Make room in your kitchen for processing harvests. Growth accelerates rapidly in June with early spring crops ready to eat, warm-season crops sizing up, and plenty of planting to do.
Island gardens will soon be lush and brimming with food. I hope this month’s checklist helps you keep up.
Welcome to new readers!
Each month, I post a checklist with timely reminders tailored for our growing season on Martha’s Vineyard. You can learn more about my work and explore past posts here.
Keep supplies to manage pests and diseases stocked.
Make summer watering, however you do it, easy with your preferred gear ready.
Consider what crops will soon be coming out of your garden and what you might plant next in their place.
The window for planting cool season crops like peas and brassicas is closing for now until it reopens in late summer. If you’re thinking ahead to fall harvests, some of those crops do get started as early as June. Brussels sprouts, leeks, storage cabbages, and winter squash all need a long runway.
Direct sow:
All the warm season crops! Beans and cucurbits especially.
Succession plantings of greens, radishes, carrots, and beets.
Succession plant small batches of cool season herbs like dill and cilantro. Choose slow bolting varieties, harvest when they are still small, and keep sowing often to maintain a steady supply through the summer.
Basil. I recommend downy mildew resistant (a.k.a. DMR) varieties for a longer harvest season.
Fast growing flowers like sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, nasturtiums, calendula, and borage.
Transplant:
Tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and basil. Plant these warm season plants now for best results.
Plant out dahlias, whether you’re growing them from tubers or pre-sprouted
If you are transplanting cucurbits, handle their roots very gently.
Keep interplanting small quick-turnaround crops like radishes, herbs, scallions, and baby greens. These can still fit in among slower growers.
Keep labeling what you plant.
Water daily (unless there’s rain) and give your plants a nice deep soak once a week, especially fruiting crops. Try to water in the early morning to avoid fungal disease and set your plants up for a productive day of photosynthesis.
If a more specific benchmark is helpful: aim for at least 1” of water per week.
Avoid overwatering. If you are not present to manually pause irrigation when it’s rainy, make sure your automated system has a rain sensor or smart controller. Adjust the schedule if you notice your beds are soggy.
Keep up with weeding, always trying to get weeds before they go to seed.
Watch for signs of bolting in arugula, spinach, lettuce, cilantro, and dill. Take plants out when they’re done and don’t taste good anymore. You can put something else there and sow more anytime, anywhere during planting season.
Train climbing crops like cucumbers and pole beans up their trellises.
Prune and trellis indeterminate tomatoes about once a week.
I often recommend removing tomato flower buds for about a month after transplanting while your plants are still small. This might delay your first tomato harvest, but it helps the plant direct energy toward growing a healthy root system that will sustain a longer, more productive season.
Mid-June is time to side-dress granular nitrogen fertilizer, such as blood meal.
Fertilize heavy feeders like brassicas, squash, and tomatoes some more if you notice slow growth or pale foliage.
Pinch plants like basil, zinnias, and peppers to encourage bushier growth.
Hill potatoes.
Scout for pests, many of which are active in June.
This article from UMass Extension is a good quick reference highlighting some of the what and how of insect and slug/snail management.
Deadhead your flowers. This encourages them to keep flowering and helps avoid letting too many go to seed and become weeds. You know all those flowers that are easy to grow from seed? Most will self-sow easily, too.
Baby greens. Pick often to extend their season.
Radishes, beets, carrots
Broccoli and broccoli raab
Cabbages and bok choi
Spring onions
Kale
Kohlrabi
Mustard greens
Swiss chard
Snap peas and shelling peas—daily picking keeps them producing.
Garlic scapes. Pick once they curl for the best flavor and texture. The scape is the plant’s flowering stem and removing it results in bigger hardneck garlic bulbs. Softneck garlic varieties do not grow scapes.
Herbs, herbs, and more herbs.
Chervil is reaching the end of its season.
Rhubarb
Asparagus
Strawberries
Happy harvesting!
-Faren
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