Update for July, 2017: What a pleasant month June was, eh? A few days of predictable clouds and drizzle, and a few of stupid heat, but looking back at the actual numbers for Seattle, it was clear-ish, with highs for nearly all days in June between 65°F and 80°F. That’s weather not even a Seattleite can complain about (and we can complain about almost all weather.)
Looking at July, my prediction is that we will keep that pleasant weather trend going. The joke in the Pacific Northwest is that the rain stops on July 5th – right after the holiday, of course – but at this point I’m anticipating mostly blue skies and temps from the 70s to low 80s. I hope I’m right. If I am, enjoy this summer friends, it’ll be a lovely one.
That UV and those heat units have helped the garden along, haven’t they? My garden has outgrown the spring blahs quite nicely. I spy tomatoes – they are green, but they’ve got some size on them – and I started harvesting summer squash last week. Cucumbers are growing fast, greens of all kinds are overwhelming me and my (late) planting of broccoli and cabbage are about a week out. Fruit’s doing well, too. My early cherries finished up and the main crop is just coming on. Berries of all kinds are ready or nearly so.
All-in-all, it looks like the beginning of July out there. Better late than never, and not even so late after all.
Printable At-A-Glance Grow-Guide!
If you like your Gardening To Lists simple and direct, you’re in luck! Just click the image below to download the July At-A-Glance Grow Guide as a printable PDF.
Or, continue reading below for the full details on everything to do in your garden this month.
Plan and Purchase
It’s time to finalize your fall and winter garden plan. Like, right now. Stop what you are doing and immediately go finish this.
Why? Because no later than mid-month, we need to have most of our fall, winter and overwintering brassicas started. With only a teeny bit of planning, we are a year-round gardening climate, so we might as well work it.
Learn More:
If you don’t have your cool season seed yet, get on it! It’s getting late to mail order, but good nurseries will stock fall and winter adapted varieties for in-store purchase. Territorial Seed offers a particularly broad range of cool-season seed for the Northwest gardener. I prefer other seed houses these days, but I can’t fault Territorial’s selection of cool season, Northwest-adapted seed. Alternatively, look for a local nursery that sells cool season starts.
Garlic should be ordered now for planting in late September/early October. Combine with your seed order to save on shipping, and don’t wait too long because they do sell out.
Start Indoors/In A Pot
If you sow fall crops out directly in July heat, the duel threat of slugs and desiccation means you’ll need to exercise constant vigilance to keep your brassica seedlings alive. I prefer to sow in pots or in soil blocks in flats where it’s easier to keep an eye on my little seedling nursery.
My seed lights are turned off for the year, so I start my cool season crops outside, in a spot that gets morning sun but afternoon shade. This helps keep the seed-starting mix from drying out too quickly.
Mid June to mid July is our window for starting the long-maturing hardy coles (cabbage, brussels sprouts, etc) and root crops that make up the bulk of the cool season edible garden.
So, if you’re gonna do a fall garden, now is the time to start:
- Fall Cabbage
- Winter Cabbage
- Chinese Cabbage
- Other Asian brassicas, like bok choy. (Check days to maturity and count back from mid to late September – some Asian cooking greens are very fast to mature and can go in next month successfully. Typically the large-framed heading greens should be started now, leafy greens and “baby” type varieties can wait a bit.)
- Fall Broccoli
- Sprouting Broccoli
- Chinese Broccoli / Kailaan
- Fall and Winter Cauliflower
- Overwintering Cauliflower
- Kales
- Swiss Chard
- Collards
- Winter Kohlrabi
- Celeriac
Sow Directly Outside
If you have a bare patch of earth anywhere in your garden, prioritize it for your fall and winter root crops. These need to go in before mid-month to size up well for a good harvest.
If you have gobs of room and don’t mind babying your seedlings, anything that can be sown in a pot at this time of year can also be sown out directly.
Note: Wait until early August for your next big sowing of salad greens like lettuce, spinach, arugula, frisee, escarole, radicchio and endive. Technically you can sow these crops now, but they will taste better and be longer lasting if you set them up to mature in the cooler days of September.
No. 1 Priority – Fall Root Vegetables
- Carrots
- Beets
- Parsnips (asap they take forever!)
- Turnip
- Rutabaga
If Not Started In A Pot
- Cabbage
- Asian greens
- Broccoli
- Cauliflower
- Kales
- Swiss Chard
- Collards
- Winter Kohlrabi
- Celeriac
If You Can Find Room
- Green Onions
- Leeks (for winter/overwintering crop)
- Fall peas: If you grow a fall crop of peas you should start them this month.
Absolute Last Chance
If you sow now, at the very beginning of July, and you are very lucky, you can probably still sneak in a late crop of the following summer vegetables, for harvest in early fall.
- Late beans: bush types with a fast maturation (55 days is what I’d look for).
- Cucumbers – plant a powdery mildew resistant variety to give yourself the best chance of success with a late sowing of this crop.
Transplant Out
All your warm weather transplants should be planted out and growing huge for you. They are, right?
If you started your cool season crops in mid-June, they will ready for transplanting by the end of this month. But your garden may not be ready for the transplants. No worries, you can usually keep them going just fine in 4″ pots for another couple weeks until you tear out your snap peas to make some room. If your fall starts are looking a little root bound, up-pot as needed. (Related: How To Check Seedling Root Development – Patreon)
Try to have the leeks you started last month in their final spot by the end of July.
- Cabbages
- Cauliflowers
- Brussels Sprouts
- Sprouting broccoli
- Kale
- Leeks
Harvest
Nearly everything whole garden is ready to pick or will be by the end of the month. We’re at that lovely overlap stage where the spring crops are still thriving and the heat lovers are just coming on. It’s A-to-Z, pretty much.
Vegetables
- Artichokes
- Beans
- Beets
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
- Carrots
- Chard
- Cucumber
- Garlic
- Kale
- Onions
- Peas
- Salad greens
- Tomatoes
- Zucchini and other summer squash
Fruit
- Cherries!!!
- Strawberries
- Currants
- Gooseberries
- Blueberries
- Raspberries
- Blackberries
- Marionberries
- Asian plums
- Apricots
Maintenance
There’s a lot to keep harvested, healthy and happy right now! It can feel overwhelming. A little bit every day is the way to do it, friends. And keep in mind that it’s all a rhythm. Take a deep breath, dive in, and know that in just a few months they’ll be nothing to do but pick the occasional bunch of chard.
- Water, water water! Your plants need you – the Pacific Northwest only rains a lot when plants don’t really need it. Water deeply in the early morning when your soil is dry at about 2 inches for big mature plants. Water seedlings or establishing plants more frequently.
- Weed, weed, weed. This isn’t so bad in the areas where crops are growing so fast they shade the soil, but in the areas with small crops, or the rare patch waiting for Fall crops, the weeds grow fast. (Related: 5 Ways To Save Time In The Garden)
- Mulch, mulch, mulch. Seriously, you know this already. (Related: Pros and Cons of Black Plastic Mulch in the Garden – Patreon)
- Harvest, harvest, harvest. Shockingly often, the harvest is where it all falls apart and lots of hard work in spring goes to waste. If this is you, don’t feel bad! Just stop treating your garden like a grocery store. Get out there and pick for a few minutes every morning – ten minutes with the beans and summer squash will do a lot to keep the task manageable. The garden at this time needs you to harvest even if you don’t need more fresh veg right now.
- Harvest and cure garlic. If you didn’t pick your garlic last month, it’s almost certainly ready now. Cure it in a dark-ish, dry place at room-ish temperature with good air-flow. Don’t overcomplicate it. Find the right spot, lay the garlic out so it gets good airflow, and leave it there for a month.
- Pinch out climbing beans when they hit the top of your trellis. This is a good thing to do that I never do. Take that as you will.
- Pinch out tomato shoots. A good thing to do with indeterminate tomatoes that I do keep up on. (Related: How I train and prune indeterminate tomatoes – Patreon)
- Train cucumbers. I just weave them in and out of trellis when they try to wander. Their little tendrils hold fast like curlicue hands once they are pointed in the right direction. (Related: Building A Cucumber Trellis – Patreon)
- Side dress heavy feeders. I recommend pee. Yeah, I know. But seriously: pee.
- Hill up potatoes.
- Summer prune espalier trees, stone fruits, grape vines, and anything else that’s getting out of hand.
- Prune summer raspberries
- Tie in blackberries
- Thin apples and pears if you didn’t do this two months ago
- Trap, snip, or apply Sluggo regularly if necessary for control of slugs and snails
- Apply copper fungicide or homemade baking soda controls for fungal diseases if necessary
- Handpick cabbage caterpillars or apply BT for cabbage moth control if necessary
- Foliar feed with fish emulsion if necessary to give heavy-feeders a quick boost
- Preserve, freeze and dry what you cannot eat fresh. But do eat fresh when possible!
Phew! Are we having fun yet? How’s your garden growing?
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Well, I think we just traded climates because here in the Niagara Falls area it has been raining everyday! And it’s cool. Little sun at all. Plants are in raised beds so they are ok with the water but I’m still afraid they are going to rot!!!
Deer pounded tomato plants last night, still angry, seriously considering getting a hunting license, that’s how upset I am! Even cried. Can’t believe you already harvested a tomato! Not from greenhouse either. Nice.
Getting the garlic ready to plant. Planting a ton this year, can’t wait to harvest in the spring!!!! Love garlic, no vampires here.
Hi Laura –
Had to comment because a deer just chewed up my cucumbers and I’ve been really upset about it, since I typically can’t grow anything for my life and those were starting to look fabulous. ARRGH!
Yep, here in Texas we eat those suckers! And they are TASTY let me tell ya.
Nothing more organic than that!
Plantskydd Deer Repellent. I’m east of Syracuse and it works wonderfully! Stinks though, just to warn you. I don’t even spray it on the plants, just in a circle around the garden.
So glad the weather this week is NOT looking as warm as it was predicted a few days ago. I was getting seriously depressed when I saw all the temps listed starting with a “9”. Seems to be more mid 80’s now. That I can actually enjoy! I think this is the first year I might actually harvest some red bell peppers! I’ve got little green guys all over my one plant – ya, I only go with one each year because, really, they just turn into something I water that doesn’t produce. One of my potato bags totally dried out I think it was Saturday….we’ll see if that one recovers. The others are doing well!
75*?? I’d love for it to be that temperature for us. Consistently in the mid 90’s + loads of humidity for us here in SE Texas. Forget any new tomato fruits…what we have is all we’ll get until maybe September or October, if one wants to keep the plants in the ground that long after looking ratty half the summer.
But, we do have AC, so I’m not complaining…much. 😉
Misti, we’re neighbors. I heard that we’ll be up to 97 by Tuesday and 99-100 by the end of next week. Here comes August!
No more ‘maters for us, I don’t think I can stand to look at the poor ratty things much longer. No more nothing else except for maybe okra and possibly eggplant if the caterpillars will leave them alone. Thank God for the AC or we’d all be crispy and fried! That 75 degrees sounds like heaven. Heck! That’s what we keep our AC set to during the day, lol!
Hi Erica, thanks for the informative post! I’m in south Texas and it is insanely ridiculous trying to garden here…but trying, we are. 99 degrees F here yesterday and no rain in weeks. The gardens are just trying to die on us, and the birds are eating the tomatoes with glee. In between hauling around watering hoses and swatting mosquitoes, we dream of living in the Pacific NW!
Thanks! 🙂
I don’t know if it is the super wet spring / warm summer combo or if I am just adjusting to a microclimate 50 miles south and inland of Seattle, but I just haven’t figured out the rhythm of my garden this year.
Things that should have grown brilliantly in my raised bed couldn’t even germinate, repeatedly, meanwhile the pumpkins and tomato growing in an utterly bastardized and off-the-reservation hugelkultur/compost/pondsludge bed are doing better than ever before. And I have a volunteer pumpkin (?) in my first fruit tree guild looks poised to do ridiculously well, though the pumpkins in the faux-hugelkultur bed are wait ahead in the fruit department.
I will say, my shallots, garlic, and potatoes have wildly exceeded past results and expectations. I’m actually getting side shoots on broccoli (didn’t get any last year), the chard has finally stabilized and taken off, and the peas went from pathetic to overpowering everything!
I thought this was going to be the year that I “figured out” my new yard, but I’m left with more questions than I started the year with.
Still waiting on the first ripe tomato up here in Lynden, but getting closer! First planting of lettuce has officially bolted, hoping the second planting of lettuce, arugula, spinach and radishes in pots on the shady north side of the house will get going now and weather the heat. Kale’s been seeded, rutabagas as well, waiting to pull the last of my bulb onions to plant the fall carrots. Had a great harvest of garlic and first set of bulb onions. Definitely enough to see me through the winter! Bush beans are huge and everywhere. Pole beans are reaching the tops of the teepee and trellises. I grow dry beans, though, so the only maintenance is water and wait. Already thinking and planning for next year’s garden. I tried square foot gardening in my new raised beds, and although I need to plant intensively to make the most of my space, I think square foot is a little *too intense*. My bush beans definitely seem too crowded and are crowding into everybody else’s space to make up for it. I think it works well for root veg, but definitely not bushy things.
It’s been 95-100F here the past week and I never realized how much I dislike the heat until now. I’m AMAZED I have one cauliflower, all the broccoli is bolting- what a waste of space that turned out to be. Everything else is pretty good but as per usual our pea season ended up short. Sometimes I wish our May & Sept also didn’t reach 87F, it makes it really really hard to grow the cool season vegetables, which I happen to love more than the heat lovers…hmm.. perhaps a move is in order…
68F looks like a nice temp!!
We are experimenting with overwintering this year, cauliflower, sprouting broccoli, leeks, parsnips, fingers crossed! I’m really getting more into winter gardening, hoping we’ll have lots of greens until Christmas and an earlier spring start 🙂
I hope you’re enjoying summer!
Hmmm, looks like the NW stole our WI weather. We are experiencing much cooler temperatures than we usually have in sweaty July. In fact, as I sit here typing this my feet are cold and I have a jacket on…IN JULY!
I even went out and put row cover on my peppers last night because it was supposed to go down to 51. I want some 82 degree days. I love summer.
Still waiting on ripe tomatoes here in the Midwest, which is unheard of in July. Plants look good, fruits are there, just hasn’t been warm enough for ripening. Usually I am swimming in cherry tomatoes by now, but not this year. On the plus side, we are still eating from my first planting of lettuce with just the tiniest hint of bitterness beginning to creep in. Coolest summer I can remember in at least the last 15 years.
On the coast here in Northern California, we normally have nothing but fog for days on end. This summer it’s been sunny almost every day. It’s almost tropical! The old timers are saying they’ve never seen a summer like this.
I’m in Detroit. Last night I had to throw a blanket on the bed because the temps dipped around 58 degrees. I was canning peaches earlier and forgot that I had left a couple of windows open when I turned off the A/C. Yes, turned off the A/C in July. I got a late start on the garden due to a knee injury, but all of the cherry tomatoes are in a 23″ high keyhole raised bed. The plants are fine but tiny green fruit only. Same with the cucumbers. This might be the only garden season when I might pick ripe tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce at the same time! I think I’ll start my cool weather crops after August 15th since they tend to produce even when the lows dip towards 40 degrees in mid-October.
With regards to your last photo, “plant densely and it’s harder to see the weeds”, I had a ton of old seeds lying around (2-4 years old) and in desperate need of use. So I just jumbled them all together and threw them into an empty patch in my garden that would otherwise have housed weeds. Worked brilliantly!! The sunflowers are taking off, and the beans are climbing up them.. all of the shade means we’re still getting lettuce, radishes and cilantro in the summer heat. And I haven’t had to water at all—the density is keeping everything well watered. At the end of the season, I’m planning to chop and drop. If I get volunteers next year, awesome.
Erica, thank you so much for explaining why fall crops are started outside of their final bed. I couldn’t find an answer anywhere. I don’t have a space in the house for plant starts and the greenhouse right now is like some kind of nuclear epicentre. I do have lots of part shade spots that I will now be utilising. Thank you so much, you’re a life saver.
ps I agree chickens, bastards. Karma’s gonna get em.
Yay watermelon! We tried one in our North Bend, WA garden maybe 6 years ago and I have to say it as the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten! We always devote a bed to melons…some years we have success, others fail. But it is so worth the space during successful years.
I’m eating cucumbers like they’re going out of style. I was only going to plant three, but somehow ended up with eleven. Oops. I wish the tomatoes would catch up. Tomato and cuke salad is a favorite!
Thank Kokopeli we finally cooled off some. Here in the WV mountains it has been hot, 85+ and upper 70s at night. Also no rain 5+ most days and in the 70s at night. No rain for weeks. Thank goodness for our 800 gallon rain cistern. Finally 1/4 inch of rain yesterday and temps in the 60s. It will be so cool tonight, I’ll pressure can baked beans.
The garden looks great despite the heat. Electric fence all around for deer-yummy this fall. No tomatoes yet, but cukes, peppers, basil, green beans, peas, and 1 bellow squash today.
I have 2 weeks starts on broccoli, brussel sprouts, cabbage and Chinese cabbage. We are squishing potato bugs twice a day. Next week we will replant bush green beans and peas. I try to get two crops of beans; pre and post Mexican bean beetles.
I just moved to a new place a month ago in Moscow, ID and am hoping I may be able to plant something this weekend. I’ve got a very very dry patch of soil (facing south I believe) that I can till up and add soil to but it will likely be whatever I can find at the hardware store, along with the seeds listed above.
Is this still plausible if I start now? Any suggestions?
I discovered a lovely pumpkin growing in my low maintenance side garden the other day. I have no idea where it came from but it looks lovely so I’m keeping it. Gardens are so funny that way. I nurture along my cilantro only to have it immediately bolt, but something else just takes off on its own. Tomatoes popping up in the arugula patch? Sure tomatoes, go for it. I’m learning to just roll with it. I’m trying a potato tower for the first time this year. I have no idea if it’ll produce any potatoes but it looks impressive at almost 6 feet tall!
Thanks for the honesty and inspiration! What do you do with your plums? Last year I made plum wine and this year I’ll try plum ketchup.
My asparagus after three years finally has five feet of growth; it’s even got new stalks pushing up. It’s gone to feathery seed. Can I cut the huge tough growth out now or is it still necessary got feed up the roots?
Nope, leave them – they are actively feeding the roots now. The ferny part will turn brown and dry up, that’s when you can cut them out.
I like your site. I am new to it and so far I really like it. My favorite things to talk about is gardening, crocheting, reading, cooking and fishing. Believe it or not, I know a lot of [people who get totally bored with these topics. Oh, well. My favorite thing to tell people is to constantly be replanting. I plant all the way up till about the middle of September.
We live in Southwest Missouri and we have a pretty long growing season. I plant a lot for us and a lot to give away to people I know can use the produce. They are always happy to get it. Right now we are suffering 90 degree weather and higher. August will, as always, be awful because of the extreme heat. My favorite season is fall. we still are doing a lot of gardening in the fall and also getting ideas for next spring’s planting. we live on a fixed budget and I put back all the produce I can for winter use.
I am very happy to receive newsletters from a great gardener and some one who looks at life as a full glass, instead of grossing about every little thing. Have a GREAT DAY.