Short days, cold mornings, and a garden that looks like it's thrown in the towel. It hasn't. June is quietly one of the busiest months in the patch, you just have to know where to look.
Here's what's worth doing this month, bed by bed.
In the vege garden
The big June job is garlic. Kiwi gardeners have planted it around the shortest day and pulled it around the longest for generations, and there's good reason it stuck. Break a head into cloves, plant them pointy end up about 3cm deep and a hand-span apart in free-draining soil, and let the cold work its magic. Shallots go in on the same logic. For more on garlic read the blog here.
There's plenty more to get in. Sow broad beans and peas now, along with spinach, silverbeet, lettuce and radish, and plant out seedlings of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and onions. A winter patch is a low-fuss, smug little thing.
Frost is the one to watch. A clear, still night can undo weeks of work, so get cloches or a tunnel over anything tender before it bites. And keep harvesting: leeks and winter brassicas are ready, and parsnips and carrots actually sweeten after a frost as the plant turns starch to sugar. Mulch any bare beds while you're at it, because exposed soil is wasted soil.
In the flower garden
Winter doesn't have to mean a grey garden. Plant out polyanthus, pansies, violas and primula for colour while everything else is asleep, and in milder spots you can still sow sweet peas for a spring show.
It's also bare-root rose season, the best-value time to add roses while they're dormant and happy to travel. Settle them in now and they'll romp away come spring. Your established roses want their winter prune this month too, but we just went deep on that, so we'll point you to the Winter Pruning Guide and the secateurs to do it justice rather than repeat ourselves.
And bring a little of it indoors. Force a bowl of paperwhites, pot a hellebore for the bench, and keep the garden close while it's too cold to linger. More on that in Wintering Well.
In the orchard
June is bare-root season for fruit trees, the best-value way to plant apples, pears, plums and more while they're dormant and settling their roots over winter.
Give your citrus some love: feed them, mulch around the base without packing it against the trunk, and keep picking lemons and mandarins to take the load off the tree. Once the leaves are down on your deciduous trees, a winter clean-up spray helps knock back the pests and disease planning to overwinter on the bark. Your deciduous fruit trees get their winter prune now as well, again covered in full in the Winter Pruning Guide.
Your June weekend hit list
- Plant garlic and shallots around the shortest day
- Get bare-root roses and fruit trees in the ground
- Sow broad beans, peas and winter greens
- Plant winter colour: polyanthus, pansies, violas
- Cover tender plants with cloches or a tunnel before the next frost
- Feed and mulch the citrus
- Force a bowl of paperwhites for indoors
June rewards the gardeners who show up when it's cold and quiet. Do the work now, and spring arrives owing you a favour.
