058: What To Do In Your June Garden

June is a key month for both planting and prepping your garden for the season ahead! In this episode, we cover:

✅ Last-Chance Summer Crops – Get those tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, and squash in the ground before it’s too late!
✅ Direct Seeding Tips – Fast-growing flowers, root crops, and herbs you can still plant now.
✅ Succession Planting for Greens – Keep the harvest going with broccoli rabe and Napa cabbage.
✅ Carrot Germination Hack – A simple trick to keep seeds moist and improve sprouting.
✅ Biennials & Perennials to Start Now – Why June is the perfect time to plant hollyhocks, lupins, and black-eyed Susans for next year’s blooms.
✅ Flower & Herb Must-Haves – Pollinator-friendly, edible, and medicinal varieties to grow this summer.

🌱 Whether you're catching up or planning ahead, this episode will help you maximize your June garden! Tune in now.

📩 Questions? Email me at homegrownfoodandflowers@gmail.com

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Transcript

(0:01) hello hello and welcome back to organic gardening for beginners my name is Jessica and this is the show to help you get going in your garden even if it is your first second third or Beyond with a very minimal and stress-free style organic all the way sustainable keep it going low input and have a good time out in the garden it is beginning of June which as always means it's time for our what to do in the garden this month episode and this one is a little bit of a mix of planting stuff getting things in the ground as well tackling a few
(0:37) little tasks or projects that are either going to apply right now or will set you up for success in the future such as your fall Garden so we're going to start off with make sure you're getting the last of your summer crops into the garden if you've been Dilly dallying or busy something died or whatever the case this is the month to get those things in ground June is still a good month to plant crops like your um squash beans cucumbers some of your flowers I'll go into those in a second but if you are going to plant tomatoes or Peppers
(1:15) eggplants I would definitely suggest that you find a Seedling or plant start for those it is too late to start from seed right now unless you are I suppose living in a very long growing season or you plan to grow them Undercover into the fall because a lot of those Nightshade summer crops like tomatoes and peppers need a very long growing season so you should still be able to find seedlings out at all the nurseries at some of your grocery stores or the Farmers Market you can even check your local Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace
(1:48) um I've seen tons locally of tomato seedlings for sale uh as well Peppers it plant all that good stuff so start keeping an eye out for that get those transplanted right away if you haven't yet for your direct sewing I already mentioned beans and cucumbers zucchinis and squash those are all very fast Growers very fast germinators so no need to buy those from seedling unless you need to skip that step for whatever reason uh and those things will sprout in fiveish days if you direct s them in the garden so you are not too
(2:20) behind on those for myself my own garden um I am also experimenting with starting a new crop of Napa cabbage and broccoli Rob specifically because we eat a lot of those in my family and all my spring crops are mature right now and we are ripping through them uh and I don't want to get through them all in a month or so and then have nothing left so typically broccoli family crops like head broccoli or cauliflower stuff like that is more of a spring crop because it tends to not do so well In The Heat Of Summer and with Summer pests but for
(2:56) this I'm specifically growing broccoli Rob which is not meant to make a head instead it produces a lot of chuts and uh side stems with little mini florettes on it so that uh it's less likely to bolt in the summertime and for the Nappa cabbage who knows I've never grown Nappa cabbage in the dead of Summer it's always been a fall or a spring crop for me but we love it and so it's totally worth triing it and if it doesn't work or bolts whatever then I'll either toss it in the compost or I can feed it to my animals
(3:30) if you haven't yet planted or want to do another round of then you can still get a lot of root crops going such as beets or carrots radishes are pretty much good to grow any time of year because they grow so quickly for your carrots depending on your watering system and your sun exposure this can be a time where germination is a little bit tricky because your soil is going to dry out just a little bit faster if your garden is in full sun uh so just keep an eye on moisture for those so that there's not a dried out crust on the top
(4:05) of your bed and those seeds can actually push through as they germinate one trick that a lot of people use is to sew your row of carrot seeds and then put a board on top of them something like a 2x6 or 1x6 to keep it protected and cool until those seeds germinate one thing that you do have to do like religiously do is go out and take off the Slugs that are going to congregate under there because just like the carrot seeds they enjoy that damp cool environment in the sunny weather and they could likely eat your carrot seedlings as they pop up now
(4:45) carrots are a strong flavored foliage the leaves so they might leave them alone but that's not a gamble I want to take if I'm waiting a couple weeks for these carrot seeds to germinate the last thing I want is for a bunch of slugs or snails depending on where you live to come along and eat them so keep that in mind but your beet should come up just fine your radishes should do just fine even as it's warming up for flowers there are still a ton you can direct sew and that means planting them straight in the garden not transplanting them from
(5:17) seeds you started indoors or bought as a start and so we're looking at Cosmos and sunflowers zenas nestum you can also plant nerum darn near any time of year colula and marold are two other very quick maturing easy to start from seed flowers that are good no matter where you plant them when plant them they are just great beneficial attractors and pollinator attractors and they're both edible so you can always eat them and culas are medicinal uh for several things having to do with skin like you can make a Sav
(5:51) or a balm out of them so I've got ton of Cula right now so I can dry flower heads for fall gifting and projects stuff like that you can still transplant a lot of things as well if you are finding them out in the nurseries or Farmers Market Snap Dragons blacke Susans eona status scabiosa um you might find a holly Hawk that got started really early or loopin that might Bloom for you this year Holly Hawks and um Lupin tend to be either bials or perennials meaning that they bloom their second year and then in the
(6:29) case of penal they come back from year to year whereas a banial typically only lives 2 years but if you can find them as plants chances are you'll get some flowers this summer if you don't find those seedlings and you want to have those in your garden this is actually a great time to start them either right out in the garden or you can start them indoors and then plant them out later and by indoors at this point I wouldn't even bother with a light setup or you know anything indoors I would honestly just fill some sixpacks that you have
(7:01) left over or a little pot yogurt container and then just put it in a protected area outside like your back porch or the overhang of your garage something like that where you can kind of keep an eye on it and make sure that gets watered but you don't need that artificial environment that you might have created in February when you were starting your tomatoes because obviously your weather is very different right now but to get back the original point the reason for starting your Holly Hawk your Fox gloves black eyed Susans um
(7:32) loopin the reason you'd want to start them now is to give them the summer time to grow then they'll over winter and then they will Bloom for you nice and early next season so you would let them grow for a few months this summer transplant them I would say August September depending on how big the plant is if this you're growing them uh in pots and that way they can overwinter do their thing and then Bloom next year this is what I'm doing for a lot of Holly Hawk and blacke Susan I've already got some eonia started actually um so
(8:07) that way I can just kind of let them grow on the back burner and not have to start them super early next year and still get flowers next year and I don't want to forget about my herbs because they always get kicked to the bottom of the list um for direct sewing herbs cilantro and basil are still totally good to go especially basil it's going to bloom for you not produce you all summer long cilantro you're probably get a good harvest off of it and then it will bolt or go to seed because cilantro does not appreciate the
(8:35) summer heat so if you plant your cilantro and after maybe a month two months Max I would say you start to see it sending up a tall stock from the middle and forming white flowers that means your plant has gone to seed which isn't a terrible thing because those seeds are what we in the States called coriander and you can eat them cook with them they are delicious in Indian style dishes or Chutney you can save them and plant for next year the flowers before those seed pods develop um are very attractive to ladybugs in my experience butterflies
(9:12) and bees to a lesser extent but man the ladybugs just go nuts for them uh I've seen that year after so I always let my cilantro go to seed once the warm weather um kind of comes in and I know I'm not going to get a whole lot of harvest off of that cilantro even if I snip off that flower stock for other herbs parsley you could start now it also needs a long cool germination so I would either try that board style that I mentioned with the carrots or start it inside find a plant other herbs that are a little bit
(9:45) slower growing at this point I would probably try to find a Seedling like thyme or Rosemary definitely something like lavender Sage you could start from seed it's kind of like the parsley just know that it's going to take a while before it's big enough to harvest from or find a Seedling and toss that into your garden all righty and then away from planting one tip I want to give you is this is the perfect time to start new garden beds these garden aren't necessarily meant for you to plant in right now but rather you are building
(10:18) for future Garden space so two ways that I like to do this and one is I actually just did this last weekend I think it was and that is a lasagna Style garden bed where you put down cardboard and then a bunch of material that is totally dependent on what you have hand so for me I laid down the cardboard I use the litter from my chicken coup so the straw the chicken manure dirt you know whatever came up from the CPE floor and then um I put in some kitchen scraps like just you know our kitchen carrot Peels and potato peels stuff like
(10:57) that and then I covered all that with with some raised bed mix that we used to fill our ra raised beds earlier this spring and then on top of that I put a layer of wood chips to stop it from just becoming a weed bed immediately and I'm going to let that sit for a couple of months especially since I have that fresh chicken manure in there I'm not going to plant in it right away because that would be too hot if I had aged chicken manure then I would have put that bed together and then just planted in it right away and the plants can grow
(11:29) while everything is decomposing and the cardboard will break down so the roots can go right through into the native soil and I find it to be a very easy way to to create new Garden space if you don't have chicken litter or you know um what's it called the Aged compost from Craigslist or wherever then you can do it with grass clippings cardboard leaves if you happen to have any leftover from last fall and then as your last layer put your soil whether that's some garden soil from elsewhere or bags of potting mix or you know say
(12:06) you got a bulk delivery of raised bed mix and you got some leftover then if you don't want to wood chip it right away or cover it with some other sort of mulch a great way to help all that material breakdown quickly is to plant a cover crop and cover cropping is its own science in a way and I'm not pro at it but I do like to use buckwheat as a super super low maintenance and easy to handle cover crops so build your lasagna style bed and instead of wood chipping it for mulch sprinkle your buckwhat seeds over the top of it and let those
(12:40) Sprout it will grow oh maybe 2 feish tall and it will produce a ton of white flowers that the bees love and it is a frost sensitive crop so once your fall Frost comes around it's going to die back and you can just leave it in place all winter long the roots are going to decompose in the soil the top Greenery is going to decompose in the weather and it won't all like disappear or anything but come springtime all you have to do is pull those dead stocks and flowers to the side pop in your transplant and let it
(13:15) grow up and around that buckwheat mulch that is in place I wouldn't recommend direct sewing unless it were something like you know a zucchini plant or two little bean plants but I wouldn't go and direct sew you know a line of lettuce or radish or something like that because they have to kind of fight their way through the leftover buckwheat Greenery um but that's a great way to have your bed ready for planting next spring while doing very little work uh you basically just have to put it together so it keep watered and then
(13:49) really just walk away let nature help you out on that and then next one up is make sure your trellises and your drip irrigation are in place now if that's what you're going to use this season so I mentioned this I think a couple of episodes ago if you plant something and you tell yourself I'm going to come back tomorrow or next week or whatever to put in the trellis if you're anything like 99% of us you're going to forget or say yeah next week yeah next and next thing you know have this big Tangled mess of cucumber vines or
(14:23) sweet PE vines or snap peas whatever it is and you can't really get the trellis in there anymore so if you got your stuff in the ground get your chuses or your steaks or tomato cages whatever they are up around those plants before they get too big if have tendrils they're going to start grabbing on to themselves and squishing their leaves and it just becomes a bigger pain in the butt than it's worth as opposed to just getting it done now and this is the same for drip irrigation weaving around plants is a pain enough I love
(14:52) drip irrigation I hate figuring out all the Angles and the corners you know know is this plant covered and so when you are digging around scratchy zucchini plants or your lettuces that have gotten really big it's just even more timec consuming to do it as opposed when they are small plants and you can clearly see where your garden bed is and where you're going so get those done now don't dilly dally it just makes more work later and then as always I would be remiss if I didn't add make sure you've got everything mulched even if you're in
(15:27) containers or pots hanging basket gets everything can benefit from a layer of mulch um I as always love to put down my wood chips because they hold in so much moisture and they block weed so effectively and I can get them for free from my local arborists um but use whatever you've got as I mentioned before grass clippings is a great um backyard source for mulch do it before your grass goes to seed otherwise you will potentially be just just be planting grass seed in your containers um and that will take care of
(15:59) weeds water retention it'll help moderate not moderate mod modulate regulate there we go regulate the soil temperature of your containers especially if they're smaller and it helps build organic matter over the season all righty so keep in mind that June is kind of the lull Season before your Harvest start to really kick in in July and especially August if you are going to be doing canning or anything like that you know how busy those months can get so this is a good month to do any of those tidy up chores that have kind of been sitting
(16:36) around and you know keep saying you'll get to them um or maybe you're spending less time in the garden to focus on other things to kind of prep for those busier months when you constantly have fresh tomatoes and you constantly have zucchinis and the weeds that didn't get mulched or escaped you or whatever are getting big and need to be dealt with so take June as kind of your get it done month that's what I find best um oh yes and then the last thing I wanted to mention is last year moved in June which if you've been with
(17:06) me since the beginning you know this but the reason I bring it up is if you are moving this month or maybe you just moved into your new house apartment whatever don't feel like your chances of a garden are totally shot for this summer because there's still plenty of time you know as I mentioned in this whole episode there's lots you can direct sew there's lots you can transplant and even if you know literally picked up your keys today and you can't get to your garden for a couple more weeks that's okay there's
(17:34) still plenty you can do especially if you take advantage of finding seedlings that should still be available maybe you get them now and you just kind of baby them along until you can get them in the ground or you wait and look for them in a couple weeks but all of those warm season crops find seedlings for those you can transplant not direct so as I again already mentioned zucchini cucumbers basil even kale K does really well in the summer heat tolerant spinach or lettuce nsta marold you can find seedlings for chives and
(18:07) oregano those Tomatoes Peppers um so get it in the ground as soon you can but don't feel like just because it's June you have missed your opportunity to be able get a garden going I did it last season a very quick summer garden and then I shifted my focus to my fall garden and it worked out um even you know moving during a less then ideal time so all right guys get out there have fun talk to you later bye