Is it too late to plant a veggie garden the first of June?

Hi, We're just finishing our hardscape and I'm dying to plant a veggie garden. What will survive this late in the season? Any suggestions ? Thnx!

Hi,

This should help .. it's a pdf file on the time it takes veggies to grow. Also, for the ones that will obviously not make it til your first frost, consider planting in containers. Then you can drag in and out during frost times.

http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM534.pdf

X

In North Carolina you have almost unlimited options. Summer vegetables of course (squash, cukes, beans, southern peas, okra, sweet corn, etc Starting in late August, you can plant many cool season vegetables like broccoli, spinach, English peas, Mustard, kale, turnips, collard etc for fall crops.

You can still get tomatoes and most of the others. Most of the big boxes and nurseries have larger plants that you can put in, certainly into large containers. And I think that for some crops (radishes and lettuce, certainly) you are to plant successive waves of them for all season.

I was going to build a raised bed this year, but stuff happened and it got too late.
So I use 18 gallon Rubbermaid tubs with 12 3/8" holes drilled in the bottom (I stack them and drill them 4 at a time) and 4 holes drilled about 1 inch up the side in case the bottom plugs to keep it well drained. I put a layer of landscape cloth or wire mesh in the bottom. foloowed by an inch or 2 of either coasrse wood mulch or styrofoam pellets (reduced the amount of dirt and gives better drainage). Then I mix 1 part Mushroom compost with 2 parts Pine Fines and 1 part cheap bedding mix. I put down about 2 inches of that mix and sprinkle a small handful of the Watersorb crystals and a good fistful of Osmocote. Mix it lightly then top off with about 5 inches or up to 2 inches from the rim with the soil mix, mixing in a bit of the osmocoat type fert. in the upper layer. By layering it that way the watersorb stuff stays low and encourages the roots to grow deeper (or so I have heard) and deos not float up to the top. We will see- I have 2 of the smaller blue tubs with Watersorb and 2 without. Planted the tomatoes with one of 3 kinds of basil on the side plus the bigger ones have a pepper plant of some sort, too - I got a bunch of seeds in a swap and they are all doing very well. Some sweet peppers and some hot peppers, too.
The nice thing about that is that when it gets really hot you can move them to where they get a little cooling off and are easier to water, or move them up by your back door once they start getting ripe so you can graze on them as you go in and out.

I have 14 'mater plants (2 per big tub and 1 each in the smaller), mostly heirlooms (got a great deal at our garden club sale for 50 cents each) plus a few that I started from seed (yellow pear tomatoes and a yellow sungold cherry tomato). The ar all going great guns. I am amazed at how fast they grow. Also have several cucumber plants and some bush beans that I just planted last week and are sprouting today.
Try it! A pack of seeds is just pennies per plant and if it works, it works!
Lorie in Cola
(photo of my little garden)

I hope that my sweet peppers produce. I have never grown them before. But I love them and I just cannot bring myself to buy many at $4 a pound at the market for yellow ones. and $3 a pound for green ones.
So figure that I will give it a try!
I am trying Chocolate peppers and King of the North. Have some seeds for some other type, may try them, but I will be gone all of July, so I might plant those just before I leave. My garden club said that they would tend my garden while I was gone if they could eat the veggies! I said Sure! Just save some for me and take pictures!

pyro - LOL - it's amazing what folks will do for truly fresh produce huh!

Wow Tarheels, thanks for all the help!!! Xeramtheum, I have printed your chart and will encase it in plastic, it will be my veggie bible!!! Pyromomma I don't know if I can pull off the container planting right now, but I have saved your recipe. I'm with you on the price of sweet peppers!

Someone told me to wet paper towels and place the seeds in them. What they didn't tell me, approx how long before I will need to plant them? I'm about 2 weeks out from being able to plant.

Mightyscott: You're safe in NC. We have a long growing season and it's not unusual for me to harvest tomatoes right into the end of Oct. I just planted beans and corn and set out some tomatoes today. Still have more tomatoes and cukes to plant, too, and will do another planting of corn and beans in 2 weeks.

Mightyscott, if you are doing seeds, go to Wally World and get the little jiffy expandable peat pellets- Soak them in water, they will puff up, and then plant seeds in them. I just set mine in square microwave and take-home tubs and poped the celar lid back on them. Keep them warm and sunny and water them from the bottom.
By the time you are ready to plant your plants will have a head start and then just plant them peat pot and all. Before you plant them it is a good idea to let them become used to being out in the fresh air for a day or two and then plant them. Going from Steamy "Greenhouse" to Out InTheGarden is a bit rough on some.
Remember to bury the tomatoes deep - bury them right up to the top set of leaves and then pile more dirt up on them in about a week. They will make that whole stem into a root system.

This is the first tomato on my Marion tomato bush. Planted it from a 2" potted seed;ing on April 12. My Patio Cherry tomatoes are showing nice fruit now, too.

"You Guys" have me so excited, I got up, showered, and then looked at the clock, 2:10am !!!! Yikes!!!! I gotta plan my veggie garden!!! Pyromomma (I've got to ask you about the name pyro momma - ???? As the mother of two boys, lots of scary images come to mind) Your Marion tomato bush is looking great! I can taste the tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese sandwiches right now, yum!

Mightyscott, you might want to check out another version of Lorie's container growing system by looking at the Self-contained Box Gardens forum. I am using it for the first time this year and can not believe the speed and growth of plants using this system. Here is my first box of tomatoes planted in March. I now realize that is way too early to plant tomatoes outside in our climate , but look at these plants in a little tub--the same size Lorie is using.

This message was edited May 18, 2009 6:30 AM

This message was edited May 18, 2009 6:54 AM

Here is a squash plant that was potted up on May 1; It was just a little $1 plant from Walmart but it and cucumbers (same source and price) are already producing little female flowers!! I am sold on container gardening !! You might want to give it a try.

Think I might try Lorie's system myself next year, maybe on a limited basis this year! I could put those cukes in a tub.

Holy Crud, Gessie, those are monsters!! I was late in getting mine into the actual tubs, I had them in smaller pots for several weeks until just 3 weeks ago. My big mistake, because I also lost a couple of seedings that would have made fine plants and have made it just fine in larger pots.

I am making a note in my journal to plant them EARLIER next year. With tubs you can do that, b/c if we get a cold snap you can either drag them into the garage or cover them more easily with a blanket. Duh.

The other thing that is nice about them is that you can move them if the area that you wanted to put them in is just not quite right as far as sun, foot traffic, etc. I am a lazy gardener. And things that are too far or out of the way get overlooked. Also, since this is my first veggie garden in this year, I did not want to go to the trouble of building raised beds, lasagne bed, etc. and then find out that it would have done so much better 15 feet away.

My cucumbers (planted seed Mar 12) sorta sat there until last week. Now they "have legs" as my Gram used to say and are off and running.
Gonna plant some gourd seeds by a lonesome fence and let it battle with the neighbor's grapevines that take over everything. Gonna throw some morning glory seeds over there, too.

Say, I tried something, not sure if it will work, but in 2 of my tubs I also planted a small Marguerite ("English") daisy. I figure that if the water is too low, it will wilt and give me a heads up on the container. Just do not know if that will upset the veggie plants

I will be setting up a drip irrigation system for these tubs later this month. Like I said, I am lazy. That way I can water and weed at the same time. The only thing that I do not like about the auto watering system is "what if it gets plugged up" . So still have to do my 'rounds'.
Gessie, I would love to know how often much water your "Earth tubs" use when it gets hotter. Gonna set one of those up, too. Do you use soil or Coir?

Mscott, get out there and plant some containers! BTW, the Pyromomma comes from my Boy Scout stuff. I train adults and youth in Boy Scout skills and I got the nickname of "pyro" because I was always encouraging the kids to start (safe) fires and they all call me Mom. And then there was this one incident with very dry tinder and an errant gust of wind --- well, the eyebrows grew back just fine and Smokey Bear did not have to visit me, so all was well. Shortly after that we were traveling in Washington state and saw a fireworks stand called "Pyromama's Fireworks", my kids just howled, so it stuck.

I find it very sad that the kids today do not know how to strike a match.
Gotta get outside while it is not raining - it rained 2 inches here last night.

You guys have got my mind working now. If I plant in tubs, I could get some of those rollers for the large planters and put the tubs on those to roll around. Hey, I'm liking this idea already and I haven't even tried it yet!

Pyromom, I am trying coir for the first time in a few containers.. It kind'a expensive initially, but can be used for several years from what I understand. I did grow tomatoes in the Earth tubs last year (never any other vegetable, though). My boxes are all homemade. This is my original box made before I thought to measure the reservoir but last year I just as matter of course put water in each morning and each evening until it ran out of the overrun hole on the side of the container. In the boxes and buckets I am making this year I am actually measuring the water level before I drill the overflow hole. In my containers like the one pictured I use 4 gallon reservoirs; in 5 gallon buckets I use 1 gallon reservoirs. I am sure you know that even though these containers are constantly filled with water the mixture itself is not in water. Water is wicked to plants so that they get only what they need.

These tomatoes are growing in 2 year old Fafard potting mix with a band of 10-10-10 centered in the container. Come to think of it the squash are in one of those store bought self watering pots that also was filled with old Fafard mix that I grew a lemon tree in last year.

Sounds like we have similar gardening philosophies, I refer to mine as a casual approach, since it is politically correct to give everything a positive slant these days. I am in denial about being a "lazy gardener". LOL Seroiusly, I feel gardening is to be enjoyed--we know for sure if we put a price tag on what we grow it would be a heck of lot cheaper to just go buy it at the grocery store--but we couldn't boast that we grew it ourselves!

Pyro you should beable to grow peppers no problem. They grow on the coast like weeds so I don't see why inland they wouldn't grow. My neighbor is big on peppers and she grows like 10 different kinds. Red, green, yellow and then into the hot ones.

We did build raised beds and filled them with the clay we displaced. What a job!!! We turned in potting soil, black kow composted manure, and compost. I bought seed from Johnny's and planted the end of August. Every row I planted I tried a different system; rows, bunching and succession. We did put in drip irrigation. Every time I thin the plants out we saute the greens or make a salad with them. Caterpillars took out one row in one night!!!! Yikes! The plants are really thriving. Can't wait to harvest in the fall.

We planted Asian Greens, broccoli, brussel spouts, leeks, beets, artichokes, parsnips, and salsify ( I don't even know what this is, but had to try it after reading the catalogue! The beds are right outside our back door, we love watching over them!!! Crazy!

All the herbs went into pots, they're doing amazingly well! How on earth do I bring them in for winter? The DH is enjoying this as much as I am, but he won't admit it. He built all the beds almost three feet high. I wish we had made them out of the half concrete bricks. So much work and money into wood that will rot, OHHHHHH, can't think about it.....

Pyro, thanks for the history, I thought my sons should have been yours for awhile. Fortunately they grew up to be very nice men! Shocker!

I'll report on my first harvest!!!!!!! Best to all, mighty