June

Pull bolted vegetables. 

Lettuce, carrots, radishes, broccoli, cabbage and brussels sprouts are beginning to bolt now. Unless you’re saving seed, pull the plants and free the area up for succession planting. Put the old plants on the compost pile. If you are saving seed, leave the plants where they are until the seed is dried … and collect them before they blow away. Not that I am speaking from experience. 

Harvest garlic & onions. 

The garlic you planted in October is ready to harvest now: whenever the stalks of the garlic begin to go brown and die back. For me, this usually happens in early June, and I pull the entire bed and replant it with sweet potatoes. The sweet potatoes are harvested in October, and the garlic goes back in. Spring-planted onions are usually ready around the end of the month. Again, their stalks will die back and fall over, and their bulbous tops should be visible above ground. When onions are ripe, they practically push themselves out of the dirt. 

Deadhead flowers. 

Most flowering plants will rebloom all summer if you continually deadhead the flowers. Cut off the spent blooms of roses, buddleia, lavender, zinnias, echinacea, sweet peas, and virtually any other blossom you can think of. Many plants will repeat flower until frost as long as you keep deadheading. 

Plant to fill holes in the garden. 

As plants begin to reach their full size, and as they’re blooming or gearing up for that, it’s easy to see the visual holes in the garden. Nurseries are filled with options, so plant to fill those gaps. If the weather is dry and hot, remember that new plants need water to get established. 

Prune plums and cherries. 

Plums and cherries shouldn’t be pruned in winter with other fruit trees. Prune them now, as needed. 

Harvest and preserve. 

Cool season plants are reaching their ends, and now is the time to harvest and preserve them. Enjoy the last of the spring cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, broad beans and other similar plants. You may also be getting the first of the summer harvest: early tomatoes, squash, beans, cucumbers, root crops, and greens. 

Sow beans. 

I sow green beans, shelly beans and dried beans now, rather than in April. This is considered off-season, but it helps me avoid the lifecycle of bean beetles, which are a huge problem here. If you haven’t already sown your beans, do it now. 

Weed. 

You missed a week, didn’t you? The weeds are two feet tall, aren’t they? I told you so. 

Ridge-up potatoes, leeks, and celery. 

The potatoes you planted in early spring need to be continually ridged up — a process by which soil is pulled up to cover the growing plants’ stems. When potato stems are covered with soil, they convert to roots and bulb out, creating more potatoes. A nifty trick, to be sure. Keep ridging up your potatoes. Ridging up leeks and celery blanches the plants, making them more delicious later. 

Turn, turn, turn the compost. 

The more you turn compost, the faster it will rot down. As it rots, add it to vegetable beds as old plants come out and new ones go in. Keep adding materials to the pile, and keep turning it. 

Force winter bulbs into hibernation. 

If you have amaryllis, paperwhite or narcissus bulbs that you want to bloom in December, now is the time to force them into hibernation. They should have spent their spring outdoors in a pot that has been upgraded with fresh compost, but now is the time to bring them onto a porch and stop watering them. Be cruel. The leaves will die and the bulb will go to sleep. In October, you’ll replant the bulb in its winter pot and begin watering it again, and with luck, it’ll be blooming at Christmas.