July is one of the slowest months of the year for our garden. The plants grow, rains grow fewer, weeds slow a bit, heat intensifies, and we prepare for the coming harvest. Summer is fully upon us! Let’s take a look at whats on my July Gardening Check List!
I am sharing monthly garden to-do lists here on the blog for two reasons: for my future self to refer back to and for fellow gardeners to see the types of things I’m doing each month to stay on top of the garden. Go back and check out my June Gardening Check List and Gardening To-Do List | May to see what I was up to in the previous months.
Here’s what I’m planning to do for the garden the month of July:
- Weeding
- Tying up tomato plants
- Watering
- Harvesting
- Food Preservation
I’d like to share the tasks on my garden to-do list for July. This is a slow month of the year for most gardeners! Curious what other gardeners do during July to maintain the garden at this point in the gardening season? Continue reading and I’ll share my list with you. I also plan to share a list like this one for each month of the year, so come back for more all year round!
July Gardening Check List
Weeding:
Weeding is one of the most pressing tasks in June, but this begins to wane as July rolls around. We typically see a decrease in rainfall (though this year has been extremely dry all spring and summer), so the weeds simply don’t grow at the same rate. Also, if the gardener stayed on top of the weeds in previous months, the vegetable plants should have grown enough to overtake sprouting weeds.
While July does provide a bit of a break from weeding, this job is never fully complete until the garden is laid to rest for the winter.
For the past two years, we’ve used a weed tarp on a portion of our garden. This year is covers the tomato, pepper, lettuce, cucumber, and bean sections. This weed barrier has drastically reduced the number of hours I spend weeding! Even still, some weeding must take place in the areas not covered in tarp (the popcorn, watermelons, sunflowers, zucchini, and pumpkins).
I’ll be spending a little bit of time each day weeding certain sections of the garden at a time. See my Managing the Garden with a Schedule post to discover how I stay on top of the garden by doing a little bit of work each day rather than frantically weeding the entire space in one day.
Tying Up Tomato Plants:
This another task that I’ve been at for a few months now, but July is most likely when I’ll be doing the most tying up! Tomato plants really come to life in July, so they’ll be growing rapidly this month.
Some of our tomato plants are surrounded by a cage while others are supported by a wall of wire. Each method will require tying up growing branches. I’ll be doing a lot of that this July!
Tomato plants want to grow along the ground. They’re created to grow additional roots along the main stem that allow them to creep along the ground. There are a few issues with this natural way of growing: insects and disease.
Caging and tying up rouge branches will give the tomato plants the best shot at thriving and producing healthy fruit.
Read more about How to Cage Tomato Plants here!
This looks like manipulating long branches back inside the cages when they try to escape (and encouraging them to grow upward) and tying branches to the wall of wire as they grow large enough (I use jute or twine).
Watering:
Typically, July is the month when our sprinkler runs the most. This year has been an exception since the drought caused many more watering sessions for us! I’ll continue to water two or three times per week (as needed, of course). I normally have to move the sprinkler four or five times and leave it running for 30 minutes in each spot to sufficiently cover the entire space (our garden is 50’x50′ ). This is a big need on my July Gardening Check List!
Harvesting:
The first of our harvests will begin in July. Tomatoes are already beginning to blush, the corn is tasseling, beans are flowering, and the peppers are nearly full-size! The bulk of the harvest comes in August, but a little bit here-and-there starts this month…normally not enough to preserve in big batches, but adequate amounts to use fresh.
I’m so looking forward to fresh garden tomatoes. There’s nothing quite like it!
Food Preservation:
As previously mentioned, the bulk of our garden harvest comes in August therefore most of our food preservation happens in August and September. I can begin to prepare for the preservation, as best I can, this month.
Rather than making lots of small batches of tomato sauce, I like to freeze enough tomatoes until I have enough for making and preserving a few large batches all at once. Any paste tomatoes that ripen this month will be placed into the freezer for a later date.
This looks like gathering needed supplies (canning lids and rings, store-bought ingredients, extra jars, and so on). Food preservation, whether freezing, canning, fermenting, or the like, takes a lot of time, energy, and work. Preparing for these big events may also look like coordinating extra hands to help with the process.
More Gardening To-Do Lists:
- Gardening To-Do List | June
- Gardening To-Do List | May
- Gardening To-Do List | April
- Gardening To-Do List | March
- Gardening To-Do List | February
- Gardening To-Do List | January