Kitchen Garden Magazine

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Undercover

Glorious July should be hot outdoors and hotter still when you work under cover. A well-filled polytunnel or greenhouse can feel like a jungle at this time of year so keep bulky foliage trimmed to allow air to circulate, and leave doors and windows open to avail of any cooling breeze. Spray overhead to cool down any plants that don’t like too much heat and damp down paths to keep air moist

Hot tip for the month

A polytunnel or greenhouse isn’t just for growing summer crops. It is perfectly possible to grow a wide variety of autumn and winter crops as well, but the secret is to start making sowings now. We aren’t just talking greens here, although spinach, spring cabbage and winter salad leaves do very well in a protected space.
Try Florence fennel for delectable winter bulbs; Swiss chard ‘Bright Lights’, gives vibrant coloured stems and early varieties of beetroot should grow small juicy roots for mid-winter. Try making a sowing of second-cropping seed potatoes in buckets outdoors.

Bring them under cover when space clears and temperatures fall, and you should have tasty new potatoes for Christmas day. If you intend to go on holiday in July and don’t have an enthusiastic garden minder nearby, leave sowing until August. You might get slower autumn crops, but at least seedlings won’t die for want of water while you are away.

Strawberries

Plants in pots under cover will finish cropping in late June or early July. Move them outdoors, but keep them in your sphere of care. Strawberries produce runners before they finishing fruiting and these should be pegged down into small pots to grow on next year’s stock.
Take runners from the best plants, rather than the worst producers, and all should bode well for early fruit in 2010.

Peppers

Sturdy well-grown plants will set fruit and should be bearing a crop of small peppers, as well as many more flowers, by the end of the month. There is no need to limit the number of fruit per plant and some can comfortably bear 20 to 30 peppers over the next few months. Green peppers are unripe versions of red ones. The choice is yours – pick them green if you like the taste, or leave them to ripen on the plant.

Sweetcorn

These really are thirsty plants so don’t stint on the water. Use a hosepipe, if possible, to deliver moisture right to the base of each plant. Tall stems will reach above head height. These produce tassels at the top and pale green silks at leaf joints where the cobs will grow. If grown outdoors, wind pollination occurs, but under cover you need to give plants a good shake to get pollen down onto the silks.
Don’t shake so hard that you break the brittle stems, but do make sure several plants get a chance to spread their pollen. If you have grown more than one variety, try to confine pollen spread to like with like. This can be difficult, but some varieties do not fill cobs well if cross-pollinated.

For much more advice, see this month's issue, available to buy online!

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