Handy tips for June - July

Plant onions and garlic. Sew seeds of broad beans, peas and English spinach. Dig over vacant veggie patches (unless you use a no-dig method) and add lime or dolomite if necessary. Let the heavy winter frosts break up any clods of soil.

If you haven't already pruned your deciduous fruit trees, do it now. Make sure you remove any shriveled up fruit remaining on the tree (potentially disease spreading), and either burn it or put it in the garbage.

Prunings should be chipped and composted for use as mulch, or taken somewhere, where they can be recycled in a similar fashion. Also rake up fallen autumn leaves for composting.

Now's the time to plant bare rooted deciduous fruit trees, and to transplant shrubs or small trees.

Never stop weeding and making compost.