July
Weed.
God, it’s hot and miserable and the weeds are everywhere, and how are they everywhere when I’ve pulled them a billion times and I just weeded this spot yesterday and there is already more and …
Cut down on mowing.
If it’s hot and dry, cut down on mowing the grass. It will make your life better, and it will help your grass hold onto the water that is in the soil (which, in turn, will help it stay green). Don’t water the lawn, for the love of God.
Harvest and preserve.
Tomatoes are everywhere. The zucchini is so prodigious that you’re considering the very real possibility that it may be some kind of curse. Peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, okra, sunflowers, corn, basil, beans, potatoes — it’s all coming in now. It’s a great problem to have. Pickle, freeze, dry, can and preserve the harvest in any way you can.
Collect seeds.
If you left spring or early summer crops in the ground to go to seed, now is about the time that those seeds are ready to harvest. Once the seeds have been pulled, place the spent plants on the compost pile.
Add to and turn the compost pile.
Water the compost pile if it gets very dry; the fungi and bacteria that help compost rot need to be a little damp.
Sow late summer & autumn vegetables, herbs & biennial or perennial flowers.
I sow the first batch of my autumn vegetables and flowers in July, in the blank spaces created in the garden as spring and summer vegetables are pulled out. I sow my first succession of winter lettuce, kale, swiss chard, mustard, tatsoi, mizuna, arugula, turnip, beet, rutabaga, carrot, radish, pea, fava bean, broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. I also sow any last batches of summer crops, like bush or pole bean, summer squash, zucchini or cucumber.
Late July and early August are also the right time to begin sowing perennial or biennial flowers — which will grow through the fall, sit during the winter, and resume growth and bloom next year. Those flowers include snapdragon, foxglove, rudbeckia, poppy, echinacea, sea holly, sweet pea, milkweed and cosmos. Autumn-sown herbs include sage, lavender, rosemary, thyme, oregano and other hardy herbs, as well as quick-growing herbs like cilantro and parsley, which will mature before winter.
Deadhead flowers.