9 Productive Vegetables to Sow This June Pack Your Garden with Food

Hello and a very warm welcome back to the garden. Now it is June, but the sowing season is far from over. But I didn't want to overwhelm you. with 25 odd crops that you can sow this month. Instead, I thought I'd focus in on kind of nine crops And throw in a few herbs and flowers in between. And these are just focused on what grows quite quickly. to help fill your garden with food. Now I've got some runner beans here. that have kind of run away from me And I'm just going to tease them back. onto their own individual bamboo supports. And the thing about runner beans or climbing beans, like French climbing beans, June, you still have time to separate them. They grow so quickly, and sometimes it's nice. Sometimes people might look at their garden and think, You know what, everything feels a little bit two-dimensional, Everything's a little bit flat. That's exactly why I create these structures. to grow beans, but also tall-growing peas up just to add a bit more visual interest. So you can, because the soil is nice and warm, you can either sow them directly, a few beans at the base of each pole and then thin down to the strongest, Or you can start them off in modules and transplant them. And they make such a nice difference to the garden. Naturally, as we had just started filming, It decided to rain. So in the shelter of the polytunnel, I thought I might as well give you one of the herbs. that you can also sow in June. This is not counted among the nine vegetables. This is coriander that is flowering. And it is just so beautiful. Look at how delicate it is, how frothy it is. Actually, we have this growing against an apricot. And you can see the height. This is like a six-foot-tall coriander. Because you have to take into account the fact that it's also in a bed. Actually, some of it is taller than that. But coriander grows really quickly. I let it bolt and you can just see in here, You've got the little green coriander seeds. that are beginning to appear. And these are these amazing kinds of very citrusy, coriander-like crunch to add to all sorts of dishes. It smells wonderful and is also brilliant. for beneficial insects If we can encourage those into the garden, They can assist with our pest control. It's a eager shower, So let's look at one of the flowers instead. And this here is nasturtium, probably one of the fastest-growing flowers that you can plant. The slight issue with that is that this nasturtium is beginning to take over the tomato beds, which is not a bad thing. I can just pull or snap off some of the stems. just to make sure there's a little bit for some breathing room for this tomato to come through. And once this tomato reaches a certain height, It doesn't matter if this nasturtium occupies as a ground cover underneath. But nasturtium is brilliant for bumblebees. and it has a very peppery, fiery taste to it. You can also eat the leaves. So a great thing to start off in June. I think Bob the bumblebee is coming for a little ride. Come on. One of my absolute favorite crops Without a doubt, it's cucumbers. The cucumber is a very fast-growing squash or cucurbit. And this is a variety called Market Moor, which is a very reliable variety to grow outdoors and is well suited even for later planting in June. So I'm just dropping this here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to get four wooden sticks. to kind of like tie together to create almost a pyramid shape That each one I'll train and I'll let it overflow maybe into some of the pathways. But I've got a little space in front here to plant some extra herbs or something like that. But did you know, you can also eat cucumber leaves? So you can take the young leaves, You can cook them quickly in a hot pan. just as a side dish with your meal. And also Sam, who is currently holding the camera Quite rightly reminded me that Market Moors There is a great variety that can also be turned into pickles. One of my absolute favorite things to enjoy roasted beets Now, beets will give you a couple of harvests. because some people choose to grow Swiss chard. Swiss chard is great; I have some growing here too. But beetroot can be a bit of a three-in-one. You have the little stems, You have the leaves that you can eat and cook. The smaller ones, you can also, Let's just get an example here. These smaller ones are nice enough. to add to a nice summer salad. And then, of course, you get the roots. Now you have options. If you know that there's a little space They're going to emerge in your garden in a couple of weeks. if you start off beetroots in modules, You can then transplant them. Or you can simply sow them directly in rows. They work really well that way. And there are so many different options as well. Those of you who watch, Oh, that splashed some water into my mouth. Those of you who watch my channel You know how much I love golden beets due to its deliciously sweet flavor. Next up on the list One of the favorite root vegetables. Following on from beetroot, are carrots. And I'm just getting ready, It's about three rows here that I'm going to direct sow. Now carrots are fast-growing, but many gardeners know that you can run into problems like carrot root fly So even though I'm not planting a resistor fly variety, There is that option. What you can do is use certain tricks like alliums, You can grow carrots between onions. If you've already got your onions and you're going to be harvesting them soon, Then maybe you could plant rows of spring onions in between. But sometimes I just take the risk. And that's exactly what I'm going to do here, provided that I can actually open the seed packet. Let's see, can he do it? This is extremely embarrassing. You'd think I was new to this stuff. There we go. How many thousands of seed packets? So the beauty of direct sowing that there is no limit on the growth of the roots From day one. So this is how you create nice, resilient plants. And I'm just spreading it quite thinly And then I'll cover it over. And since it has been raining, I'll let nature water it. The next crop is a really nice, fast-growing crop. which is kale. Now I've got Cavallonero kale here, which is starting to develop nicely and looks beautiful, especially with the way the raindrops land and sit on the leaves. What I'm doing is interplanting this kale, and it's okay to prune off a leaf, just to create a bit more space, with a kale called Scarlet Kale, which is very similar but it's actually almost like this somewhat deep purple-colored leaves. So as both of them grow together, It should hopefully look nice and beautiful. And there is an honorable borage in between. The kale is great because it grows quickly, so it provides you with a large number of leaves, That's a lot of food. And it provides you with a valuable winter crop. because it's getting a bit late to sow a lot of winter vegetables now. And of course, also You get all the delicious flower shoots that you can eat, The lovely sweet flower sprouts the following spring. Now to one of the other flowers you can sow in June. This is calendula, and it has all self-seeded. And I'm using this as my little nursery bed. Then, actually, I'm going to lift some of these plants, and I'm going to dot them around the garden, just to add some beautiful bursts of orange. Early in the video, I mentioned climbing French beans and runner beans. I just combined them into one. You also have the option of dwarf beans. These will mature even more quickly, And they are nice and low-growing. So if you want, you can plant dwarf beans. at the base of your bean towers, or they're really useful for filling gaps or grow on the side of beds. But what I'm also doing here, And this is another fantastic herb. That you can start off in the month of June is parsley. And what I'm going to do is transplant parsley in between the beans, more on the shady side, because what it does is keep it nice and healthy, And it yields me a fantastic parsley harvest. So I'm making the most of the growing space I have. A lot of people aren't going to like this suggestion. But please hear me out. It's Brussels sprouts. Yes, they might not be mature enough by Christmas. but there are other options like Kalex, which is what I'm planting here, which is a bit like an open Brussels sprout, And it's a fantastic gap-filling crop for hunger. But people who say they don't like Brussels sprouts haven't cooked them properly. What are you doing boiling them? Why are you boiling them? Honestly, that's the worst way possible to cook just about any vegetable except new potatoes. No, the trick is roasting. Roasting with some other flavors. I actually love Brussels sprouts. Anyway, these are the kalex I have actually gotten. From Penne Edica. So I'm just carefully teasing them apart, And they're going to grow quite tall. And also with Brussels sprouts and kalex, You can eat the leaves. But I'm just going to plant them in a row of three. because they're going to be tall, cast a little shade so I can grow like my summer salads and things behind. So well worth doing, plenty of time to sow, And trust me, it's worth it. Just know how to cook them. I'm standing in what is, or what was, the hotbed, And there's a lot of beautiful compost at the base. And so these are two very hungry plants. I'm going to be putting in. One is a ukechi kuri, winter squash. And one is a pumpkin jack-o'-lantern. So I'm going to plant these here. I've got some beans that are going to grow up here. I'm going to cut back this comfrey, put into either the compost or make a liquid fertilizer for the tomatoes. But then I'm going to let these two take over completely. And June, especially the first half of June, You still have an opportunity. And the great thing about winter squash, particularly other things like Hubbards or giant pink bananas, that they can store quite well over winter and provide you with food during the darkest of months. Now, another flower that grows extremely quickly, You can almost just sow it as a green manure. a cover crop, like this one, which is entirely self-sown, is borage. And a borage plant can produce up to 100, Not 150, 950, so about 1,000 flowers over a period of a few months during its flowering season. And so it's well worth doing. It resets the nectar every five or ten minutes. So it's brilliant for pollinators. And you also get the beautiful little flowers that are perfect for garnishing your salads or any meals you have. This plant here is basically a loose-leaf cabbage. So it doesn't go up. It's called Asurian tree cabbage. And it's one of my winter staples. And these kinds of cabbages, I mean, you can use other winter cabbages such as Savoy cabbage, which is a beautiful thing to have. These, once again, are merely productive. They produce a large amount of food. There are so many ways you can use them in the kitchen. But that's really what having a garden is all about. It's about cultivating all these different flavors, all the different colors your eyes can enjoy. But if you think, hey, I don't have a large garden, I've actually started a new series. that you can watch here, the first video that introduces it Just six raised beds like this—nothing more. where I've set myself a challenge to offset the rising cost of food prices. So I hope you enjoy. Hooray.