It is Summer. You may think that gardening season is about over. Greens are a distant memory, and bolted almost a month ago. You have already dug up potatoes. You may be harvesting tomatoes and peppers. The squash is coming along nicely.
But if you live in the midsection of the country or the South you can get another growing season. Start succession planting now! Here in NE KS in July, the seed displays are thrown away or sent back to the vendor. If you have a good relationship with the manager at the big box store or (better yet) a small neighborhood hardware store, you may be able to score these seeds for very cheap or free.
Last week I bought 10 pepper plants for 60 cents each. All the other tomato and squash plants were looking very sad, beyond help. But the peppers thrive in hot weather and they had some shade, so they were still going strong.
Fall Garden
I live in USDA Zone 6A. Our average frost date is Oct-20. In 2021 it was at the end of October. In 2019 and 2020 it was much earlier in October. That still gives me almost 100 days left until first frost. Squash, pumpkins take about 100 days to maturity. Cabbage can be planted later and will survive a light early frost. I even plant cut-and come-again lettuce in early September.
If I set Clyde’s Garden Planner (from Baker Creek) to the Oct-20 first frost date, these are the things that I can plant and harvest. LP is the last planting date, and checkmarks are the harvest dates. Many of these I need to plant NOW in July to get a decent harvest period before the first frost.
Plant that Victory Garden!
A good graphic of the Victory Garden flyer from the 1940s is a good guide for planting another succession crop.
Plant turnips, radishes, cabbage, bush beans. Or plant kale and greens to feed to the chickens.
Follow up those carrots with spinach. You can even plant some beets.
I plant Black Seeded Simpson cut-and-come-again lettuce in Sept and into the Fall months both in-ground and in my greenhouse. I can get fresh greens from the greenhouse until a very hard 20 degree freeze in January.
Plant a cover crop for an extra food harvest, deer food plot, or a cover crop to build nitrogen and cover the soil for the winter.
Plant cowpeas or bush beans for extra nitrogen. Purple top turnips and brassicas for deer plots. I have also planted winter lentils, which cover the ground and hold on down to the low 20’s. Some actually make it through to Spring. These can all be tilled under as green manure in the Spring.
I get my cover crop seed from Green Cover Seed.
Don’t forget the perennials!
Fall is a good time to plant trees. If planted in September, you can get root growth before the first frost and a head start on growth for next year. I also plant perennial narrow leaf plantain and transplant echinacea.
