Water Deep, Plant More, Share Often
Ah the heat of July! When nature provides an inch of rain a week, all is well but when conditions are dry, keep up with the watering. Your plants will thank you. One deep watering of an inch per week is better than frequent shallow waterings. Your plants will also appreciate mulch and it’s not too late to apply mulch such as straw or leaves. It will help keep the roots cooler and moist.
One of the questions I am asked in the early summer is if I am done planting the garden. I don’t stop planting until mid to late August. Succession planting means that you plant small amounts of some crops throughout the growing season. The first frost in our area usually comes at the end of September or early October. It seems funny to contemplate frost in July but it’s important for late season planting. You can use this date to count the frost free dates left for growing and check the seed packet for the dates to maturity. If there are enough days to maturity, go ahead and plant. In early July, pop in a row of arugula, beans, chard, lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, turnip or rutabaga. You can plant cabbage, broccoli, Chinese cabbage, kohlrabi, summer squash and cucumber. Planting when the soil is warm in July is often successful because germination happens so quickly as opposed to the cool soil temperatures of spring.
It’s fun to experiment with late season planting. You can start plants such as cabbage, broccoli, cucumbers and summer squash inside in pots and transplant them out in the garden in early July or just start a short row in the garden and transplant them where you have space from a spring crop that has already been removed. If you have started the plants inside, remember to harden them off, as discussed in last month’s article, before planting in the garden. Planting in containers on a sunny deck may work well, if you can keep the critters from nibbling them.
The abundance of food produced in even a small garden is astounding. Keeping up with picking and harvesting helps plants such as beans to keep producing. Don’t pull your broccoli out after you cut that large head as it will keep producing side shoots that are easily harvested until hard frost. I’ve had broccoli produce into November! You may find that you have too much to eat and your friends and neighbors don’t need more. I drop off my extra produce at the Lincoln Center (ADRC) in Stevens Point. They have a scale for weighing what I donate and a sheet to write down what I have brought in. It’s easy and the produce is appreciated and disappears quickly. Operation Bootstrap also takes donations of things that don’t need refrigeration. In other words, lettuce doesn’t work well but summer squash and the like does. Gardening can be such joyful work and sharing the harvest adds an extra layer of kindness.
