6 June Garden Tasks Every Gardener Must Do NOW!

In this video, I share 6 June garden tasks every gardener must do now! In June, we must transition our gardens and our minds from spring gardening mode to summer gardening mode, and this brings new challenges. These June gardening tasks will help ensure bountiful harvests while minimizing work in the hot sun.

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0:00 6 Important June Gardening Tasks
0:44 June Gardening Task #1
3:22 June Gardening Task #2
9:54 June Gardening Task #3
14:27 June Gardening Task #4
18:00 June Gardening Task #5
21:03 June Gardening Task #6
24:27 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about gardening in June or how to grow a summer garden, want to learn more about growing fruit trees or the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

What’s growing on gardeners? Things are warming up quickly here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina. And now that June is here, we must transition our mindset from a spring gardening mindset to a summer gardening mindset. That’s why on today’s video, I am going to share with you all six gardening tasks that every gardener should do in June. Now, if you’re new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden. and awesome custom apparel and gear. As a point of reference, I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, zone 8b, just outside of the Wilmington area. But the tasks outlined in this video don’t really matter where you live. These should hold true for just about everyone. Garden task number one is so simple, yet it is so often overlooked, and that is to establish a garden walkthrough routine. All you really need to do is dedicate 3 to five minutes twice a day, usually first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening around sunset and just take a leisurely stroll throughout your garden and just observe. By simply doing this, you can catch so many problems before they start. This simple act has helped me catch so many problems while they are still small and easily correctable before they blow up into some giant issue that threatens not only those plants but to spread around your entire garden. What kind of problems have I caught over the years? Well, things like little pest infestations. I found one or two beetles or caterpillars here and there that I was able to address the issue at that stage before it blew up into an infestation. I found plants that were wilting. Maybe my watering methods missed them or I just underwatered. I found things like plants that are starting to fall over or have blown over in a storm that need a little bit more support. So now I can add some support to them now before they snap underneath their own weight. Here’s what I recommend. Dedicate two 3 to 5 minute walkthroughs throughout the day. I recommend you do your first one the first thing in the morning and your second walk through sometime around sunset. So, in the morning before you get off to work or do whatever it is you do in the morning, grab yourself a cup of coffee and just take a leisurely stroll throughout your garden and just look through everything. Then, after you get home from work or when the sun goes down and the weather starts turning really pleasant, grab yourself a beer, grab yourself a glass of water, a glass of wine, grab yourself nothing. Just enjoy yourself, be with your thoughts, and take a 3 to 5 minute leisurely stroll through your garden. make sure everything is okay. Today’s garden walkthrough revealed to me I really need to start staking things up better. These need a little bit more overhead support because these tomatoes are getting out of control. And by the way, you owe it to yourself to do this. Gardening takes a lot of effort. This is about a whole lot more than just getting harvests off of our plants. It’s about enjoying the process of gardening itself and being rewarded with all of the abundance around us. All of that hard work and effort we put in, we are getting something beautiful in return. And the way we celebrate that is by actually walking around the garden leisurely and just enjoying it. So spend more time in your garden. Spend those 3 to 5 minute walkthroughs a couple of times a day. You will be happier that you did it. June garden task number two is another critical routine that you must establish and that is establishing a fertilizer routine. As our plants grow and become larger and larger, they will demand more and more nutrients from our soil. And as the heat continues to build and insect pressure begins to build, we need our plants to be as healthy and strong as possible because stronger, healthier plants are more resistant to pests, disease, drought, and other kinds of problems. So, it’s very important that we keep our plants well fed. I believe your fertilizer routine is dependent on how you are growing your plants. For example, if you are growing your plants in large raised bed gardens or in earthbed gardens, I generally recommend that you fertilize your plants every 2 weeks. That’s twice a month. And that is because when you have large amounts of soil like this, they hold on to nutrients better. So you don’t have to have constant fertilizing unless you’re in a very wet and rainy environment where your soil is constantly washing out. So for most of us growing in large raised beds like you see right here or in the earth itself, a two week fertilizing routine is probably what you need. But when you were growing in a container garden, I generally recommend a more aggressive fertilizing schedule of about every 10 days. And that is because your container gardens are more prone to nutrient depletion. You see, when you garden in a large deep raised bed garden or in the earth itself, you have a lot of soil mass that may have a lot of stored nutrients in it. So those roots can hunt all around that soil mass looking for the nutrition they need. But when you are growing inside a container, your plant’s roots are restricted to what’s inside that container. So if you are not fertilizing often enough and the grow bags or the hard containers or whatever kind of container you are growing in become depleted or you get too much frequent heavy rain or you accidentally over irerrigate and wash out the fertilizer all the nutrients from that container garden. Well, your plants can wind up starving pretty quickly. So for that reason, I generally recommend a more aggressive fertilizing frequency to account for the limited nutrient storage that is inside containers. Now that being said, there can be some fluctuation based on your climate. So you really have to think about where you are. If you live in California or the desert southwest or West Texas or someplace that gets very little rainfall in the summer and your containers never wash out, well, maybe you don’t have to be incredibly aggressive if your containers are large enough and you can fertilize more on like a 10 to 14 day rotating schedule. But if you’re like me and you live in the southeast where we get almost daily rains in late June or July and your containers are prone to washing out, you may have to be a little bit more aggressive and fertilize every 7 to 10 days. So for that reason, I think 10 days is generally going to be the best for most people. But again, think about where you are, think about the rainfall patterns, and generally speaking, the heavier it rains and the more frequently it rains, the more often you will probably need to fertilize. So, now that you know how often to fertilize, how much fertilizer should we give our plants, and what should we give our plants? Well, I have made so many videos on fertilizing over the years. If you want a detailed explanation on how I fertilize my garden, I’ll link to a video both above and down in the video description that will give you lots and lots of detail. But if you just want a roughly two-minute overview, this is what I do. My fertilizer component consists of a dry fertilizer and a liquid fertilizer. My dry fertilizer component consists of an all-purpose organic fertilizer such as this Espoma plant tone, which is a 533 NPK, but anything around a 555, 444, 434, anything where all three NPK numbers are represented and within one or two points of each other will work just fine. I’ll link to various fertilizers down in the video description for your convenience so you have lots of stuff to pick from. Then I like to supplement all of my plants with some organic bone meal, which is a strong source of phosphorus, calcium, and micronutrients. I like to give my plants anywhere from 1 to 1 and 1/2 tspoons of the organic all-purpose and half a tablespoon to 1 tspoon of bone meal. You will add that to the soil in the root area, basically in a ring around your individual plants, and you will take your fingertips and you will just work that fertilizer into the top inch of the garden soil. Then after the dry fertilizers have been placed around all of our plants, we need to wet them down in order to facilitate decomposition because our dry fertilizers are not fertilizers in their raw form. They are precursors to fertilizers. They are organic materials that have to be broken down and decomposed by the microbiology in the soil. So they trickle feed your plants over a long period of time. So I like to wet my plants down with water soluble fertilizers to both facilitate the breakdown of those dry organics and also because water-soluble fertilizers have already been broken down so they start feeding your plants right away. So it’s like a onetwo punch. if you’re giving your plants organics that trickle feed them for a long period of time and also immediate nutrition with the water-soluble fertilizers. And my favorite water- soluble fertilizer is Alaska Fish Fertilizer. I like to put 2 to three tablespoons per gallon of this in a watering can. And because this is a 511 NPK, it’s nitrogenheavy and it is poor in phosphorus and potassium. So if you are growing flowering and fruing plants, they like a more balanced NPK. So I like to supplement the watering can with a little bit of something like Jax 2020 2020 or another roughly one one ratio synthesized fertilizer that mixes well in the watering can. If you don’t want to use a synthesized fertilizer, I’ll link to some organic wateroluble fertilizers down below that you can use as a substitute. But I generally like to combine the two unless I’m growing something like a leafy green or brassacas because they pretty much just like nitrogen and this is really all they need in terms of a water-soluble fertilizer. So it’s kind of up to you what you want to do. The more important thing is that you establish that fertilizer routine. June garden task number three is to install drip irrigation to as much of our garden as possible. As the days get hotter and hotter and our plants get larger and larger, the need for irrigation increases exponentially. So, if you’re in a dry pattern or you don’t receive regular rainfall in your summers, you are going to find irrigation to be one of the biggest time sucks in your garden. I know, I know, drip irrigation are two of the scariest words in all of gardening. So many people are intimidated to set up a drip irrigation system, but I’m telling you, it is one of the best things that you will ever do in your garden. Being able to automate the process is a lifesaver. It is one of the top things I do every single late spring, early summer to save me lots of time. I’ve made this process very simple for you. I will link to a playlist both above and down in the video description that will show you how to install drip irrigation easily in any orientation you can think of. But that being said, let’s be as efficient with our time and money as possible because not all crops or garden orientations need the same level of irrigation. For example, the thing in my yard and garden that need irrigation the most by far is my container garden. My container garden needs irrigation every single day from basically June to the beginning of September. So, for that reason, I recommend prioritizing your container gardens if you have one. I have drip irrigation set up to every single one of my containers in my container garden. So, that more or less allows me to just ignore irrigation in this entire container garden area. All I have to do is turn on the spigot behind my house and everything instantly gets watered. Most of my raised bed gardens don’t need to be watered every single day. It’s more like every 2 to 3 days, but that’s because I pack them all so incredibly tightly with food. And these tomatoes have exploded so quickly that they actually have a very high water demand. So, I pretty much prioritize these as the second most important things to run drip irrigation to in my garden right behind the container garden. Something like this garlic bed, well, I may only need to irrigate it once a week. And since I tend to harvest this in early June before it gets really hot, it may not need any drip irrigation at all. But that being said, I still have drip irrigation run in this bed because once you install it, it’s there permanently. Same thing with this onion bed. Your onions really appreciate irrigation as they are trying to bulb. If you restrict water, they may not bulb as well. So, when your onions are starting to do this, make sure you keep them well irrigated. Pure earthbed gardens usually require the least frequent irrigation because you’re dealing with the most amount of soil mass, so there’s going to be more moisture in there. But that being said, it’s also going to depend on the crops you are growing. So something like a six- foot tall corn field is going to have a much higher water demand than if you’re growing something like oh I don’t know peanuts or zucchini or something like that. While they still may have a significant water demand, it’s not going to have as much water demand as a tightly packed corn field. So please keep that in mind. All of the different systems in your garden, well, they may perform differently. So prioritize installing drip irrigation to the systems that need the water the most frequently. And over time, since drip irrigation is basically permanent, well, once you set up your beds, they’re done forever and you don’t have to worry about the setup process. So install the stuff at the locations that need it most and just work your way down the line as time allows and have fun with it. If you are wondering where to get drip irrigation parts, I highly recommend you order through Drip Depot. They are a drip irrigation manufacturer and their selection is absolutely unrivaled. The quality is incredible and the prices are unbeatable. All of the drip irrigation that I have running to my container garden and all of my raised garden beds, I purchased everything through Drip Depot. You are going to get a way nicer system for a fraction of the price if you order individual parts and try to piece it together from some big box retailer or just a generic online retailer. I’ll place a link down below to my drip irrigation store. Like I said, the quality and the selection is unbeatable, and they have all types of pre-made kits and guides. And again, please check out my drip irrigation videos where I show you how to build any system easily. June garden test number four is to mulch your garden. And this doesn’t matter if you’re growing in containers, raised beds, or an earth garden. In early May, I do not mulch my garden because in early May, the plants are small, they have low water demand, the nights are cool, sometimes the days are cool, and I actually want the black soil in my containers and raised beds to be visible because mulch actually reflects sunlight and keeps the soil cooler. In May, I want my plants to get a boost by having warmer soil temperatures. And because the watering demand is fairly low when the plants are small, it’s not really a bad thing to have my garden unmulched. But things change quickly in June. The plants have increased in size as much as 10 times. They have a much higher water demand, and it’s plenty warm now. I don’t need my soil to heat up any more than it already is. And I actually want to preserve the moisture in my garden. And again, whether they’re containers, raised beds, or an earth garden, I want to lower my irrigation demand at this point in time. Also, you’re going to have a lot of weed seed germination that is going to start happening in June as the weather warms. So, keeping everything well mulched to suffocate any weed seeds and preventing any new seeds that are blowing around in the air from falling on top of your soil and germinating. So, we really want to suppress the weeds. So now is going to be a good time for most of us to start significantly mulching our garden. Now, when it comes to selecting a mulch for your garden, I really only have one rule, and that is to use a natural mulch. So don’t use things like dyed mulch, rubber mulch, or stone mulches. That’s because dyed mulch is not natural wood. They are typically groundup wood products like pallets, plywood, lumber, and other construction trash that they artificially dye to make it look like natural wood. but it is not. Don’t use rubber mulch because they’re often made of old tires. You don’t want runoff from rubber leeching into your garden soil. And you don’t want to use stone mulch because stone mulch doesn’t break down. You want a natural mulch that decays over time and as it decomposes, it releases all of that nutrients into the soil to keep it healthy. Now, what should you use? Again, anything that is all natural. So, you can use pine bark, you can use shredded hardwood bark, you can use cedar, cyprus, redwood, oak. You can use wood chips from a tree trimming company. You can rake up leaves and run them through your lawn mower and chop them up and then drop them around your plants. You can use pine straw. You can use grass clippings if your lawn is not treated with any kind of herbicides and chemicals and it isn’t full of weed tops. One of my favorite mulches is actually old rotting wheat straw. So, what I like to do is I like to buy these bales of straw and then I let them sit out in the sun and rain for about 3 months. So, initially you don’t want to use fresh wheat straw because it’s full of seeds and you’ll have wheat grass germinating all over the place. Well, when you let it sit and rot in the sun for about 3 months, what’ll happen is all those weed seeds will germinate and you’ll get grass growing on the edges of the bales and then it will all die back. You know the straw is good to use when you start seeing these little mushrooms pop up, that means that the straw is basically decomposing. And then when the mushrooms start dying off, well then these straw bales are basically ready. So now that I see those mushrooms popping up, I know there’s not going to be any more weed seed germination and the straw is perfect for use. June garden task number five is a very important one and one I have often struggled with over the years and that is to plant flowers around your garden. This is a very important thing that should not be overlooked because we want to bring in as many pollinator insects into the area as possible. This has two main benefits. Number one, when you bring in lots of pollinators to your yard and garden, you will get better pollination on your garden fruing vegetables and also your fruit trees. So, that’s a good thing. And number two, the more beneficial insects we bring into the yard, the less bad insects we should have because there’s only so much room in our yard and garden for insects. So, if the good insects are swarming everywhere, well, it’s population density. It squeezes out the room for the bad guys. So, it’s a good thing to have as many flowers as possible planted to support that system. Now, what flowers should you plant? Well, it doesn’t really matter. All that really matters is that one, you like the flowers, and two, you have something blooming at all times. Admittedly, I’ve always struggled with this because I’ve always looked at this as just another thing I had to do in the garden and more transplants I had to start. But you don’t really have to do that. All you really need to do is scatter seeds. So, about 6 weeks ago, I scattered a bunch of seeds in this area right here up against my garden. And now I have all different things that are in the process of growing. There are things like chundulas and netoriums and borage and all kinds of other good stuff that is germinating and I want to keep this process going. So what I would recommend you do is if you don’t have any flowers growing around your garden right now, just go somewhere and buy some cheap packs of transplants and just stick them in the ground. Then after you stick them in the ground, follow up by just tossing some handfuls of seeds in the ground. And that’s what I’m going to do right now. I have a mixture of chundulas right here. I’m going to take the chundula seeds and I’m just going to sprinkle a couple randomly in this area. Then I have some pythram daisies. I’m going to take my pythram daisies and I’m going to sprinkle a handful. And I’m just going to start sprinkling that all over the earth. Then I have some borage right here. I’m going to do the same thing with borage. I’m going to take a small handful and I’m just going to sprinkle some randomly around. Doesn’t really matter where. Something will germinate. And then last but not least, I have some alysum. And I’m going to sprinkle some alysum around. As a last minute addition, I decided I was going to stick some sunflowers and some zenyas in the ground. and they like a little bit more ground cover. So, I’m just going to stick my finger in, poke a few holes, and just drop a few seeds randomly. And then we will just water all the seeds in, and we will keep the area moist until things start germinating. June garden task number six is something that I’ve never really shared with you all, but it’s so important, and I had to learn this the hard way. And that is to take some time off from work and spend it working in your garden. For those of you that don’t know, I was born and raised in New Jersey. And after college, I lived in Pennsylvania for 13 years. And during those times, I developed really bad seasonal effective disorder. And the winters in New Jersey and Pennsylvania were killing me, literally. That is the main reason why I moved down here to the southeastern coast of North Carolina. I needed better winters. And in the beginning, it was great. It really fixed a lot of my issues because, well, I’m an avid gardener and every year I garden bigger and better. and spending all that time in the sun year round did a lot for me both mentally and physically. But as I started making these YouTube videos and my YouTube channel became more and more popular, I found myself on a very tight schedule. I was filming and editing all of these videos and I was still working a full-time job. So in the spring when I’d also have to plant out my entire garden, it became the most stressful time of the year for me. And I finally realized a light bulb went off. This is the time of year that you waited all year for and you’ve turned it from your greatest joy to your greatest stress. Why are you doing this? So about 3 years ago, I just started taking time off when I would plan out my garden. I would take a full week off in April, like a station, and I would just spend that time planting things out in my garden, getting everything ready. So if you feel overwhelmed and you feel like I don’t have the time to do all of this, if you have paid time off, take it. There’s no rule that says that PTO is only used for family emergencies or to take big expensive vacations. Sometimes you can just take a few days to yourself. And one of the most healthy, fulfilling places that you could spend a station is in your garden getting some light exercise, getting some negative ion therapy. I think that’s what they call it when you’re out in the fresh air. It’s just so good. So, if you’re going to take a station, do it around the spring when the weather is just beautiful, when you’re trying to get out of that cabin fever and plant out your garden. Set up drip irrigation. Build yourself some new raised bed garden boxes. Do something fun for you and spend it out in nature. It’s the greatest, most restful mental and physical recharge. So, don’t make this a stressful thing. If you have the time off, please, I urge you to take it. It was literally a life-changing decision for me. I’m so glad that light bulb went off in my head. And that right there are six garden tasks every gardener should be doing in June. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring that notification bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these. If you’re curious about any of the products that I featured in this video, I place direct links to all of them down in the video description, as well as all of the tutorials to my drip irrigation systems. If you’re curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my garden, everything I use is linked in my Amazon storefront in the video description. So, expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link, and you’ll see everything I use in real life. And while you’re down there, please consider checking out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support my channel. Thank you all so much for watching, and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Dale, we have something extra special. We have rotisserie chickens. Dale, are you going to help me take the meat out? Can you be my professional taste tester? All right, Dale, it’s time for you to taste test the chicken, but I don’t want to get my hands all dirty cuz Dale might eat me. Can you give him Can you give him a piece? This is a huge piece. All right, I I’ll do it. I’ll take the risk. Dale, gentle. Gentle. You be gentle. That’s a big piece. Oh, Dale. Dale, did you even chew it? Did you even taste that? What did that taste like? He says, “I don’t know. I need another.” All right. That was That was the white meat. Let’s give you a little piece of dark meat. See if I can find some. Oh, this one’s extra juicy. It’s at the bottom of the gentle. It’s at the bottom of the bag. Woo! Oh my goodness. I’m going to have to wipe that up. All right, Dale. I think we found out that the chicken is safe to eat.