CHAPTER 8
June

June and July are mostly about doing a lot of watering, and harvesting and eating things. You’ll also need to do some thinning and pinching-out of various plants in June, to encourage them to grow better. Rocket and lettuce are also very prone to bolting right now, so you might be a bit short of salad leaves until the weather cools a little.

My Balcony at the Start of June

Plants growing:

Herbs: sage, mint, rosemary, bay, thyme, chives, oregano, basil, parsley.

Early dwarf peas now over and taken out; mangetout doing well.

Bronze arrowhead lettuce.

Rocket and ruby chard gone to seed; waiting for seed to mature to harvest it.

Mispoona nearly ready to be harvested.

Tomato plants outside in pots and starting to flower.

One very small pepper seedling recently moved outside.

Pot of carrots: first edible thinnings ready.

Box of potatoes.

Satsuma tree starting to bloom.

Seeds and cuttings:

Second pot carrots still not appeared.

Dill seedlings growing well.

Papalo seedling growing well.

One nasturtium has come up; no marigolds.

Courgette seedlings hardening off outside.

Miscellaneous Other:

• Alarming lack of worms – possibly attacked by ants?

Things to Do in June

• Plant out courgettes into full size pots.
• Plant out any remaining tomato or pepper seedlings (if you started any late).
• Succession sowing of some lettuce (not rocket, which bolts very quickly if sown in June).
• Sow microgreens.
• Pinch out tomato side shoots.
• Fertilise regularly.

Midsummer Problems

June weather can be a bit unpredictable in the UK, but the days are nevertheless visibly lengthening towards midsummer, and a lot of plants react to this by bolting (going to seed). Rocket is particularly notorious for this; don’t even bother to sow rocket in June as it’ll bolt as soon as it is big enough to eat. (The exception to this rule is if you’re growing it as a microgreen and harvesting it as soon as it has a couple of real leaves.)

If you do see green leafy plants starting to bolt (they’ll get suddenly much taller and start growing flower heads), you can get a bit more time out of them by pinching off the flower heads. This is very much a short-term solution, though, as they’ll just grow more heads. You may be better off letting them bolt, and saving seeds for any plants that will breed true. Rocket, coriander, and parsley are all worth saving seeds from. In the case of plants such as coriander, dill and fennel, the seeds themselves are also a nice crop.

Of course, some plants you actively want to encourage to flower – any fruiting plants need to flower before they can set fruit. This includes peas, beans, tomatoes and peppers (although early peas and beans will already have started to flower, and later ones are unlikely to do so until a little later in the season). Getting your tomatoes out and growing by the start of June will encourage them to get on with flowering, after which you’ll start seeing small tomatoes. You can also start using a potassium-heavy fertiliser such as comfrey tea to encourage flowering.

It’s also important to be aware, now it’s definitely summer, that if the weather is good, your plants will get thirsty fast.

The importance of water

For tomatoes, peppers, and other water-greedy plants, you may need to water daily over summer when it’s hot (especially if you have a south-facing balcony). Make a point of going out into your space daily (this is one of the reasons why you should consider, when planning, how enjoyable it will be to spend time in your space) to keep an eye on what’s going on, and to make sure that your plants aren’t suffering. Plants which seem to keep getting thirsty and wilting very fast may need a bigger pot – sage is usually tolerant of dry conditions, but I had to repot my sage seedling sooner than I’d expected as it was suffering from thirst. For the majority of plants, you should water before the plant starts showing signs of thirst, as that puts it under unwanted stress and may affect its production. Keep an eye instead on the soil moisture and water when that becomes too dry (although be aware that ‘too dry’ varies between plants). Self-watering containers will also help here, especially for tomatoes and other thirsty plants.

If the space allows it, a water butt with drainpipe diverter will help.

If tomatoes don’t get enough water, you may get blossom end rot (a large brown or black area on the bottom of the tomato). This is most likely to happen at the start of the season if a sudden hot spell hits and there isn’t enough water for the plants. If you see this, pull the affected fruit off and throw away. Blossom end rot can also be caused by too much water, so the soil should be damp but not soaking. Too much water, or irregular watering, can also cause the fruit to crack, although in this case you can still eat them, as cracking only affects the look, not the taste, of the fruit. Ideally, water well in the evening (if it’s really hot, in the morning as well); or use self-watering containers for the best results. It’s best not to water in the heat of the day as the water will evaporate faster, thus wasting some of your effort. You should also do your best to avoid getting water on the leaves of the plants if watering in the morning, as this can lead to the sun scorching the leaves.

If you don’t water potatoes enough, especially in the early stages when they’re setting their tubers, you’ll get fewer and smaller potatoes when you come to harvest them. Potatoes are best served by heavy weekly waterings rather than by little-and-often watering.

Thinning plants

Plants, once they’ve germinated, need a certain amount of room to grow, and you may find yourself needing to thin your seedlings out a bit. When thinning, think about how big you expect the leaves of your plants to get. If therer isn’t enough room between plants to spread their leaves out, they’ll grow tall, thin, and straggly, as they try to get enough light. They also need room for their roots to grow.Plants that are too close together will steal nutrition from each other. In practice, what tends to happen is that one plant in each group will start to do better, and the others will be stunted; but the strong plant could be even stronger if it weren’t competing with the others for sun, water, and nutrients.

Self-seeded basil seedlings growing underneath a bigger plant which I overwintered.

Having said that, it is entirely possible to grow plants at a closer spacing than is suggested on the packet. As with many of these things, the best bet is to experiment a bit and see how your plants do.

With some plants (e.g. carrots, rocket, and other salad leaves) you can eat the thinnings, which is nice as it increases your crop yield. With others, you’ll just have to stick the thinnings in the compost.

There are two basic approaches to thinning:

1. Sow to the desired density in the first place. This way, you won’t have to thin at all, so it saves effort; but if not all of your seeds germinate, you’ll have fewer plants than you wanted. It’s almost always a good idea to sow a couple of extra seeds. In my experience, the larger the seeds, the higher the germination rate – so sow more rocket seeds than you would courgette seeds.
2. Sow more than you want to end up with, and thin as the plants come up. This is more effort (although you still get some benefit if you can eat the thinnings) but your chances of getting the number of plants you want is higher.

Of course, you can also take a middle road; and as you get more knowledgeable about the plants you’re growing, you will have a better idea of the germination rate you can expect. I’ve tried to indicate which plants have particularly bad germination rates (e.g. carrots) or good rates (e.g. courgettes).

If you’ve sown very thickly, you’ll probably need to do a little thinning as soon as the seedlings come up. Take a pair of scissors, and carefully snip out the weakest seedlings from each group. Using scissors avoids upsetting the roots of the stronger seedling (the one you want to keep), which might affect its growth. With very tiny seedlings you can use a sharp fingernail.

For plants whose thinnings you can’t eat, you can thin straight to the desired spacing as soon as they’ve germinated (although you may want to leave a couple of extras in case something happens to the stronger seedlings). For plants where you want to eat the thinnings, thin to maybe half or even a third of the desired spacing on the first round, then leave them for a couple of weeks and thin again. With carrots in particular, the longer you can get away with leaving it the better; but if you wait too long, the plants that remain will not grow as large as they might.

This rocket may be slower to go to seed if you thin it a bit as it grows.

These lettuces are doing well so far but could definitely use thinning before they get any bigger. The thinnings will make a substantial salad!