Urgent July Garden Tasks Every Gardener Should Do NOW

In this video, I share 5 urgent July garden tasks every gardener should do now. July is the hottest month of the year, and the extreme temperatures, heat waves and strong sun is stressful to a vegetable garden. Growing a summer garden in July brings new challenges, and completing these summer gardening tasks in July will help maximize harvests while minimizing work in the hot sun.

Drip Irrigation Install Videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIHHHsx0JPcYgD4xXzA96usL&si=XhCNykJaPix_p4t5
How To Use Shade Cloth: https://youtu.be/cO-U1wYGZ8Q?si=gPLhuhM5OLj4qjGD
How To Use Sprinkler Hose As Drip Irrigation: https://youtu.be/TpdBB63VUxg?si=uxxW0FgFcA-X9Kck

My Drip Depot Affiliate store** for all your drip irrigation needs: https://aff.dripdepot.com/aff/idevaffiliate.php?id=372

I use the following products* to grow a vegetable garden:
Shade Cloth (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/4bLbv72
Grow Bags (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/3x4bJXO
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Jobe’s Organic Vegetable Fertilizer (4lbs): https://amzn.to/45YHmh2
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Jack’s / JR Peters All Purpose 20-20-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/44DUV58
Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/45FIuXh
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 5 Critical July Gardening Tasks
0:44 Gardening Task #1
2:47 Gardening Task #2
6:08 Gardening Task #3
11:17 Gardening Task #4
13:39 Gardening Task #5
16:53 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about how to garden in summer, want to know about 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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Miracle-Gro Soluble Bloom Booster Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GKYG0j
Miracle-Gro Soluble Tomato Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GDgJ8n
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Southern Ag Liquid Copper Fungicide https://amzn.to/2HTCKRd
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Weed Barrier with UV Resistance https://amzn.to/3yp3MaJ
Organza Bags (Fig-size) https://amzn.to/3AyaMUz
Organza Bags (Tomato-size) https://amzn.to/36fy4Re

Injection Molded Nursery Pots https://amzn.to/3AucVAB
Heavy Duty Plant Grow Bags https://amzn.to/2UqvsgC
6.5 Inch Hand Pruner Pruning Shears https://amzn.to/3jHI1yL
Japanese Pruning Saw with Blade https://amzn.to/3wjpw6o

Double Tomato Hooks with Twine https://amzn.to/3Awptr9
String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
Nylon Mason Line, 500FT https://amzn.to/3wd9cEo
Expandable Vinyl Garden Tape https://amzn.to/3jL7JCI

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #july #vegetablegarden

what’s growing on gardeners June is coming to a close and the heat and humidity is absolutely brutal here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina now that July is rolling in our garden is about to face the toughest conditions of the summer extreme heat humidity drought thunderstorms all of these things are going to threaten our garden and if we are not prepared it could fail and bite the dust so on today’s video I’m going to share with you five critical gardening tasks you must do in July to give your garden a Fighting Chance if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden an awesome custom designed to power and other gear your support is greatly appreciated critical Garden task number one is maybe the most important thing that you must do for any summer garden and that is to provide a generous layer of mulch at the bottom of every plant even soil moisture is key for production and the health and happiness of of your plants and if your plants frequently go from wet to dry to wet to dry they will not like that so you want to apply at least a 3in layer of mulch at the base of all of your plants to prevent evaporation and maintain a relatively even soil moisture level now if you’re like me and you also mulched your plants in the spring well this is 3 months later most of my mulch has actually broken down so I just applied a 2in layer of compost at the bottom of all of my pepper plants PL because my mulch layer was drying up and going away so now that I put down that 2-in layer of compost I’m going to follow up with another 3in layer of mulch now what you choose to use as mulch is not that important as long as it is a natural mulch that is free from weed seed tops and herbicides and things like that so what you don’t want to use is really more important than what you do use don’t use dyed mulch because that’s just ground up Construction Supplies in most cases that are dyed to look like real wood when it’s actually just ground up pallets ground up 2x4s plywood things like that don’t use Stone mulch because it doesn’t break down and add organic matter to your soil and don’t use rubber mulch because that’s usually made of old tires and waste products you don’t want that leeching into your soil now when it comes to mulch that you do use any natural mulch will do you can use wood chips hardwood shredded bark mulch you could use pine bark nuggets you could use pine straw wheat straw you can use hay as long as it isn’t full of herbicides and Seed tops you can use grass clippings from your lawn as long as you haven’t treated your lawn with any kind of herbicides and it isn’t full of seed tops you can use chopped up leaves you can use uh pine straw the world is your oyster when it comes to what mulch you can use just make sure it is natural critical Garden task number two is one of the biggest time and money Savers that you can possibly do in your garden and that is to install drip irrigation now a lot of people are reluctant to install drip irrigation because they think it is complicated and they think it is expensive and that’s not really true there are many easy and affordable ways that you can install drip irrigation to your garden in fact over the years I’ve made a complete playlist on how to do that I will link to that playlist both above and down in the video description that tells you exactly how to install drip irrigation to whether you’re growing a container garden a raised bed garden and Earth bed garden and I’ll also place a link to my drip Depot affiliate store down in the video description that has all the parts Under the Sun that you’d ever need to design a drip irrigation system now while there is an initial setup expense to drip irrigation you only have to pay that one time and then after that you will start adding up the savings because drip irrigation is extremely efficient you see when you overhead water you cover the entire surface of your soil with water so all of that that moisture it sits on the top layer of the soil and it evaporates when the sun comes out so you’re just flushing water away when you install drip irrigation you are dripping all of that water into a tiny concentrated spot so it Waters deeply and there is little to no evaporation so all of that water goes into the soil and deeply penetrates it so it gets to the roots of the plant instead of evaporating back up into the atmosphere but the real benefits to drip irrigation is in the time savings and the sweat savings all of these little fig trees that are part of my fig breeding experiment they are not connected to drip irrigation yet so I’m still handw watering them and doing it today it’s 93° with Peak humidity it is absolutely brutal and I am utterly dripping with sweat I think I’ve lost about 2 lbs of water weight so not having drip irrigation run to this setup right here is really killing me it is very unpleasant so I strongly recommend Everybody Run drip irrigation it will be such a timesaver and because I’m handw watering you can see I’m getting yellowing on these figs because I’m washing out the containers that doesn’t really happen with drip irrigation so this uneven moisture is actually hurting these figs and I’m wasting water in the process and flushing away my fertilizer I have to give these some nitrogen to Green them back up because I’m watering these inefficiently and if I can’t convince you to install drip irrigation at least consider this I recently made a video that shows you how to take an old school sprinkler hose and use that as makeshift drip irrigation by simply flipping it upside down I’ll link to that video both above and down in the video description but all I did here was run a lead in hose to a Y connector and then I have two 50t sprinkler hoses upside down running behind all of my drought sensitive fruit trees and that is acting like drip line and it is working absolutely fantastic you can use these in raised garden beds as well as long as you don’t make too uh auster of a bending radius in the hose if you have long rows in your garden this could be absolutely perfect so at least consider this option I’ll Place links in the video description for this as well tip number three was the absolute game Cher in my garden that finally made it possible for me to Garden all throughout the summer and that is to install shade cloth overhead your plants yes this thing that you see installed above my head is 40% shade cloth this has made all of the difference in my garden before I installed shade cloth my garden used to quit in July because it got way too hot and the heat would just kill all of my plants but now that I had this shade cloth installed overhead I’m able to Garden all throughout the summer for the first time because of the extreme heat humidity and rainfall we get in my climate here in the coastal Southeast come this time of year most of my vegetables would be dying especially my tomatoes they would be covered in leaf diseases like early blight leaf spot and a whole host of other things since installing shade cloth these diseases have largely become a problem of the past I don’t really deal with them much anymore despite the fact I spray fungicides less than ever I haven’t sprayed any of these plants in weeks and they still look great if they were growing out in the open they would be covered in Disease by now so why does this happen well why do human beings get sick human beings don’t get sick just because there is fungi and bacteria and viruses in the air it’s only a problem when it overwhelms our immune system system and the same thing happens to our plants in the beginning of Spring when conditions are cool the plants are very comfortable and the loads of viruses and bacteria and fungus in the air are relatively low so the natural immune systems of the plants can easily fend them off but then summer happens and there is more fungal disease there’s more bacteria there’s more viruses circulating throughout the air and growing in your soil but also what happens is your Tomatoes your cucumbers your peppers your eggplants your zucchini all of these things get too hot the UV index is too much for them and that’s because they are native understory Vines and Native understory plants they are used to growing in the dappled light of shade canopies from trees and growing along a forest floor they didn’t adapt to deal with direct sunlight but because we are growing them in temperate regions that get Frost and freeze we have to get them to fruit really quickly in a truncated season so we plant them out in full sun well in the summer that full sun is way too strong for them because they adapted to grow in shade and dappled like conditions and then that stresses them out so their immune systems get naturally suppressed because of the extreme UV and the too high of temperatures so when that happens when their immune systems start getting beaten down that is when they really become overwhelmed with all of the diseases in the air so you have stressed out plants and you have have a higher volume of pathogens in the air in the soil that is why your Tomatoes Get disease and your other plants get disease so since installing shade cloth I have taken the sun related and heat related stress out of the equation so now their natural immune systems can better fight off the pathogens in the air and the soil let me show you at the bottom of my tomato plants they all show a little bit of early blight and that is to be expected I planted these back in late March so if you live in the North these are what your tomato plant probably look like come the beginning of August I’m just a lot further ahead now when you go up higher on the plants what you see are beautiful largely disease free leaves so my plants are vastly outgrowing the very mild early blight and leaf spot that I have so it’s not an issue I don’t really need to spray to control them as long as my plants keep outpacing the disease I’m not even really removing those leaves because I don’t want to open up wound on the tomatoes for those diseases to spread so simply by taking the extreme heat out of the equation these plants have become better prepared to deal with the natural pathogens in the air and the soil and I don’t really have to spray as much it has been a revelation and if you don’t believe me here out in the open in my garden where I’m growing my determinant Tomatoes I did not install shade cloth and you can see the massive difference my determinate Tomatoes comparatively look awful they are overwhelmed with disease they are beat up they look sick some of them are dying and again this isn’t really a big deal because these are determinant tomatoes so they have a limited lifespan anyway but the tops look okay for the most part but everything immediately below that they are just covered in early blight and that’s because they are under so much more pressure from the UV index and the heat without the shade cloth so you see these miserable looking plants by comparison that should show you just how incredible shade cloth is so now my tomato plants are healthy where they would otherwise be overwhelmed with disease at this time of year and of course if you’re curious about where I get this shade cloth I will make sure to place a link down in the video description it is absolutely awesome stuff it’s very affordable and it comes in all different sizes for your convenience critical gardening task number four that you must do in early July is to start a succession crop of short lived plants especially things like cucurbits your zucchini your cucumbers your small fruited meel you see things like cucurbits generally speaking have very short lifespans they largely don’t live past 60 to 75 days after you transplant them so if you transplanted your cucumbers and your squash back into ground in April or early May chances are the plants are starting to quit on you now all of these cucumber and zucchini plants are my original plants and some of them still look pretty good and they’re giving pretty good production still but some of them are starting to suffer I’m starting to see some yellowing on the lower leaves some of my cucumbers have been attacked by Boring worms like this one right here it was wilting because a pest got inside the vine so I had to cut it back and it is just not doing too well so that plant will likely have to be replaced this one is starting to look sickly on the bottom these are starting to get some kind of disease that are working their way up the vines they’re still producing but it’s probably not going to produce really well for me Beyond a few more weeks so it’s really important that I get out ahead of it and have a new crop look this is starting to get some type of spotted Leaf Disease on it my zucchini doesn’t look nearly as good as it used to be they’ve been attacked many times by squash bugs so don’t try and fight nature just replace the plants now your cuer bits generally speaking germinate in only about 3 to 4 days and they are ready for transplant in about 3 weeks so if you start the seeds right now and early July they should be ready for transplanting come the end of July and then you will have a nice fresh crop for August this also holds true if you like growing things like fall corn and fall Tomatoes now may be the time that you want to start fresh seeds for your fall tomato crop like I like growing determinant tomatoes in the fall and all of my tomato plants at this point have too much disease on them that I wouldn’t want to propagate any suckers for those ugly determinate tomatoes out in my garden so I’m going to be starting fresh tomato seed this week and things like fall corn that is a direct sewn crop but chances are depending on what your climate is you may need to plant that at some point in July and critical July Garden task number five will come as a shock to many but I promise you it is the truth and that is to start planning your fall Garden it sounds very strange to talk about fall gardening when we are just entering into the hottest longest days of the summer but I promise you it is true and that is because any seeds that you sew today will not be ready for transplanting out into your garden for 6 to 8 weeks so if you start sewing seeds on July 1st those plants will not be ready for transplant until August 15th to August 31st sometime in that window and many of you will be knocking on the door of cooler fall temperatures by then so believe it or not early July is the Gateway for your fall Garden so if you want to plant things like lettuce brasas fall Tomatoes you have to start all of those things at some point in July now here where I live in zone 8B North Carolina it doesn’t really cool off here a lot until mid to late September so for me to plant something like broccoli and roma lettuce out in the garden I need to plant them around September 15th well that means me personally I’m going to be starting my seeds in mid to late July many of you cool down way before me so you will want to plant a lot of those fall seeds that you’re making transplants for in the beginning of July I know it’s crazy but as gardeners we always have to think 6 to 8 weeks down the road now I’m not going to use this video to talk about all the different things that you should plant from seed in July because that’s highly variable on where you live and that would take a long time in and of itself so stay tuned I will post another video within the next week or so of this video that shows you all of the different things that you should start from seed in July I just want to prepare you mentally in advance because while it’s the start of July fall gardening season is creeping up quickly and that right there are five critical gardening tasks that you should do in July July is a very difficult time to Garden not just for your plants themselves but for us because we have to be outside in the heat humidity the drought the thunderstorms and the relatively unpleasant conditions but take it from me I used to think that gardening in July here was relatively imposs possible now I do it with relative ease and it is much more enjoyable because I have automated so many different procedures and I’ve provided shade to the plants that really benefit from it so I don’t suffer nearly as much 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 have any questions about these Concepts please ask them down in the comments below I will do my best to address them and remember to please check that video description because I have lots of other videos and also the product links that I featured within the video description for your convenience while you’re in the video description check out my Amazon storefront if you want to see everything I use in real life in my garden and also check out my spread shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video watching Dale sleep is so funny sometimes sometimes and I don’t know why he just buries his face underneath blankets I don’t know if that is to make it darker or what or to suppressed sound but he has his face buried under the blanket he’s cracking me up oh my poor little boy you’re so funny a he’s so comfy I’m just going to let him go I wish I could sleep that comfy see this is one of those cooling pads and it’s always cool to the tou so he’s got his body on the cooling pad to keep cool and his head under the blanket to stay warm