Hill Gardens of Maine - The Mid-Summer Vegetable Garden

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The Mid-Summer Vegetable Garden
by Fred Davis, MG, Hill Gardens, Palermo (To view other articles, click Archives)

Welcome through Fred's Garden Gate! So! Your vegetable garden is all planted; you've already enjoyed some peas, lettuce, radishes and perhaps even a few snap beans. Now, what do you do? Most gardeners are content with popping in a few seeds and transplants during the early Spring planting rush, then simply taking what they can get from that one day of almost-frenzied activity. Smart veggie-gardeners know that, even in our short growing season, it's possible to squeeze much more from even the meanest patch of earth. Most folks' veggie patches are far underutilized!

Did you know, for example, that you can plant a second crop of short-season sweet corn during early July for a really delicious late crop just before frost? That's right! If the weather cooperates, you could be shucking tender, juicy corn—and a lot more—long after most other neighborhood gardens have returned to weeds and bare ground.

Here's a clever gimmick to at least limit forays of raccoons into your sweetcorn patch: As the corn seedlings break ground, inter-plant winter squash every few feet. Squash vines have sharp, needle-like spines all along their stems and leaves. Raccoons have sensitive little hand-like paws that seem desperate to touch and feel everything. They very much dislike getting tiny, painful "stickers" in their paws...and will quickly learn to avoid the discomfort. Well, yes, the critters may still reach a few ears of corn... but the damage will, in all likelihood, be much less. Then, a few weeks after the corn is picked, you'll have a nice crop of delicious squash to harvest, store and, later, bake with butter or sour cream. Nifty, huh?

How about bush snap beans? They could be planted every two to three weeks after the first spring sowing, right up to the end of July. Peas, too, should be re-planted at two-week intervals. I know gardeners whose harvest never seems to end! Early, mid and late. . .there's always a basket or bowl full of fresh, sweet, tender veggies making the trip from the garden to the kitchen or freezer.

And don't forget radishes. Once that first row begins to bulb-up, plant another row right alongside of it. Radishes can be re-sown until six-weeks before frost. Beets are another—the day you see small bulbs form, that's the time to drop in another row of beet seed. Then keep sowing every two or three weeks until eight weeks before that first anticipated frost.

Lettuce, spinach and greens—and that includes kale, collards and many of those wonderfully fresh and crisp Oriental greens and vegetables—will grow and perform very well when sown even as late as six weeks before first frost.

But I've saved the best for last. While it is a bit of a gamble, even cucumbers sown in early July have enough time to mature crisp, juicy and tender cukes before Frosty heralds seasons' end. Why, I've even heard of mid-summer-sown carrots having plenty of time to produce some of the nicest, sweetest, best-flavored beauties—and they won't even need to be covered. Imagine lightly-steamed or stir-fried fresh-from-the-garden carrots on your Thanksgiving dinner table!

There is one small "wrinkle," however—you will have to tend the watering, cultivating, weeding, staking, tying, thinning, picking and bug-squishing for a bit longer than most plant-it-once-and-walk-away vegetable gardeners.

Something else that must be attended to is soil health and nutrition. Don't expect that first little dab of compost or old manure—or that initial, skimpy application of fertilizer—to carry your garden all the way through full-season production.

Plants, particularly vegetables, remove a tremendous amount of food, water and "goody" from the soil. Those vital ingredients must be replaced. . .or you could end up with an embarrassing patch of weak, gasping-for-breath, pitiful little plants that would have been best left in the seed packet.

So get back out there in the veggie patch! Go pick up a couple more bags of compost or sterilized cow manure. . .it's probably on the edge of going on sale now, anyway! Leave the hose out there for a few more weeks. Keep the weeds down with your Collinear hoe. Pick up a few more packets of your favorite vegetable seeds—and enjoy much more from your garden (plus, quite possibly, the praise and admiration of your family and neighbors).

Get the scoop on gardening in drought conditions? Drought.

Want the whole story about vegetable gardening? It starts here.

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