July says
It’s the middle of July (how’d that happen?) so we climb out of bed, scratch where the chiggers were and plan the day. Laser-focused gardeners make coffee while thinking about the garden and spent snow pea vines… time for them to go. Save a few wrinkly brown pods for seeds; the vines produced well, so keep the variety going. Even the first crop of Rattlesnake beans has had its burst. The vigorous vines should do well in the compost.
During teeth-brushing, the ever-attentive gardener remembers the bed gone wild with lettuce, chard and kale plants going to seed and maypop running amok. That bed was site of a mini-greenhouse over the kale, chard and lettuce during winter, and all responded to the challenge. Now they’ve shot up tall stalks heavy laden with seeds, and the time has come to save the seeds and clear the space. Dried-on-the-stalk kale seed pods look like small brown pointy string beans, and at any perturbation they open and scatter seeds. I save some anyway.
Cleaning up, clearing out spots mid-season is a chance for soil and the air above it to breathe and relax a bit which, of course, is followed quickly by the omni-conscientious gardener wondering what to plant in the wide-open space. Yes, gardeners can plant new crops in summer! Ooh-wee! It’s like early spring, just sweatier with chiggers. It’s too hot right now for lettuce and snow peas, for example, but it’s okay for another planting of beans, cucumbers, leafy greens and many more.
First, though, you know your soil better than I do, but the freshly-bared soil might need some amendments tickled in with a cultivator. All spring, that soil fed the early crops you just removed, and soil continues to feed us if we keep it healthy. Soil is alive and deserves universal healthcare just like we do.
So… soil prepped and ready for another run, the dedicated gardener grabs some bush beans to plant in a sunny south-facing spot. Some varieties such as Red Swan and Butterwax will be ready less than two months after planting. Rattlesnake pole beans take just another week longer, so bean seeds in the ground now watered well might be producing just after Labor Day.
Same for cucumbers. Several varieties bear cukes after only 50 days. A senior couple once told me the best day to plant the second cucumber crop is July 21. I did not wait till then, but that date still awaits, and I have seeds. If you don’t have trellis space for vines that climb, varieties such as Spacemaster, Picklebush and Bush Champion produce cucumbers quickly and don’t require trellises or much space. I have, however, known bush varieties that ramble rather than “bush,” but it’s about cucumbers, not semantics.
Some summers, to outsmart squash bugs, I have waited until mid-season to plant zucchini and crooknecks. I hoped the later, hotter start would frustrate their expectations, and they would get hungry and bored and fly away thither. I don’t claim to be smarter than a squash bug, but sometimes coincidence favors the bold. Black Beauty zucchini are ready in 50 days, so that would be just past Labor Day. Your kids could take fresh zucchini to school for their new teachers. Teachers love zucchini.
Planting now would mean harvesting fresh beans, cucumbers and summer squash from early September ‘til some frosty evening mid-autumn. Also, cilantro, basil and dill. Might as well try the kale seeds you just saved. The fresh lettuce seeds should wait a month or so ‘til cooler days are in sight.
The first frost date for our area is predicted to be mid-October, so determined gardeners who never dodge duty or dirt will have stories to tell about their second plantings – pints and pints of canned or pickled zukes and cukes plus frozen beans. Pints and pints might come in handy if food prices increase. Just saying.