July Planting – Subtropical Australia Vegetable Garden

Last chance for cool season crops here for us in the Subtropics. Here’s what we’re planting this month in our organic vegetable garden in South East Queensland Australia.

Grab my seed bundle here – https://loveofdirt.com.au/products/seasonal-seed-bundle
Mycorrhizal Fungi – https://loveofdirt.com.au/products/mycogold-complete-mycorrhizal-fungi
Seaweed Extract – https://loveofdirt.com.au/products/seaweed-saver

Get my seed sowing chart here https://loveofdirt.com.au/pages/what-to-plant-now
Need help growing food join me inside Dirt Lovers – https://www.dirtlovers.com.au

It’s mid-winter here in subtropical Australia, the garden is loving the cooler weather, less 
bugs and everything is really thriving. So it’s time to plant out another bed to keep 
the harvests coming. If you’re new here, I’m Nicki and I’m on a mission to grow as much 
food as I can on a regular suburban block. I like eating but I hate preserving, so 
each month I plant a small bed of staples to keep us with an ongoing supply. These 
plants are things that I turn around in a three to four month period but I do have 
other beds with things that take a little bit longer or need more room. Things like 
capsicums, some tomatoes, garlic and onions. Each bed I plant has a diverse collection of 
plants so any losses that we inevitably might have isn’t as catastrophic if we were to do one major 
planting at the beginning of the season. I have my little helper today, this is Betty and she is 
nine weeks old. She’s been keeping us very busy. If you watch some of my older videos 
you might have seen our old 16 year old beagle Lucy who was my constant 
companion in the garden. Sadly she passed away around two years ago and 
it was a big reason why I took a break from gardening. Having a dog again is 
going to change a few things that we do. I won’t be able to use blood meal or slow release 
fertilizer in the garden anymore as it’s just way too strong for the sniffy inquisitive noses. 
Even a straw bale garden will be off limits for us unless we put it in a beagle free zone. 
So a little status update on our previous beds. Our April bed we had a few setbacks with those 
cockroaches but we’ve already harvested all of the lettuce. I’m letting the remaining go to seed. 
The solo broccoli that survived is now ready to harvest and I’ll cut this one off and leave it 
in and we’ll be getting lots more side shoots. The sugar snaps are now also starting 
to kick into gear. The bed I planted in May we’re now harvesting kale and 
swiss chard and the kohlrabi is doing well. Lettuce will also be ready 
to be pulled out of here soon too. For the June bed that we planted last 
month I did go away for the weekend after I planted and I didn’t keep 
the water up so none of my carrots germinated. So I’ve had to re-sow 
those but otherwise everything else is going really well. I do still have 
to put up the trellis for the peas yet. So now on to our July bed. So I 
cleared out everything that we had sown in March to replant. We had 
some great harvests from this bed. Loads of snow peas, carrots, asian 
greens and rocket. I directly sowed everything in this bed. The beetroots 
were a little bit on the smaller size. I didn’t thin these out which 
is probably why but they were perfect for a baby beet harvest. For 
this July bed it will be the last of our cool season crops. If you want some 
more inspiration I did do a video last year with a different combination for 
things that you could plant in July. This time of year you could also follow 
what I planted back in March, April, May or June. It’s just probably a 
little bit too late for cauliflower now. Now with this bed I’m going to 
do something a little bit different. I’m going to use a bit of a square foot gardening 
approach. Instead of rows I’m going to be planting in blocks and with this 90 centimeter bed I’m 
going to be doing nine blocks of different plantings. I prepped this garden with our own 
compost and some worm castings and I have to tell you after slacking off on the compost front it is 
so good to have it back and up and running again. I also put in my fork and gave it a bit 
of a wiggle to loosen things up as the bed was quite compacted. In here I’m going 
to be planting some of the seedlings that we sowed in the greenhouse last month which was 
florence fennel, spring onions and lettuce. I’m also going to direct sow some oregan sugar 
snow peas, tatsoi, beetroot and carrots. Now I’m going to go in with three squares of 
fennel. You could direct sow these, they do take a little bit of time to germinate so just keep that 
in mind if you’re wanting to turn over this bed in three months time. Some say fennel will inhibit 
growth of other plants but I haven’t had that experience so it will be interesting to see how 
it goes with this quite intensely planted garden. So in each square I’m just going to put two 
plants per square. If you didn’t want to do fennel you could fit in a single swiss chard 
or a kale plant, even a broccoli could work in these positions too. I’m going in with 
two squares of lettuce with three plants in one square where the rounded edge 
of the bed is and four in the other. This is buttercrunch which forms a loose head. It will soon get a head forming lettuces 
and will move toward loose leaf varieties but I’m going to try and get in as many as I 
can before it gets hot. Lettuce can definitely be swapped out with any of the fast growing 
asian greens such as pak choy if you prefer. The spring onions I’m just going to be 
using as space fillers in and around the fennel. I’m going to plant some oregan 
sugar snow peas. This variety doesn’t get super tall so I’m going to use a tomato 
cage as my climbing structure for it. You could easily make a teepee with a couple 
of bamboo or tomato stakes and just run some string around it to create a bit of a climbing 
frame. In this little square I’m going to fit in six seeds. Sugar snaps would also be a great 
one to grow in this kind of position as well. I’m going to do a grid of carrot 
seeds so I’m actually going to do 16 little holes and put the seeds 
in. This is a lot different to how I normally plant carrots. This variety 
I’m going with is scarlet nantes. I usually interchange this with the 
kuroda and the nantes. The nantes is the standard one that you will find at 
supermarkets. It’s relatively easy to grow. This one is more vibrant in color so it 
makes it a really nice baby carrot too. If you’re not into growing carrots you 
could also swap this out for radish if you want to. Smack bang in the middle 
I’m direct sowing some tatsoi seeds. These plants actually get quite big and 
unlike the pak choi they are a perfect pick again plant so you can harvest the outer 
leaves. I’m only going to plant two here. If didn’t want to do a tatsoi a single broccoli 
or kale or swiss chard would work as well. The final square I’m going to put in 
some beetroot. Normally I do a dark red detroit but I interchange them with 
this early wonder which grows kind of a little bit flatter not as round. I find 
this one to be particularly sweet as well. In here I’m going to fit nine in a grid. Then just 
a quick water in with some diluted seaweed extract and once it’s all settled in I will give it some 
mulch usually after the seeds have germinated. Now this is the time that I would normally head to 
the greenhouse and this month the only thing that I was going to plant was lettuce but I already 
have a lot on standby so I’m not going to bother this month but if you want to plant with me next 
month make sure you get some lettuce seeds in now. Next month there will definitely be way 
more that we’re sowing as we transition to those warm season crops. Now 
if you want to plant along with me I have created a bundle of seeds 
which you can grab from my website. It includes everything that I plant in these 
staple beds for the next three months. There’s a link in the description if you 
want to check that out. Now after the winter equinox I have found that’s the 
best time to get my potatoes in for us. Sometimes I plant in March as well but the harvest 
from the July potatoes has been generally better. It’s technically our dry season so they’re 
less susceptible to rotting during this time as we don’t have that high rainfall. 
I’m just going to plant in bags this year and I’ve chosen determinant varieties the 
Kennebec, I’m not sure if I’m saying that right, and the Red Pontiac. I would probably 
get a bigger harvest if I went with indeterminate varieties but growing in 
pots it’s just harder to hill them up. I’m using these 40 litre felt bags. I 
didn’t have enough of my own homemade compost so I’m just going to use commercial 
potting mix with a bit of cow manure and some mushroom compost. I’m going to experiment 
with a quantity for each of these bags. I’m going to do one with one seed, one 
with two seeds, one with three seeds and one with four seeds. If I had more space 
I would probably cut these seed potatoes up to make the most of the seeds but I am 
just going to use the whole seed for this. Planting them it’s eye to the sky and I’m 
burying them around 15 centimetres deep. In the hole I’m just going to add a 
little bit of slow release fertiliser, some worm castings and some mycorrhizae fungi. 
I used to say that potatoes weren’t really worth growing but they are getting really expensive 
in the shops and honestly there’s nothing like a fresh new potato straight from the garden. 
Anyway that’s us all planted out for July. Thank you guys so much for watching 
and I’ll see you next time.