July is the month for filling the gaps in your vegetable beds, waiting for harvests and buying seed for sowing July to August for Autumn and winter vegetables.

This year we are having a mild summer in the UK, with periods of rain and very short periods of heat up to 30 degrees centigrade. We have noticed a lot of ladybirds around this week and spiders eating all the blackfly on our sweetcorn and beans.

Vegetables that have finished since End of June

Out with the Peas

Pea Avola and Pea Twinkle had both finished with pea pods that were sown in March. When pea start producing pods it’s normally 3 weeks until the plants start looking straggly.

Radish Harvest

Under the A Frame set up for the Dwarf peas above I sowed Radish and Rocket. The rocket bolted and was left for the bugs and othe radish has now been harvested so all has been removed.

Plugging the gaps with Lettuce and Spinach

In the Pea and bean bed, the old peas have gone and in their place I’ve put some lettuce and Perpetual Spinach plants that I had grown on in the greenhouse. I liked the Dark Rogan lettuce so much I managed to sow another plant in June and I sowed Marvels of 4 Seasons lettuce which is a butter head lettuce and can be harvested from June to November. These plants went in the gaps and after a few days, are growing strong.

We have Carrots

With all the Cucumber mini munch harvests we have have made daily, we had forgotten about the carrots. They took along time to get started but apparently they are better when you forget about them.

Carrot variety ‘Milan’ was sown in Mid March directly into the raised beds. They have produced a decent sized orange carrot. My daughter sowed rainbow carrots for the first time and her crop was good too.

More Lettuce Harvests

The lettuce Romaine variety have bolted and so has the black seeded Simpson. We are trying to eat it all but we have found a work colleague who has a tortoise who is now getting the loose leaf lettuce.

Roasted Lettuce

The romaine lettuce will be now be roasted by cutting the head in half (top to bottom) and with olive oil and salt and pepper roasted in the oven for 10 minutes. A great addition to this is tomatoes (if you have any red ones yet) and garlic to roast with it.

First Broccoli of 2023

Calabrese ‘Kabuki F1’ was sown in late March, planted out in late May in a cage with netting over it to avoid the cabbage white butterflies.

I planted 3 plants in the 1 metre by 1 metre aluminium pole cage. The reason I can plant them so close together is the are a compact variety. Just right for our household as one broccoli head is enough for 3 of us for one meal.

We had to cut the first head a little early but as you can see below, it looked like it was trying to flower. It’s best to cut them before they do this. Tell tale signs are: clusters turning yellow and clusters raising up above others in the head. There’s two more heads coming on two more plants that look more dark green.

More Ball Courgettes Harvests

I am loving having these ball courgettes. So far two plants are serving us well with one to two courgette balls per week.

In the kitchen – I have been slicing them with the skin on and just frying in oil and butter with a bit of garlic, salt and pepper until they have a bit of colour of them in the pan. It’s the simplest way to eat them and you can taste the freshness.

Squash – Summer Breeze (Petty Pan) is on its way

The yellow flying saucers are on their way and almost ready! I am excited as I’ve not grown these before or eaten them.

French Beans are coming

I do love green beans fresh from the garden, this variety is called Sprite and were sown in late April and planted out in late May. They have been a little slow getting settled in the raised beds but are now producing beans.