Planting a late summer garden
The fence is abruptly
almost done! I'll let Mark share more construction details with you
later. But for now, answers to the most important question --- what can
you plant in late June after the deer eat your original garden?
Fall crops should, of
course, be on the top of your agenda. I went ahead and sprouted some
peas (a bit early) and broccoli (a bit late), and will be
direct-seeding carrots and kale and lettuce at a later date.
But I'm not really ready
to write off the summer garden, so I filled the rest of my flat up with
bush beans, summer squash, and cucumbers. I succession plant all three
of these anyway, so this actually isn't particularly late for a second
or third planting.
What else am I eying?
Strawberries! I've been itching to expand my patch, but was afraid to
risk this deer favorite outside a fence. Time to transplant some
runners and decide if I want to add a new variety to the patch.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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Very much enjoy your blog, BTW. Keep writing!
Your readers should be reminded that you are now in a different climate zone (and micro climate zone) completely from when you lived in SW VA.
Here in East TN, people are still planting summer crops because we have longer hot summers than Ohio. I wouldn't start planting fall crops until mid-August at the earliest due to the crops, more than likely, being killed by the heat and drought since August/September is our "dry" month.
I just finished harvesting peas which I planted in March. Unfortunately, this year we've had so much rain that even getting to the garden, with Wellington boots, was problematic due to the mud and potential falls from slipping. Then there's the problem that we have "spring" weather for about three weeks at the most between intense cold and hot-as-blazes. I've since decided to forego planting cold-weather crops in the spring and will just wait until August to plant them since we have very long falls (sometimes September, October and even into November to harvest).
The moral of this missive is that one needs to really pay attention to the climate in one's area and especially the microclimate when determining what to plant and when.