not near, but an eventuality. I don’t know about you, but sometime mid month I feel the intense need to really savor these moments, the long warm days and to squeeze all the goodness of a summer day out of every moment, because we know that it will slip away.
But let us not talk about that, because we are still firmly in summer, with all the beauty and bounty it has to offer. So, here are some jobs for the garden this month, what we chip away at in our own gardens and what you could do in yours.
Jobs for the Garden
Cutting Back Early Perennials
Earlier flowering perennials can be cut back now. Right now I am in the process of cutting back our lupines in the front sloped meadow garden. They have already gone to seed, and now the old leaves are growing brown and frankly they are just a bit sad. When you cut back their old leaves and flower stalks you will see a flush of new grow already coming out of the base, cut back the lupine hard and let this new growth come up and replace it. Doing so will allow to see all the weeds that have popped up and give you a little space to stand in the bed and weed. You can also add new plantings to fill the space that will give you a later season interest.
Another plant I am beginning to cut back is my catmints. Most of mine are still looking good, but some have already gone out. If you give your catmints a really good haircut after it finishes flowering, cutting the plant down to around 6” high, you will encourage a new flush of growth that will replace the old rather quickly as well as a second flower later in the year.
Give your herbs a hair cut
As I walk around the garden, I see all the spot we have herbs growing, many are still in flower, but many are done flowering. If you give your kitchen herbs (thyme oregano, sage, etc) a good haircut now, cutting back and reducing the plant by around 1/3rd (or more, depending on how it looks), you will encourage it to put on a flush new growth, instead of growing woody. I have found that a haircut now, means I can take a big harvest of my herbs for drying in the fall.
Tomatoes
If you are growing tomatoes out in your garden, they should be growing strongly now. So vigorously in fact that I have to prune and tie them up multiple times a week. It is I supposed a somewhat mundane task, but I really enjoy it. I think I have mentioned before about my love of hiding away in my tomatoes, quietly and hopefully without disturbance, pruning and tying them to canes, a solitary meditative process. My family can attest, I am prone to a certain amount of crankiness if interrupted in this task, a sort of garden induced character flaw I suppose.
Again, I grow mine as cordons, which means I grow them up a stake and I pinch off side shoots. This allows me to grow them closer together and to keep them propped up against the wind. I also find it is helpful to prune off all the lower foliage. This both help reduce blight and it helps clear away the foliage that covers the clusters of fruit, which in turns helps them ripen better.
Potted Plants
As the summer gets on, don’t forget about your potted plants. With the sun and warm weather they are prone to dry out much faster than in ground plants. I tend to water mine daily, but that depends on the rain, and if it is sunny vs. overcast. In extreme heat, they may need twice daily watering. The best way to tell if they need water is to actually put your hands in the soil and feel it, does is feel dry, moist, wet? If you do find yourself with a sad bone dry potted plant, you will need to plunk the pot in water to sit, a bucket or trough or anything large enough to contain it to rehydrate it. If you try and water a pot that has gone very dry, you will find the water will just run right through, so soaking is only method at this stage. You will also want to fertilized your potted plants. My goal is weekly, but if it is only biweekly then I feel happy too. Plants don’t have access to a wider amount of nutrients in the a pot, and once they deplete the soil, there is not anything left for them, so fertilizing them will keep them well fed. I go with either a seaweed fertilizer or a bloom / fruit feed that is higher in potash (I generally use Neptune’s Harvest).
Comfrey Tea
I did in fact brew comfrey tea to use as a fertilizer. And here is my feedback. Don’t brew is anywhere near where people are, the smell is of some sort of dead animal and it is strong. I actually though there was a dead rotting animal somewhere, but I quickly found out it was just my comfrey tea. So for now, we have move back to cutting the comfrey down and laying leaves in the garden to decompose and add nutrients. I will probably make the tea again, but not until I find a location that is suitable to is fragrance.
Raspberries
I think I can say with reasonable confidence that my raspberries are my favorite fruit I grow. I just don’t know if any thing can beat a summer raspberry, warm, sweet, just bursting in your mouth with an intensity of flavor. Our black raspberries are the cream of the crop for me. We eat a good deal of them fresh, but we also try to freeze a lot of them for use on yogurt or oatmeal in the winter. They tend to be very popular with whoever comes over to the garden, everyone is drawn to them.
Gooseberries and Currants
We grow an immense amount of these. Largely it started because we read that they would be productive even in part sun and then they were easy for me to propagate through layering and cuttings. So what started out as 6 plants or so has grown into many many more. Really we have more than we can get to harvesting, so the birds do get to enjoy some, but we like the birds so feel good about that barter. But we try and harvest all we can, we reserve a large bowl in the fridge for fresh eating and we freeze as much as we can for jams, baking, and what not all the long winter. Some of our varieties are finishing the fruiting, while others are still going strong, but by the end of the month this will be done fruiting and will be time for the next job.
After yours have finished fruiting, it is a good time to prune. You can reduce the shrub by up to 1/3rd of the plant. The goals is to keep an open structure that allows plenty of light and air circulation and to maintain the size and shape. I have been very remiss in this task as of late, I didn’t prune at all last year, but you know, it was all ok this season. But I do think now is the time to make up for it, setting myself up to have a good harvest next year. So my promise to myself is to get out there and do it at the end of the month.