Vegetable Garden

[JimCo]

Just moved into a new home with a yard that is large enough to accomodate a vegetable garden. Would like to get started on one over the 4th of July. Has anyone had experience planting a garden this late in the season? I'd like to try pumpkins, chili peppers, some herbs, and green beans. Anything else that might be good to plant in mid-summer?

[porcupine]

Start by reading this: http://www.donrockwell.com/index.php?showtopic=13137 . Definitely still time for herbs. Chili peppers if you can find well-established plants and choose varieties that don't take too long to mature. Some decent information at http://www.hgic.umd.edu/content/vegetable.cfm#JUNE.

[Ilaine]

Not too late to plant tomatoes. For real. Trust me on this. But you can't start from seed, it requires plants.

For Father's Day in 2011, I bought my husband five Earthboxes from DeBaggio, offering him to buy all of them at the Amazon price, offer accepted, and husband planted the weekend after, late in June. The plants were also from DeBaggio. Very nice plants.

We got, seriously, hundreds of tomatoes.

Earthboxes, while ugly, and environmentally questionable because they are made out of plastic, have huge advantages. After you put on the plastic mulch cover, it's a sealed environment. Water does not evaporate. Pests do not get into the soil. You won't have blight problems.

I am otherwise Ms. Natural, and have turned most of our property into a wildlife refuge and pollinator habitat, but when it comes to tomatoes, Earthboxes rule.

If you buy leggy tomato plants, plant them deep and sort of sideways. The stems, if buried underground, will make roots. Roots are good. The part above ground does not get confused, it knows to grow straight up. Tomatoes are actually vines, they can deal with it.

Buy your tomato plants from DeBaggio and you will not regret it. Buy your Earthboxes from Amazon, the price is good, unless young DeBaggio will match it or at least come close.

[thistle]

I completely agree w/ Ilaine, not too late for tomatoes & herbs, & I'm another Earthbox evangelist. The rest of my yard has gone to h***, but despite neglect & pummeling by the dogs, the Earthboxes continue to give me a ray of hope-I have 6, w/ tomatoes & peppers. You should still be able to find plants, but since it is wicked hot, you will really have to keep up w/ watering, however you decide to plant (containers or in the ground).

[ktmoomau]

We just replanted some beans, because the bunnies ate our sprouts, last weekend, but with the extreme heat, I just don't know how well they will do. If you can find eggplant plants, those might be ok too, if well watered.

[Ilaine]

DeBaggio still has tomato plants but this is the last weekend before they close for the season.

[MC Horoscope]

Woo Hoo! Keep planting but don't catch a heat stroke this weekend!

I have a mind to put out some more herbs this weekend if I can find them at Wright's on New Hampshire Ave., Colesville.

[PollyG]

Jimco, contact me via PM if you want some volunteer tomato plants. We suspect they are Matt's Wild Cherry, a prolific producer of intensely flavored little nuggets of tomato goodness. The one we nurtured carefully is already yielding, and these, as well as Sungolds, will keep giving you fruit until the frost kills them.

Basil loves heat, so if you water it, you will have happy basil all summer, even with a late start. You just need to be vigilant about pinching it back so it doesn't go to seed.