Summer planting: The main event
Although I seem to save my
obsessing for the tomatoes, I didn't want you to think
that's all we put in the garden this week. Our first round of
sweet potato slips were ready to set out early, thanks to the gravel
starting flat that
tempted shoots to grow roots before I even snipped them from the parent
tuber. And I started peppers inside this year to give us a bit of
a head start on the growing season.
Most of our summer crops
grow from seed, though. I put in a second planting of sweet corn,
green beans, summer squash, and watermelons since the late April
seedlings are already up and thriving, and I would have put in another
set of cucumbers if I hadn't run out of seeds. (More are on the
way.) Peanuts will go in later this week, as will the first round
of butternuts.
Then, in two weeks,
it'll be time to plant many of these crops all over again. Succession
planting keeps our
summer harvest steady for crops like sweet corn that ripen up all at
once 
and for troublesome cucurbits
(squash, cucumbers) and beans that tend to peter out from pests or
disease after a few weeks of bearing. Midsummer planting is also
appropriate for winter squashes that will sit on the shelf through the
cold season --- the later the squashes ripen up, the more likely they
are to still be good come spring. So June is the time to plant
most of my butternuts as well as the naked seed pumpkins we're trying
out this year.
And then, just one month
from now, it'll be time to start putting in the fall garden! I'm
glad I keep all of this information in a spreadsheet because I'd never
get the planting dates right otherwise.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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