Allotment Jobs for June

It’s time to enjoy the first harvests such as early potatoes, broad beans, peas and ripening strawberries. The risk of frost diminishes this month and crops such as beans and squash can be planted out or sown direct. The need for weeding and watering the allotment will increase as the weather warms, mulching the soil with organic matter will help to conserve moisture and keep weed numbers down.

Jobs that can be carried out this month:

• Plant out beans, courgettes, squash, pumpkins and sweet corn after hardening off
• Tomatoes can be moved to their final position, pinch out side shoots on cordon varieties
• Snap off onion and garlic scapes (flower spikes) as they appear
• Keep the hoe and watering can busy!
• Place straw underneath strawberries to keep them off the soil and net before they turn red
• Make June the last month to harvest your rhubarb, allow it to rest
• Pinch out the tips of broad beans to discourage or control black fly
• Tie in runner beans as they grow
• Plant out kale, cabbages, Brussels sprouts and sprouting broccoli
• Plant a herb bed
• Ventilate the greenhouse
• Transplant or ‘dib in’ leek seedlings once they’re the width of a pencil.
• Weed in-between onions and garlic
• Pot up strawberry runners
• Cut out flower spikes from the middle of rhubarb crowns
• Check support for summer raspberries, blackberries and other hybrid berries, tie in canes.
• Thin out crowded raspberry canes if you didn’t do it last month
• Plant out sunflowers and other half-hardy flowering annuals
• Thin carrot seedlings
• Harvest crops when ready and enjoy!

Some vegetable seeds to sow this month:

• Florence fennel
• Swedes and turnips
• French and runner beans
• Carrots
• Pumpkins and winter squash
• Continue sowing beetroot, radish, salad leaves, kohl rabi and leaf veg such as chard
• Early purple sprouting broccoli
• Winter cabbage