Dirt Under My Nails
Well. What a May that was.
The heatwave caught a lot of us off guard — myself included — and if your garden looks a little battered right now, you’re in very good company. Some of my plants have been absolutely devastated by slugs doing their worst under cover of darkness (the audacity)after hiding from the heat during the day. But plenty of things are quietly thriving — my squash and courgettes are cracking on, which feels like a small victory.
There’s also some news. Big news, actually. I have an allotment!
I’ve been waiting for one for a few years and it’s finally happened. It has a view that honestly stops me in my tracks every time — looking out over the Teign estuary, it’s just extraordinary. It also has an apple tree, a pear tree, and a grapevine. And an impressive amount of old carpet pinned to the ground as weed suppression. And a spider in the shed that has clearly been there longer than I have and is not planning to leave!
It’s a project. A slow, joyful, slightly overwhelming project. And I’ll be taking you along with every step of it.
This Month: June Essentials
After the heatwave, your plants need a little TLC before anything else. If things are looking tired, stressed or just a bit sorry for themselves, feeding is your friend right now. A liquid feed — seaweed, comfrey, or a good balanced NPK feed — will help them recover and get back on track. Container plants especially will have dried out fast in the heat, so check them daily and give them a good slow water when you do to let the pots properly take down the water.
June is also the month everything starts going at pace. Deadhead roses and flowering perennials regularly to keep them blooming. Pinch out the growing tips of sweet peas and other flowering annuals like Cosmos and Zinnias if you haven’t already to keep them branching and producing more flowering stems. Keep on top of successional sowings for salad leaves, spring onions, spinach, carrots and beetroot,
And slugs. I’m sorry, but we need to talk about slugs. They have been relentless this year. Go out after dark with a torch and you’ll see what I mean. Nematodes, copper tape, hand-picking (yes, really), evening with a head torch — whatever works for you. Don’t give up on plants that have been munched — many will recover with a little snip back to a leaf node and protection.
Plant of the Month: Roses
Roses are a flower I came to love as I got older. They’re not fussy divas — they’re generous, long-flowering, mostly scented, and when they’re happy, there’s nothing quite like them in a garden.
June is peak rose time. And the most important thing you can do right now to keep them flowering all summer is deadhead regularly and feed.
How to deadhead properly
Cut back to just above the first set of five leaves below the spent flower — not just the flower head itself. This is where the plant will send new growth, and cutting to that point encourages a proper new shoot rather than a weak stem. Do this every few days and your roses will keep going well late summer.
Feeding roses in June
After that heatwave, a feed is really important. A specialist rose feed or a general high-potash feed applied now will support flowering and help stressed plants recover. Water well before and after applying.
Roses in containers
All my roses are grown in containers, it is more work but I still get loads of gorgeous, scented blooms. I’m not a massive fan of patio roses as they are often a bit weedy looking and very thorny, but if you choose a large container, good compost and mulch and feed well, almost any rose can be grown successfully in a container within reason although I would avoid ramblers.
🥗 Veg of the Month: Beetroot
Beetroot is one of those vegetables that beginners often overlook, and I’ve never understood why. It’s easy, fast, and genuinely beautiful — the leaves are as striking as any ornamental plant.
Sow direct now in well-prepared soil or into deep pots of peat-free compost. Sow 2–3 seeds per station about 10cm apart and 2cm deep. Thin to the strongest seedling once they’re established. Beetroot is wonderfully unfussy — it just needs reasonable moisture and a little patience.
On the allotment, this is exactly what I’m growing in my Three Sisters area — the one clear patch I have so far. More on that below.
Varieties to try ‘Boltardy’ is the reliable classic — bolt-resistant and delicious. ‘Chioggia’ is stunning in pink and white rings if you want something a bit different. ‘Golden’ is sweeter and doesn’t bleed all over your hands.
Don’t forget you can eat the leaves too — young beetroot leaves are excellent in salads. Nothing wasted.
🌿 Guru’s Quick-Fire Tips
🌿 After the heatwave, mulch everything you can. A layer of bark chippings or similar around the base of plants helps lock in moisture, suppress weeds and protect roots from temperature swings. Water first, then mulch on top.
🌿 Keep feeding containers. Anything in a pot will have lost nutrients fast in the heat — a liquid feed weekly now is not excessive.
🌿 Tie in climbers. Roses, clematis and sweet peas are all growing fast. Five minutes of tying in now saves a lot of untangling later.
🌿 Deadhead sweet peas daily. The more you pick, the more they produce. This is one gardening rule that is completely true.
🌿 Check your water butt. If the heatwave emptied it, connect it back up now — more dry spells are likely.
🛠️ Kate’s Kit: Felco Rotating Handle Secateurs
I don’t often get personal in this section but I’m making an exception. I have arthritis, and for a while it was genuinely affecting how much I could do in the garden. Prolonged cutting — deadheading, pruning, harvesting — left my hand aching and stiff.
The Felco secateurs with the rotating handle changed that. The handle turns as you squeeze, which takes the torsional strain off the joint completely. They’re sharp, they’re precise, and they’re made to last. If you or someone you garden with finds cutting painful, please look these up. They’re worth every penny.
Wildlife Watch: Baby Birds
June is fledgling season and it’s one of the most chaotic and brilliant things that happens in a British garden.
You may find what looks like an abandoned baby bird on the ground. In almost every case, it’s a fledgling that has left the nest normally and is being watched and fed by its parents nearby. Please do not pick it up. Move it to a safer spot nearby if it’s in immediate danger — a cat’s path, for example — but don’t bring it inside. The parents will be close.
Keep cats in during the early morning and evening if you can — this is when fledglings are most active and most vulnerable.
Keep fresh water out — shallow dishes at different heights for different species. Keep feeders topped up but avoid whole peanuts or large food pieces until the end of July, as these can be a choking hazard for young birds.
And just… watch. A garden full of fledgling birds learning to fly and to feed is one of those things that reminds you exactly why we do all of this.
Allotment Diary: The Beginning
I want to tell you properly about the allotment.
The view is the first thing. You look out over the Teign estuary and it is, genuinely, breathtaking. I stood there on the first day thinking — how is this mine to tend?
Then I looked down. Old carpet pinned to almost every surface to suppress weeds (practical, if not beautiful). A shed with a resident spider who has clearly established squatters’ rights. Ground that’s uneven, compacted, and on a slope. A fair amount of rubbish buried in the soil that I’m still finding.
But there’s also an apple tree. A pear tree. A grapevine.
So I’m taking it slowly and methodically. I’ve planted potatoes across a large section specifically to help break up that compacted soil — hard-working plants doing hard work. In the one area of clear soil I have, I’m planning a Three Sisters planting — sweetcorn, squash and climbing beans grown together in a traditional companion planting method. It’s one of my favourite things to grow, not just because it works, but because of what it represents: growing in harmony with the space rather than fighting it.
The rest? Slowly slowly. No dig where I can. Clear what I must. Trust the process.
I’ll be sharing the whole journey on my reels and here in the newsletter each month. Come along for it.
A Quick Word Before You Go
If you’re enjoying this newsletter and you know someone who’d love it too, please do forward it on. They can sign up at my website — it’s free and it’ll always be free.
And if you’d like more personalised advice for your own garden, I offer one-to-one consultations in person and via Zoom. Just head to the website.
Other wildlife notes this month: Keep bird feeders stocked and fresh water available, and avoid large food pieces such as whole peanuts during nesting season.
🌱 A Quick Word Before You Go
Something I get asked a lot is whether I ever offer more in-depth advice beyond the reels — longer guides, step-by-step seasonal plans, that sort of thing. The honest answer is: yes, and it’s something I’m working on.
This newsletter is the first step, you’ve signed up for something that goes a little deeper than a 60-second reel. Over the coming months I’m planning to expand what I offer here, including more detailed growing guides and eventually the option to access exclusive content.
If you know someone who’d enjoy this, do please forward it on. The more gardeners in this community, the richer it gets — and the more I can justify building more for you.Wash pots, clean and sharpen tools and sort your shed out ready for the big push in spring!
🌱 Come and Grow with Me
Three reels a week on Instagram and Facebook — practical, calm, no-nonsense gardening. Plus now, allotment adventures from a plot with a view and a very large spider.
📱 Instagram: @gardenerguru
📱 Facebook: @gardenerguru
Until next month — let’s get growing. Kate
