July Gardening Tips
What to plant now, simple solutions for pest problems, tips for seasonal planning, heat stress + garden lessons with a 3-year-old
Quick Summary - This Month:
☀ Subtropical gardening tips for my local climate [Printable Download].
👏🏼 Solutions for Southern and Northern hemisphere gardeners.
🐌 How to control snails and slugs - those midnight munchers.
🧤 Simple fixes for waterlogging, poor drainage, and pot-bound plants.
🔍 Dig into my Notes for behind-the-scenes tips you might have missed.
July in the Garden
Live in subtropical SE Queensland, Australia? Grab this month’s tips. 👇🏼
The Subtropical Planting Guide is designed for our five seasons, what to plant, seasonal garden tasks and common pests. A practical tool to use year after year.
Queensland Garden Show: 11-13 July @ Nambour Showgrounds.
🔊 It’s my 12th year speaking on Saturday, 12 July @ 10.00 am on the Giant Kitchen Garden stage. My talk is “How to Use Your Food Garden for Health and Medicine,” after Costa Georgiadis’ walk and talk. Explore 100+ free talks and demos - learn, solve plant problems, and leave inspired.
Check your climate zone. Discover what to plant and when + tips below. 👇🏼
Northern Hemisphere Gardening Tips
Summer is often the time we need to defend and protect our plants, to nip potential problems in the bud. The weather can be brutal.
☀️ Heat Stress and Thirsty Roots
Rising temperatures, sudden heat waves, and dry spells can hit hard. Shallow-rooted edibles like leafy greens often wilt as if they’ve run a marathon without water. 🥀
How you can help your plants:
Mulch generously as a cooling blanket to retain moisture and protect the roots.
Early morning, water the soil deeply - give plants a drink before the heat. It’s like a water bottle they can sip on to keep themselves hydrated.
Apply liquid seaweed - natural plant hormones help your plants cope with environmental stress, including extreme heat.
Offer shade relief, like a plant umbrella, to avoid sun damage.
🐛 Pest Surges
Warm weather means we often have to solve a ‘Whodunit’ mystery, investigating and unravelling the clues of pest insect culprits like chewed leaves, missing seedlings and even sudden death! Drama and tragedy often play out in the summer garden.
The usual suspects? Aphids, caterpillars and grasshoppers. When conditions are right, pest populations can spiral out of control, leaving a trail of devastation and disheartening discoveries. If you have unruly invaders, act quickly to restore order.
How to prevent pest problems:
🕵️♀️🔎 Step into your undercover Security Guard role and do regular patrols. Watch for any invasive characters lurking on your leaves. Check for hiding aphids, eggs and baby caterpillars.
🐛🚿 Catch culprits at the scene of the crime: squish caterpillars or grasshoppers by hand, blast aphids off with water, or prune and destroy affected plant parts.
💣🧪 For repeat offenders, you may have to bring out the big guns! Suffocate aphids with eco-oil, apply molasses spray, or dust caterpillars with diatomaceous earth (it’s like sending microscopic bouncers to slice and dice troublemakers).
🐞🌸 Use row covers and sow nectar-rich flowers to encourage predatory insects like ladybirds, hoverflies and parasitic wasps - your garden guardians. Value your tiny winged security force - no wages, no drama, just ruthless efficiency!
🌿👃 Companion plant with strongly scented herbs or flowers like marigolds and nasturtiums to either deter pests or attract them as a sacrificial trap crop.
🌼 Bolting and Flowering Too Early
Cool-season crops like lettuce, coriander, and broccoli sometimes think longer days and warm weather mean it’s time to throw a seed-making party! This early flowering - or bolting - makes greens bitter and cuts short your harvest. Simple solutions:
✂️ Pick early and often. Harvest while the leaves are tender and sweet, before your plants get the urge to bloom and bolt to seed.
🌱 Choose bolt-resistant varieties for succession planting. Select heat-tolerant cultivars that don’t have a tantrum in hot weather.
🌤️ Grow them in the shadier spots. Delay plants bolting to seed by sowing in dappled light or partial shade. It helps them stay cool.
Southern Hemisphere Gardening Tips
Winter may be in full swing, but July is your chance to tidy up after summer’s wild growth, lay the groundwork for coming seasons, and provide a little midwinter care.
Growth may be slower now, but that’s an opportunity to prune dormant fruit trees, enrich your soil, sow hardy winter crops, and shield tender plants from cold winds and soggy feet.
🐌 Snails and Slugs
Moist conditions bring out these Midnight Munchers in droves, targeting seedlings, leafy greens, and vegetables. Their calling card is slimy trails and silvery footprints - clues the slime syndicate has snuck into your garden.
Tips to help you banish these leaf lurkers:
✔ Set beer or yeast traps or use pet-safe iron phosphate pellets.
✔ Use protective cloches around vulnerable seedlings or transplant later when they are larger and can handle a few nibbles.
✔ Remove cool, moist hiding spots and keep your garden beds tidy.
✔ Water early in the morning so the foliage dries out before nightfall.
✔ Trap these masters of disguise by placing a large leaf or a small piece of timber on the soil to lure them to a cool, moist spot underneath. Lift it in the morning and remove the gourmet bandits before they cause more damage.
✔ Disrupt their plans: add a forcefield of copper tape around beds and pots. Create barriers with sharp gravel or spiky prunings in a band.
🌧️ Waterlogging and Poor Drainage
Heavy winter rain can leave your soil soggy and anaerobic, especially if you’ve got clay or slow-draining spots.
Look for: Root rot; stunted growth; discoloured, wilting or dropping leaves; sudden dieback; and worms coming up to the surface in high numbers.
Tips to help:
💧 Avoid overwatering, especially in winter.
🌿 Plant in raised garden beds, mounds or containers.
🚶 Avoid walking on wet soil - compaction makes it worse.
🌱 Mix compost or coarse sand into heavy soil to improve drainage.
🧪 Learn how to restore waterlogged plants and improve your soil health.
💫 Is Your Pot Plant Root Bound?
When you're shopping for plants or already have potted plants - take a moment for a visual root check. Especially trees or shrubs that have been in pots a long time.
❌ Roots poking through the drainage holes? Brown instead of white? That’s a red flag. They’re likely unhealthy and may even be blocking water from draining freely.
⏰ If roots are circling like they’re stuck in a queue, it’s time for a pot upgrade. Choose a pot that’s one size up.
✂ Water well, gently loosen or trim the roots, and rehome in fresh, free-draining, nutrient-rich potting mix.
Garden Lessons with a 3-Year-Old
Each week, I spend time with my granddaughter, Sofie, exploring the wonders of plants, insects, birds, weather, soil, and the magic of growing food. Often, we end up in the kitchen with fresh ingredients, making something together.
This week, we visited a local community garden where I once had a small plot. A visual feast awaited us! Vibrant artwork, quirky sculptures, and a rainbow of flowers.
Her eyes lit up as she touched and sniffed her way through the maze of densely planted garden beds. There were so many vegetables in one small space.
It was a sensory overload experience. We played a game, identifying many of the vegetables she eats, but had never seen growing before.
Gardens are living classrooms. In just moments, children can absorb a world of knowledge with their hands, noses, and curiosity.
Back home, a memory surfaced as we chatted - my mum’s patience in introducing us to vegetables. If we wrinkled our noses at one version, she'd try again, cooked another way. That lesson came in handy.
🍊 Our mandarin tree is dripping with fruit right now, so I baked muffins and brought a bag of the juiciest ones along. One bite in and Sofie decided her taste buds didn’t like cooked mandarins!
So we tried something new: She squeezed the juice herself and decided she loves it fresh. Then we poured it into icy pole moulds. After impatient hours in the freezer, she declared: “They’re del-ISH-ous!” And who doesn’t love a pip spitting competition?
“It often happens to children - and sometimes to gardeners - that they are given gifts of value of which they do not perceive until much later.” - Wayne Winterrowd
Keep an eye on your inbox for Part 3 of The Small Edible Garden Guide. I look forward to sharing more ways to grow good health soon. Thanks for reading, Anne🌱
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