What to sow in late May and early June

The transition from May to June is a fantastic time in the vegetable garden as the crops you have planted or sown start to put on some proper growth and the garden starts to fill up. As you know I often leave things to the last minute so things tend to get a bit frantic in my garden towards the end of the month.

As I spend so much time in the last chance saloon I thought I might share my list of what you can sow now if you have some blank spots in your garden or haven't started at all. Many people assume that it is too late to start a vegetable garden once you get to the end of May but this is far from the case. There is still a broad range of crops you can grow whether for the rest of the Summer of making an investment for Autumn/Winter or as far away as next Spring.

As you see in the photo (I think this is 2 weeks ago to be fair), my garden still has a number of empty blocks which need to be filled. Since I took the image (by standing on the roof of the jeep) things have started to fill out with potatoes damaged by frost coming on again and peas and beans taking off after a bit of rain and warm weather.

I took this photo on Sunday morning where you can see broad beans, which had been struggling, starting to fill out; we had some strong wind on Friday so I was glad I had built the string supports top prevent them blowing over. You can see mangetout pea 'Carouby de Maussane'  behind which produces attractive purple flowers followed by very large 11cm pods which are great in a salad or lightly steamed. In the background we have two green rows of potatoes with the garlic planted in October to the right which is starting to bulk up nicely.

I spent a pleasant morning on Sunday sowing some of of the seeds mentioned below in trays in the polytunnel (for planting out later) as well as putting in another bed of carrots and sowing some parsnips (about right for carrots, a little late for parsnips).

As you see above I have used the our 'Mainframe' system for carrot root fly protection which is very neat and quick to put up. The enviromesh I had in the shed was a a little large so it is rolled at the edges and secured with landscaping fabric staples. The mesh is simply attached to the aluminium poles with removable clips with the full structure taking about 20 mins to erect.

I will admit the plastic joining pieces can snap when you're taking it apart to move it (though I was able to re-use 75% of them) but they are the least costly part so easy to replace. This is the 3rd year using the same parts and mesh so I am very pleased with it.

But that's not what I am supposed to be talking about....
Please see below my list of vegetables you can sow now to start a garden from scratch or to fill up some empty spaces, I hope you find the list helpful.

Beans - French and Runner
Both French and runner beans dislike the cold; French more than runner beans. The best time to sow is May/June so now is perfect. In my garden, French beans won't grow outside but runner beans will and usually do well. You can see the French beans we planted in my tunnel a few weeks ago just starting to climb up their supports with dwarf varieties planted along the left hand side of the bed.

Once the soil is warm enough, beans usually germinate quickly and grow robust little plants in no time. Remember climbing beans will need a support like the twine above or a bamboo wigwam. Dwarf beans can be a good alternative and will produce plenty of beans if picked regularly and will be ready to pick a week or two before climbing varieties. If you can grow French beans outside an early July sowing in modules is handy as you can plant them after your garlic comes out towards the end of the month.

Beetroot
Beetroot can be sown up to the end of July, even later if you have a polytunnel. As beetroot generally doesn't suffer from pests or disease (you don't need to worry about crop rotation) and doesn't require a whole lot of space it is handy to fill random spaces around the garden. I start early beetroot off in modules but summer sowings are better done direct in the ground. Slugs do eat beetroot seedlings but will usually go for something else if there is a choice so chances are you will be successful.

Brussels Sprouts
Brussels sprouts are another late harvest crop so they are generally sown in April/May, so you still just about have time to get them going. For reliability you are better off going for a modern F1 variety like the fabulous Brigitte F1 as they tend to have tighteEarly sowings before mid May can result in very large swede prone to splitting but can also be problematic due to the number of flea beetles about in May and early June. I find the best time to sow is in early June which avoids the worst of the flea beetles and gives time for plenty of medium sized swede for your winter larder. Sow in modules, one seed per cell and plant out 3-4 weeks later at a spacing of 30cm all round.r 'buttons' which will stand on the plant for longer without opening.

Like kale, Brussels sprouts are a valuable crop as they can be picked over a long period and can provide fresh vegetables throughout the Winter. It's a bit late to tell you this now but if you sow two plants every 3 weeks from the beginning of April you can be picking sprouts from October to March. I realise that might sound like torture to some!

Purple and Green Sprouting Broccoli
Purple sprouting broccoli is one of those plants that is often sown too early but is best put in at the end of May or early June. The reason is we want it to produce broccoli heads in the 'hungry gap' part of the season when there is little else in the garden. If sown too early it may flower in late Autumn, which is still delicious but doesn't give us anything to look forward to in Spring. For autumn or early winter heads sow from early May, for overwintering and harvests from January onwards I find the best time to sow is early June.

Purple sprouting broccoli also needs a wide spacing of 65cm all round so can be interplanted with another crop while the plants are filling out.

Green sprouting broccoli can also be sown late, from April until July and will produce tasty green broccoli shoots from July until October depending when you started. Green sprouting broccoli is not to be confused with calabrese (covered below), it will produce a medium size dense head but will produce many mini heads once the main one has been picked. I find green sprouting great value for Summer when you only need a few light stalks for a salad

Calabrese 
Calabrese is the stuff they call broccoli in the shops, i.e. the large, closely packed green heads. Calabrese is relatively fast growing in cabbage family terms so can be sown up to late June. Unlike most other large brassicas, calabrese does not need very wide spacings to thrive so it's a good one for smaller gardens. The size of the heads depends on how close you plant them, for large heads leave 55cm all round, for smaller heads leave 25cm all round.

Savoy Cabbage
Crinkled savoy cabbages are a real treat in winter but are often missed by new growers as we need to sow them earlier than you might think. For harvests from November through till March it is best to sow in early June. Later sowing up to early July is possible but, if the season doesn't go your way, the cabbages may not form hearts before winter (when growth stops).

Savoy cabbages are relatively compact in cabbage terms and are planted at a spacing of 50cm all round. It might be difficult to get excited about cabbages right now when we have so many exciting summer vegetables just around the corner but I would sow and plant as many as you can fit in, you will be glad of them in the winter. Another winter cabbage I would recommend is 'January King', an attractive light green cabbage with pink blushed leaves.

Overwintering Cauliflower
I only started growing overwintering cauliflower a couple of years ago and have to say they were a complete revelation. Biennial cauliflowers like Aalsmeer are sown in late June or early July and form heads in April the following year. The exciting part for me when I first grew them was that I forgot what they were and was about to dig them up when beautiful heads (above) suddenly appeared.

One the advantages of biennial cauliflowers is that the heads will stand for a little longer before opening into a flower, this is because growth is slower in cooler April weather (when there are also less pests about). The only biennial variety I have grown is 'Aalsmeer' but it is definitely one I would recommend.

Carrots
It depends on the climate where you live but for me the end of May/early June is the best time to sow carrots as they germinate quickly and usually avoid the first generation of the carrot root fly. I also sow carrots in mid to late June for a later crop which I let strand in the beds over winter. There are any number of varieties to choose from but personally I like to sow 'Chanteany Red Cored' as they are one of the best for flavour. I also sow 'Starca F1', a very good uniform carrot well suited to late sowing and 'Rothild', another great tasting carrot.

If you have a heavy soil grow stump rooted carrots as the long, tapered ones won't grow well. If you have not had success with carrots in the past (probably due to a heavy soil) they will grow well in deep pots or in trenches filled with compost.

Celery
I prefer to sow celery a little late so that the most vigourous, later growth happens in more moist Autumn weather. Celery is originally a wetland plant so it needs plenty of moisture, a dry plant will be stringy and tough.

Traditionally celery was 'blanched' by pulling earth up around the stems to exclude light; this makes the celery white rather than green and reduces bitterness. Unfortunately, if you have a slug problem, earthing up under damp conditions can lead to slug holes in the stems.

You can also grow 'self blanching' varieties like 'Golden Self Balnching' or 'Green Utah' but these will need to be grown in a decent clump so the combined foliage blocks light from stems.

Kale
Kale is one of the absolutely bulletproof vegetable garden plants which provides highly nutritious leaves nearly all year round. I prefer the dark green 'Cavalo Nero' or dinosaur kale (pictured above) which has the best flavour when picked young and is also the slowest to run to seed.

Kale is probably the least fussy of any brassica plants with regard to site and soil and will withstand any weather thrown at it. For Winter through to Spring supply sow early June either direct in the garden or in modules.

Kohl Rabi
Kohl Rabi is pretty easy to grow and has a very pleasant sweet and peppery flavour but I was never quite sure what to do with it. Everyone says it makes a very tasty addition to a potato gratin (which is true) but I think it's at its best grated into a salad or a slaw, I think it tastes better than cabbage. You can also make a very good creamy soup with it.

Spacing when planted is only 30cm x 30cm so again, a good one for a smaller garden. Make sure you harvest at tennis ball size, any bigger and it gets woody.

Leeks
For a continuous supply of leeks you can sow in late Winter, mid Spring and in late Spring. There are different varieties for each sowing date, for late sowing choose an overwintering variety like the dark blue/green 'Blue Solaise'.

Leeks are better sown in modules as they are easily out-competed by weeds; module sown plants can also be planted deeply to give a long, white blanched stem. Leeks are planted out 10 -15 weeks after sowing.

Lettuce
Lettuce can be comfortably sown outside until the end of July, if you have a greenhouse or tunnel you can extend this and can grow lettuce for 9-10 months of the year. Due to it's speed of growth, lettuce is another useful filler for gaps around the garden and can be planted alongside widely spaced crops to use the space efficiently.

For example, if you're planting Winter cabbage seedlings you will have 50-60cm of space between them which won't be needed for 12 weeks until the cabbage has grown to fill the void. A lettuce takes 8-10 weeks from seed to harvest so will be gone before the cabbage grows into the space. Filling redundant space also has the advantage of crowding out weeds so will reduce maintenance.

Parsnip
If you're looking for large parsnips they need to be sown by mid April but, in cool areas, they can get off to a slow start so I prefer to sow late and produce medium size roots. You need to sow directly into the ground rather than in modules as parsnips won't tolerate root disturbance.

Sowing can be nerve wracking as parsnip takes a long time to germinate, up to 3 weeks before the first leaves appear. Old seed won't germinate so you need fresh every year so you can be watching a piece of bare ground for some time not sure if anything is going to happen!

Radish
I nearly had a seizure yesterday when I saw radishes in the fridge that my wife had bought in the supermarket. Radishes are the easiest things to grow, take very little space and are ready 4 weeks after sowing so it is with deep shame that I must admit I don't have any in the garden. This omission can and will be corrected now as radishes can be sown until the end July.

There are a number of types of radish generally divided into Summer and Winter varieties. Summer radishes (the small ones like 'Cherry Belle' or 'French Breakfast') can be sown now while Winter varieties ('Waternelon', 'China Rose', 'Black Spanish', 'Daikon') are better sown in July/August as earlier sowings are likely to run to seed.

Spinach
Spinach can be sown from April until August, it has great flavour when harvested fresh and is easy to grow so one I'd also recommend. If you want enough for full meals you need to grow quite a lot but you can harvest it as a 'cut an come again' crop by harvesting a few outside leaves from each plant. If you don't have the space it is still worth growing a few plants as fresh leaves make a great addition to salads or omelettes.

Spring Onion
If you want chunky spring onions like the ones you get in the shops these days, you want a Japanese bunching onion like 'Ishikura Bunching' pictured above. Standard spring onions are weedy looking in comparison.

You can sow spring or bunching onions up to late July and harvest up to late Autumn. It is easiest to sow them in modules using 6-8 seeds per cell and planting them out in bunches, you can them pick them a bunch at a time when needed.

Perpetual Spinach and Chard
All spinach (and chard) are members of the beet family with some more 'rooty' than others. True spinach is a shallow rooted, relatively short lived plant while perpetual spinach and chard will continue to produce new leaves from an increasingly large root system. Perpetual spinach and swiss chard can keep producing leaves for up to 10 months even surviving the Winter before coming back into leaf the following Spring.

Like beetroot, perpetual spinach and all types of chard are very easy to grow and suffer from very few pests or diseases. Leaves are better picked regularly when small as larger ones can be more bitter due to the oxalic acid they contain.

Sweetcorn
You still have 2-3 weeks to sow sweetcorn if you'd like to enjoy one of the sweetest plants in the vegetable garden. Freshly picked cobs are far sweeter than anything you can buy as the sugars in the kernels turn to starch relatively quickly as the cob ages.

If sown from mid May to mid June plants should establish quickly and, if the Summer is good, should reward you in late August. Sweetcorn grows best in a block with plants spaced 30-35cm apart to ensure plants pollinate each other. Each kernel of the emerging baby cobs is pollinated separately so if pollination is light it can lead to empty spaces on the cob.

Swede 
There can be confusion between turnip and swede as many people refer to the yellow fleshed swede as a turnip. Swede, pictured on a frosty morning in my garden above, is a handy over Winter crop when sown early June to early July. These hardy vegetables can withstand freezing temperatures and, like parsnips, taste better after a frost as they become sweeter.

Early sowings before mid May can result in very large swede prone to splitting but can also be problematic due to the number of flea beetles about in May and early June. I find the best time to sow is in early June, which avoids the worst of the flea beetles and gives time for plenty of medium sized swede for your winter larder. Sow in modules, one seed per cell and plant out 3-4 weeks later at a spacing of 30cm all round.

Swedes are also handy if sown in modules in July as they can be put in after you have harvested garlic, onions, summer carrots or whatever has come to an end in August.

Turnip 
Turnips also like cool, moist conditions and can be sown until the end of July. I don't like them very much so they don't get a photo or much of a description.

That's it for now, if you would like to order any vegetable seeds mentioned above we still have a good range of seeds and although the site will be closed for a few days we are still packing.