Another week in June means another week filled with jobs to get done in the garden for thriving plants and lots of summer growth. This week on BBC's Gardeners' World, Monty Don says it's time to show your beet plants some love.
With so many June gardening jobs to complete this month, it's all too easy to forget about seemingly unimportant jobs like pruning your vegetables. Whether you're a professional gardener or have only just started vegetable gardening for beginners this year, it's all too easy to leave the edible plants to their own devices, but some will need a little attention this week.
So it's time to get your essential gardening tools at the ready, as Monty highlights, this time of year is when chards, spinach and beetroot tend to bolt. No, they won't grow legs and run away, fortunately, but they will grow a rather useless flowering stem. Here's what you need to do...
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If you don't have to worry about small garden tips and have more than enough space for a veggie patch, then you might be growing chards, spinach or beetroot. Even luckier, you might be growing all three.
"The beet family, which included spinach, chard and beetroot, have a tendency to bolt, that is, to produce a flowering stem in hot weather. But this can be remedied by cutting that bolting stem right down at the base of the plant," explains Monty.
"Don't just take the flowering head off, but cut it low, and that will mean that the plant can put all its energies into producing fresh new leaves," he continues.
Whilst there are a great deal of plants you shouldn't prune in summer, for other species, pruning can help promote growth, and for veggies, it can encourage your plants to become bushier and fuller with food.
Tending to your beets wasn't the only job Monty recommends getting done this week; he also points out that with the summer weather finally here (when it returns that is), your tree ferns will need a little help staying moist.
"Tree ferns thrive in mild, humid conditions, and when the weather is dry and hot, it often results in much smaller fronds. And this is true of many of the fern family. The answer is to water them daily when the weather is dry and hot," Monty recommends.
"Direct a stream of water at the trunk rather than the ground, and then turn the attachment to a mist, and water the air around them. And you'll find that tree ferns and many other ferns will thrive, whatever the weather," finishes Monty.
Of course, you might be wondering how to protect your garden from heavy rain more than anything these days, but when the hot weather does come back, you'll know just what to do to keep your ferns happy and healthy.
After watching Gardeners' World last week, we spotted a rather smart way of growing vegetables when you're lacking in space. It turns out that dwarf varieties are the secret to large bountiful harvests without the need for big plots of land, who knew?
