Mid- to late-summer is an ideal time to plant a second-season vegetable garden that may come to harvest in fall.
Hardy, cool-weather crops are well fitted to the second-season garden. Cool-weather crops like to get their get began in warmth soil and are to be had to maturity when days and nights are cool.
Cool local weather vegetables include leafy crops and root crops: beets, carrots, and parsnips; salad greens, along with lettuces; and people of the cabbage family like red and green cabbage, kale, collards, and broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. The ones crops are considered hardy on account of they are able to tolerate a steady frost and also will live on when temperatures dip the entire means all the way down to the mid-20s. (The flavor of many cool-weather crops is enhanced when the vegetation are touched thru frost.)
A second-season vegetable garden too can include easy, warm-season crops, alternatively the ones crops will have to come to harvest faster than the main frost. Subtle crops are those that extend from crops and produce fruits: tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, squashes, melons, pumpkins, peppers, eggplants, and beans.
The essential factor to planting easy crops in mid- or late-summer is that you just allow enough time for them to reach maturity. The best trail is to make a choice quick-maturing kinds of easy crops for a second-season harvest and now not be dissatisfied if frost comes early and wipes them out.
The right way to Broaden a Second-Season Vegetable Garden
• Know the standard date of the main frost in autumn. (You are able to get this information from a space garden middle or cooperative extension.) Take a look at the days to maturity on seed packets and depend once more that amount from the main reasonable frost date to make a decision without equal day that the seeds may also be planted and however produce a crop. Add a week to ten days merely to be safe.
• Make a choice cool-weather crops for the second-season garden. Cool-weather crops germinate easiest and thrive as more youthful vegetation in warmth soil and warmth temperatures. Cool-weather crops mature easiest when day and evening time temperatures reasonable not more than the low 60s and mid to top 50s. (The ones are exactly the temperatures that reason why warm-weather, easy crops to falter.)
• If you do plant easy crops in past due summer season, plant varieties that may mature and be able for harvest in 50 days or a lot much less.
• Have at the able crop protectors: (1) floating row covers harking back to lightweight Remay subject material that can be draped all through crops if temperatures turn cool or cold hastily. Anchor floating row covers in place with stones or garden staples; (2) Hoops made out of wire or irrigation tubing over which you can drape clear plastic sheeting to create a mini-hoophouse or greenhouse; you can moreover use two-by-four or four-by-four inch mesh wire fencing to create an element tunnel over which you can drape clear plastic sheeting; (3) A thick layer of straw, dried leaves, or other herbal mulch may also be forked spherical crops to stick the soil warmth.
