It's Never Too Late to Start to a Vegetable Garden!

How did it get to be mid-June already? Father’s Day is just days away - many people, gardeners in particular may be feeling where did the summer go? Time flies by our busy lives as we juggle taking care of family, work and ourselves - making us feel like we never have enough time. The good news is, summer has not even officially started yet, so we can all take a collective deep breath.

Over the years of installing gardens, one of the most repeated reasons we heard why people hadn’t started the garden was that they felt they ran out of time. “Before I knew it was the end of June or July 4th.“ We would hear over and over again. “Why bother at that point, by the time I get anything going, summer will be over.” I find more and more how instant gratification is permeates so many aspects of our society‘s lives. We want things done yesterday, once we’ve decided to actually make the decision to do something.

Gardening can’t be rushed, you may be able to nudge Mother Nature along little, but that’s all you will really be able to get away with with her. Many people find the months of May and June rush by and the blow off any thoughts of starting a garden in July or August because to them what’s the point? They miss the growing season didn’t they? It would be too late to start a garden, would it?

No! It’s never too late to put in a garden bed and depending upon what zone you’re in, you may be able to start a garden 12 months throughout the year, while others may have to wait for snow so far. 

If you goal is vegetable gardening yes there are certain plants that can be seeded throughout the year. If you’re just starting your garden and it’s July or August , we suggest you begin with planting some herbs in the bed first. Herbs starts can be found your round at a local nursery or farmers market. Flowers too, such as marigolds are geraniums will give you a raise bed instant color which will spread out and last into the fall. But what about the vegetables? By this time they’re usually are no more starts to be found at the farmers market or nurseries so you will have to start from seed. 

There are plenty of delicious fresh vegetables which can be seeded in July and August delivering to you a delicious fresh harvest in September and October. By midsummer, the sun is strong and it will heat the soil in your new raise garden bed quickly. Raised bed gardens warm up faster than in ground garden beds and depending upon the material used can be a few degrees warmer too.

There are a multitude of quick growing vegetables that enjoy summer heat. We look for slow-bolting and heat tolerant seed varieties that work better in the hot summer. When starting a garden “late” in the season, we look for quick-growers that will give us a harvest before the growing season is through.  These vegetables don’t take too long to reach full maturity and most of the specific ones listed, we have used successfully in our clients’ gardens, as well as our own.[The links I include are for your convenience, I do not get any profits from any of the sales from the seeds, but I do recommend these companies]. Some vegetables are generally known to be quick growers such as radishes and lettuce. Many times we will use this quick growers when we do succession plantings in our garden. These quick growers generally  take less than a month to reach full maturity on average. Cherry bell radishes ( 22 days) or French breakfast radishes (25 to 30 days) or Viola radishes (24 days) - all can be enjoyed in a salad that’s all homegrown in a little over a month from the time a garden is started. 

A few years ago we added a second garden bed for a client - it was around mid-summer when the decision was finalized, so when we planted the new garden bed we planted a fall garden, meaning that everything would be harvested in late September- early October. We seeded summer squash, turnips, lettuce, beans, carrots. Summer squash loves hot summer soil and we picked a variety that matured in around 60 days, yielding multiple, bountiful fall harvests. Certain varieties can take even less time such Yellowfin and Sunburst squash which mature in 50 and 55 days, respectively. Or look for a super quick grower like Fortune squash which which matures in as little as 39 days! Tokyo Cross turnips mature in a quick 35 to 60 days and Golden Ball Turnips 45 to 65 days. 

Seeding the new raised bed 

Beans love the summer heat and there are plenty of varieties they can be enjoyed into the fall months like Speedy beans (50 days) or Wyatt beans (54 days). Other varieties include Calima, Mascotte and Golden Butter Wax.

Beets are also quick growers and there are plenty of variety that are heat tolerant. Early Wonder Tall Top beets mature in 45 days and are adaptable to all seasons. Touchstone Gold only take 53 days and Pablo beets 45 days. Bulls Blood and Golden beets also only take 50 days to mature.

Kale is another quick grower which should be sown in July to enjoy your fall crop. Nero di Toscana for instance matures in 50 days as does Redbor kale. 

It’s also not too late to enjoy carrots. There are a variety of carrots which one seeded in late July to early August can be enjoyed by the end of fall, early winter. Mini Adelaide carrot take 50 days, Mokum carrots take only 56 days, , CandySnax 65 days, Napa 63 days and Yaya carrots only 60 days.

There are even some cucumber varieties which can be started in late July which will allow you a harvest by summer’s end such as Chicago Pickling, 55 days to maturity but can be harvested smaller. Or Double Yield cucumbers 55 days or Excelsior and Straight 8 at 50 days.

It’s important to remember to think about the days needed to germinate as well which can range from 5 to 12 days on the average. This adds time to the overall time before your harvest comes in.

Fall garden favorites include a return to some of the cold crops of spring. The days maybe getting shorter and the nights cooler but that doesn’t mean an end to the growing season necessarily. There is plenty of arugula, lettuce, spinach and Swiss chard do you continue to enjoy in the fall if you didn’t have a chance to start your raised bed garden until late summer.

Fall, of coarse, is the only time to plant garlic bulbs which will overwinter and produce healthy harvests the following summer. We love cooking with garlic, onions and shallots so we always include these in our garden. These ingredients can add up if you use them a lot at the grocery store so growing them in our own garden is much more economical in the long run. Adding these bulbs couldn’t be any easier to plant too and it always makes us feel good to know that something is going on underneath all that snow in the winter time. There is also a wide variety of overwintering vegetables which can be seeded in the fall which will produce an early spring harvest; these include peas onions shallots and spinach. Spring onion seeds that are sown in August will be ready to harvest in early spring,  White Lisbon is a winter hardy variety that we have with had success with in the past. 

Autumn is also a good time to start an asparagus bed but choose autumn planting varieties like Pacific Purple. You can add another variety in the springtime to the raised bed.

Extend the season with a cold cover

cabbage and pak choi

Finally there are a few more veggies that can be started late in the season but require a little protection like a cold frame or cold cover. With a little protection you can enjoy winter salads, carrots , cabbages and pak choi through out the entire winter, particularly if you are lucky enough to have a greenhouse!

Life gets busy and there is no perfect time sometimes to do things, we just do them when we can get to them. So if you find you’re interested in growing your own food and you think it’s too late - know that it’s not.  Remember even starting late in the season you will be able to enjoy healthy harvests and will be ready to go come the following spring.

Tower Garden

If you want to push things along a little and don’t want to spend time setting up a raised bed gardens but you’re interested in growing your own food you can start a Tower Garden. Tower Gardens grow food three times faster and produces 30% greater yields on average than traditional methods. 

A look back at weather 2015

The end of 2015 causes me pause to reflect on the season of 2015.  The weather more than anything else dominated my thoughts much of the season and provided us with plenty of challenges.  For Homegrown Harvest it was our third growing season as a business and as professional growers. The year began with cold but dry air with the snows holding off until mid January. I remember vividly since we picked up our riding mower/ snowthrower on January 6th from Sears. It took Mark a week of working on it to put the snow thrower attachment on it; he finished right before the first of what turned out to be thirteen snowfalls that were big enough to plow. I believe it snowed around 60"+ where we are in zone 6b; parts of New England saw much more such as Boston at 109"+ where Mark's son lives.

The springtime came in cold and wet; the snows gave way to rain and it was a soggy season.  We were able to seed early crops of peas and greens without any problem in the raised beds by  March 6th just about the same time as our last big plowable snowfall.  The top two inches of soil at that point were workable and I started throwing in seeds I could beginning from that point on.

Summer continued to be cool but the rain stopped altogether for months. Clients who didn't water their gardens regularly didn't get the yields that others who had some sort of irrigation in place did. The cooler temperatures stalled and delayed the ripening of many tomatoes and other warm weather crops.  But in time and with patience we got fantastic yields overall that just took a while to ripen.  For instance, some of our hot pepper plants, we had at least 3 - had so many peppers on them - one plant per variety was plenty.  Thankfully Mother Nature finally turned up the heat for a few days with degrees of 90+ then summer and remained comfortably warm for the fall season allowing for an early winter harvest of  broccoli, peas, carrots, greens and other fall crops.  The parsley, sage, thyme and mints continued to thrive throughout autumn. Kale pops up in the path prolifically where I let last winter's crop to go to seed.

Winter has started slowly easing in with the same temperatures we enjoyed during the fall.  No snow, but the rains returned finally. Christmas Eve and days surrounding it were warm reaching the 60s. We were able to sit comfortably around the firepit the night before Christmas sharing stories , drinking wine while opening a few gifts with our children.  The moon was full, the first time since 1977, the next will be 2035 or something - we watched it as it travelled across the night sky.

As we come to end of 2015, the temperatures have dipped to where they should be. I take solace in knowing I was given the extra nice weather to prepare everything for winter. Fall had been personally tough for my family. A personal tragedy touched our family, forcing many things to have to take a back seat.  The extra nice days served me well as I was able to tend to closing up our own garden and not freeze my hands off in the process. We had spent time in October and November closing up our clients' gardens. - many of them pleasantly surprised at the elongated season and the growing potential they had harnessed.

Currently our 11 raised beds and 20+ containers, we are growing in 7 beds and probably about 10 containers a variety of  lettuces, radishes, carrots, garlic, onions, shallots, spinach, broccoli and last of last season's Brussels sprouts. Some beds are covered with a variety of cold frames, cloches or low hoops; the others simply have a thick layer of hay on top.

We just pulled in our Tower Garden a few days before the new year- two broccoli plants have started, so once we put the grow lights on it, we should be able to add other seed starts to it and enjoy more fresh veggies during winter 2016. The winter of 2016 will be here and we are ready for whatever it brings. The early stages will be filled with seed catalogs and dreams.  Happy dreaming.

A Bountiful Summer leads to Several Seeds to Save

"I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered and near a good market for the production of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. Such a variety of subjects someone always coming to perfection. The failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one throughout the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden. But though an old man, I am but a young gardener."

~Thomas Jefferson to Charles William peel Poplar Forest, August 20, 1811.         

It's hard to believe that we ushered in the fall of 2015 this week. Our business celebrated its third growing season and the busy season of that!

Mark working at a client's garden we revamped this season

One of the best things that I love about gardening is that each season brings something new and different. We began seeding early in March as the snow ebbed and as soon as we were able to work the top few inches of soil. The peas are always the first things we get into the raised beds. Temperatures remained cool throughout spring and into early summer. It took a while for things to finally heat up which is why I still have plenty of tomatoes, beans and peppers ripening in the garden right now.

I reviewed the data on AccuWeather the actual temperatures that we experience this growing season I wasn't too surprised to confirm what I thought was a cooler than normal season here in zone 6. This may seem contrary to report this being the "warmest summer on record" or the "summer of 2015 was earth hottest on record ". But explains why we still have plenty of green tomatoes and peppers growing in our garden right now couple that with less than average rainfall and you have a recipe for a slower than average season.

Highs and lows temperatures
March	0	57
April	23	75
May	37	84
June	41	84
July	51	91
August	51	90
September *	49	94

Number of days about 90 degrees
July	3
August	1
September*	2

  

Number of days temperature was above 80 degrees in New Canaan, CT
May	13
June	10
July	24
August	26
September *	14

Number of days temperature was 75 degrees or below
March	31
April	29
May	12
June	13
July	2
August	0
September *	4

 *up until the 24th

The slower season doesn't necessarily mean less productive however. We have had a tremendously productive season bringing pounds of tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and beans. 

  

The cucumbers keep coming in, we have had such a good season I was able to put a platter full to share with our neighbors. 

The Barnside sweet runner beans and Blauhilde beans, a beautiful purple being that turns green when cooked coming in so fast I have to freeze them since we can eat them fast enough.

 

September 23rd harvest

As the growing season winds down it's the time of year to start collecting seeds for next year. Ultimately one of the best seeds to use in our garden are the seeds harvested from your own plants.  It’s an age-old tradition that’s extremely rewarding on many levels.  Preserving your heirloom, open-pollinated varieties, you help plants adapt to your local conditions thus increasing yields

Heirloom tomatoes

Understanding the difference between Heirloom and F1 Hybrid seeds 

“ Heirlooms have naturally evolved over the years and have been passed down over the generations from gardener to gardener.

F1 hybrid plants are not genetically modified but have been developed by gardeners and farmers for centuries. By cross pollinating two related varieties, breeders strive to take the best of both worlds from most plants characteristics such as disease and pest resistance, high-yielding and greater taste.

For the seed collector, the drawback to F1 seeds is that they don't reproduce a true second generation. What this means is that the second-generation may not have the same characteristics as the first generation. 

It is for that reason that we do not collect seeds from F1 hybrid plants. F1 seeds have their place in the garden but when it comes to collecting seeds turn to your heirlooms. 

By collecting and preserving heirloom varieties, we help pass along to future generations delicious varieties that gardeners of shared with one another for over 50 years. Heirloom vegetables are open pollinated and remain stable in their characteristics from year-to-year.

 

A few do’s and don’t to remember when seed-saving

• “ Don’t save seeds from f1 hybrid plants.

• “ These seeds can be infertile or produce different traits from the original parent, which are less favorable

• “ Don’t save seeds from the squash family and sweet corn

• “ They can cross pollinate and hybridize, difficult to keep variety pure

• Tomatoes, peppers, beans and peas are the best seeds to start with

• They are easiest to harvest and require little attention before storage.

• Save your seeds from your strongest plants with the most delicious fruit
• To collect seeds from the vegetables simply look to take the seeds from a beautifully developed plant that is fully mature. Look for plants that have grown vigorously and have shown resistance to pests and diseases. 

• Store seeds in airtight containers or individual envelopes kept in a dry place

• Label clearly with name, variety, date collected

I prefer the airtight container since envelopes get wet and dirty in practice ultimately – hard to reseal – seeds fall out end up at the bottom of my purse…

When we save our seeds, it helps to preserve and promote genetic diversity. In turn this helps to strengthen and make more pest-resistant future generations that will thrive.

How-to collect seeds

1.    Slice open your vegetable to carefully remove the seeds with a spoon or a knife.

2.    Then place the seeds on cardboard or a piece of paper towel to dry out

a.    Tomato seeds are covered in the mucous membrane and it can be easier to use a cheesecloth

b.    Rinse the seeds out with water to release the membrane

c.     spread seeds out on a piece of cardboard to dry.

3.    place seeds in dry place

Have fun saving your seeds!