If you’ve just got started gardening then it can be hard to know what to plant when.
Yeah, you might love the thought of a gorgeous rose garden, but if it’s the wrong month, you might just end up with dead leaves and flowers. Not so cute!
However, July’s the perfect month for planting due to its long, balmy days and nights and plenty of sunshine and some light showers providing the perfect conditions for plants to flourish.
It’s also the best time to start thinking forward to your autumn and winter garden, especially if you want to keep eating veggies into the colder months.
So, what should exactly should we plant in the garden in July?
Spring perennials
When it comes to growing flowers from seed, July is the ideal time to sow spring perennial seeds for next year. Seed and flowers website Thompson & Morgan recommend trying aquilegia x hybrida ‘McKana Giants Mixed’, bellis and delphinium hybridum ‘Magic Fountains Mixed’.
Hardy annuals
If you’d like bright, blooms to last through the summer, fill your gaps, beds, borders and pots with poppies, cornflowers and annual grasses that will start to thrive if you sow now. Mixing flowers with grasses is a great way to add different textures and colours.
Hardy, yet beautiful geraniums are great for any summer garden, and are happy to grow in most soil conditions.
If you deadhead in early summer then they’ll give you more blooms into late summer and even into autumn.
Forget-me-nots can be sprinkled directly into the soil through July and even into autumn months, too. When the seedlings are large enough to handle, thin them out to encourage stronger growth and water them, but make sure they’re not too waterlogged.
Veggies
For a flourishing veggie garden in autumn and winter, turn your focus towards sowing these vegetables now…
- Spring cabbages
- Turnips
- Oriental vegetables
- Chicory
- Fennel
- Autumn and winter leafy greens
The garden experts at Thomson & Morgan also recommend starting pickling cucumbers indoors by early July, to transplant outside later. “Pick the fruits when small and expect to start harvesting in late summer,” they say.
Pots and baskets
Basil ‘classico’ can be started in pots now to get to a good, healthy state before bringing indoors and enjoying in your cooking throughout winter — delicious.
Other fast-growing herbs like coriander, dill, and parsley can be planted directly into the ground or into containers, and harvested later in summer and popped in the freezer to last you.