Welcome Back, July Calendar, and Jump-Planting Seeds.

I haven’t blogged here for around 5 years, and I can’t believe it's been this long. I have had a lot of changes in my personal life in those 5 years, and that has slowed me down a bit. I didn’t stop gardening, though, and did post occasionally on Instagram. But I missed this blog, and I missed writing too. So I am back and I brought you something useful too. This is a gardening calendar for the month of July. Yes, you read that right. Just because it’s hot outside doesn’t mean you can’t garden. Check it out, I’ll explain a bit more on how to use it. 

As you know, our gardening season starts in the fall, I've written about it before. We can start planting some things in September, while most other crops can only be planted outside in the second half of October and some even at the beginning of November. It's still hot outside in early fall, and a lot of plants can't handle the heat. But when the weather is cool enough to plant outside, there's usually not enough time for cool-weather plants to grow and mature in time before the heat kicks back in in spring. So what do we do? We jump-start,  or jump-plant, the season as I like to call it. It means we start our seeds indoors ahead of time, and the seedlings will be ready to plant out when the weather is cool enough for them to survive. 

So, shall we start planting all our seeds now? No, that is not necessary and can backfire on you. Seedlings can stay indoors for a certain amount of time before they need to be transplanted outdoors or moved into bigger pots. If you keep them too long in their seed starting trays, they'll get stunned, and even if you pot them up into bigger pots some grow so huge that you'll run out of shelf space for them very quickly. 

Ok, so what seeds should you start now, then? You want to start now with plants that are slow-growing and take a very long time to produce a crop. You also want to plant seeds that take a very long time to germinate. July is also a good time to stratify (subject to cold in the fridge) the seeds that won't grow otherwise. 

Let me mention that the calendar above is not a complete list and merely what I'd personally grow. You can find out what seeds you can possibly start now in two ways:

1. Check "days to maturity' or "days to harvest", anything that is above 4 months is a good candidate for July planting.

2. Check how many "weeks to transplant", anything above 8 weeks is a candidate.

What do you need to consider when using the first method? Not all plants with long days to harvest need to be started now, or even indoors. Pumpkins and watermelon, for example, take a long time to mature or produce a harvest, but you can plant them directly outdoors when the weather is right, and they can only stay as transplants for a couple of weeks as they grow fast.

Using the second method can be a bit tricky because a plant can have long" days to harvest", like brussel sprouts, for example, which can be between 100-200 days, but is ready to transplant in 4-6 weeks. But August-September can be a bit too hot for it to plant out, but waiting too long to start them may not provide enough cool weather for them to produce a crop. So starting early and potting up will be necessary if we want to grow brussel sprouts in our part of the world.,

I hope this was useful for you, and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to comment below.

And if you need help planning and growing your edible garden, contact me on WhatsApp, here (via the contact form on the sidebar),  or via pm on Instagram 

Happy Gardening

Yana