June in the Garden By Russell Jordan

Vegetables in June

By Ashley Wheeler

Itend to like June as a vegetable grower. The pressure of Spring has subsided somewhat, most of the garden has been planted up and in some cases we are onto second plantings in some beds, and everything is looking lush and beautiful.

However, as always with veg growing it is important to continue making successional sowings to ensure consistent productivity later through the summer, autumn and winter.

This is important for salads, herbs and other crops like carrots, fennel, beets and chard.

We have been experimenting this year by undersowing crops with green manures and flowers, as well as sowing some of the paths with trefoil. The idea behind this is that rather than thinking of the paths as a bit of a nothing space that cannot contribute to the vegetable garden other than providing a space to walk on, we are attempting to have more plants photosynthesising. Therefore more root exudates are given out by the plants to provide food for microorganisms in the soil that in turn supply nutrients back to the plant after they have died. Many plants also form mycorrhizal associations, whereby the plants’ roots link up with hyphae of fungus and they mutually benefit one another. The hyphae of the fungus can in some cases penetrate the plant root and whilst the plant can give sugars and other carbohydrates to the fungus, the fungus can offer the plant access to more nutrients or water. This is a very simplified description of the relationship between plants and fungi, and the benefits can be far more complex such as increased pest and disease resistance for the plants when these mycorrhizal associations are made. So, by increasing the diversity of the plants in the ground, rather than simply growing a monocrop of one type of vegetable, these associations are encouraged more, and can be hugely beneficial to the vegetables that we are growing.

This, along with fewer and shallower cultivations mean that the build up of fungus in the soil will develop and continue to benefit future plantings.

In practical terms, planting lots of other plants around vegetables that we are growing is not always simple. Timing is critical, and we don’t want invasive weeds to overtake.

The undersowings will also need managing in some way to ensure that they do not compete too much with the vegetables for light, water and nutrients. We will mostly be using low growing plants such as trefoil, but also upright, but not bushy plants like buckwheat and linseed which will not reduce airflow too much around the vegetables. We will be mowing or strimming the paths to manage the trefoil, and also strimming some of the other plants before they seed too much. Other benefits that we can bring into this relationship is to plant or sow more flowers that encourage more pollinators and predatory insects into the garden. This will increase pollination of fruiting crops but also help to balance the garden in terms of keeping insects such as aphids and cabbage white caterpillars at manageable levels.

Chard is one of the vegetables that can be planted outside this month

It is sometimes easy to think that we must always keep everything in our gardens very neat and tidy and constantly hoe everything off other than the vegetables that we are growing. However, it’s worth considering trying some new techniques like undersowings of vegetables to encourage a more balanced environment. Whilst it is a learning curve and there are bound to be things that we try that don’t work so well, overall the benefits will really show through the health of the vegetables.

WHAT TO SOW THIS MONTH: purple sprouting broccoli & January King type winter cabbage (early this month), french beans, chard, beetroot, chard, carrots, basil, late cucumbers, kale, fennel, salad leaves - summer purslane, buckshorn plantain, salad burnet, lettuce, chicory (Treviso and Palla Rossa varieties early in the month, other varieties later), endive, mustards and rocket (mesh to keep flea beetle off), goosefoot, anise hyssop, amaranth, orache, nasturtiums.

WHAT TO PLANT THIS MONTH: OUTSIDE: Dwarf french beans, beetroot, squash and corn (if not already done), lettuce and salads, squash, runner beans, kale, chard, autumn cabbage INSIDE: climbing french beans, cucumbers, basil, salads - goosefoot, summer purslane

OTHER IMPORTANT TASKS THIS MONTH: Undersow squash with a mix of red and white clovers, yellow trefoil, and other cornfield wildflowers—this will help to fix nitrogen, but more importantly cover the soil and provide organic matter and living roots for soil organisms to benefit from.

THE award-winning West Bay Discovery Centre is currently featuring a new exhibition. Buried in Time, which tells the story of the area’s history through an amazing selection of fossils from the Jurassic era. West Bay itself, is situated around a third of the way along the ninetyfive miles of the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site. This stretch of coast’s unique value led to it being designated a World Heritage Site in 2001. As you move from west to east the rocks are generally younger. Between Eype and Burton Bradstock, they are between 185-165 million years old and were formed in shallow seas, much like the Caribbean of today.

Not all of the rocks contain fossils but the curiously-named Inferior Oolite limestone is the most astonishing demonstration of how a bustling ecosystem consisting of ammonites, belemnites, bivalves, brachiopods, sea urchins and sponges thrived in the warm waters and then was transformed into fossils. Amazingly it is thought that across the planet there were more than 10,000 individual species of ammonite, but not one persists today.

Fossil hunting in this area is not easy and best left to the experts but the Buried in Time exhibition contains a selection of high quality specimens loaned by expert collectors and the Bridport Museum, along with a recreation of the seabed from the Jurassic age. There is also a “touch table” of fossils to get closely acquainted with the look and feel of fossils and practice their fossil identification skills along with dinosaur and fossil colouring sheets to keep younger visitors entertained.

The Buried in Time exhibition is running at the West Bay Discovery Centre until the end of October 2022. Opening times, etc. can be found on the Discovery Centre website www.westbaydiscoverycentre.org.uk or on its Facebook page.