5 Quick Crops to Fill Summer Garden Gaps - Ep. 258

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:
I know sometimes it may seem like I have my entire gardening season planned out from start to finish with no room for any spontaneity, but that's not exactly the case. There are plenty of times when I find a vacancy in my garden, whether it's due to something not germinating or insect pests or diseases taking out a crop early, or just any other random reason. So I often find myself tucking new plants or seeds in here and there to fill the gaps. But I do have a plan in place for my summer successions, and those two approaches kind of go hand in hand to keep my garden beds full and the harvests coming. So today on Just Grow Something, we're talking about something every gardener probably needs. A second summer. That end of season boost when spring crops have kind of faded and space has opened up and you've got some really prime real estate ready for planting, but maybe not enough time or headspace for indoor seed starting. If you've got a patch of some cleared soil from an earlier summer crop that has been spent or are compromised or just gone forever, don't let that space go empty.

Karin Velez [00:01:07]:
We're going to dig into a few crops that you can sow directly in the mid to late summer that will grow fast and get you a solid harvest, even if you don't feel like rigging up grow lights or seed trays indoors. We'll talk about what makes a good late summer succession crop, my top picks with maturity dates and planting windows, and then some strategies on how to sort of get this accomplished so that you get another bonus harvest in the summertime before we even move into fall. Let's dig in.

Karin Velez [00:02:04]:
This episode might be short and sweet. I am trying to get out of town to go do some family stuff and I'm really trying to make an attempt at not bringing my laptop with me. Or maybe not working. I might bring the laptop, but I might not try to try not to work the entire time I'm gone. So I'm trying to get this knocked out before we go. So let's, let's get into it. First of all why should we bother with trying to fill those spaces? Why would we want to plant again when, you know, the summer's heat is kind of still in full force and we're not necessarily working on the fall garden yet? I am a huge proponent of making sure that our gardens are sort of full. And that isn't really necessarily from, like a harvest strategy necessarily. Although, I mean, that's another really good reason just to continue the harvest. Right. But more so because it benefits our plants. I always seem to find that plants that are grown alongside each other very closely tend to support each other, and they tend to do better than the ones that are sort of by themselves and don't really have any companions around them. A lot of this can go back to, you know, the different companion planting episodes that we've had where we talk about, you know, how different plants have different needs and how they're using the nutrients at different times against each other, but then also how they are helping to keep from the insects from predating on themselves and on each other. So maybe that has something to do with it, but it always, always seems like the more full those garden beds are, the better all of the plants seem to be, especially assuming that we are not overcrowding them. Right. So this type of succession planting means that every inch of the soil keeps feeding plants. We're not letting it sit bare, so we're not wasting those nutrients, but we're also not letting, you know, weeds move in, and we're not letting that soil just sort of sit there bare and blow away, you know, in the wind or whatever.

Karin Velez [00:04:05]:
This also can kind of help with the pest cycles a little bit. You know, our later crops tend to face fewer pests and fewer disease pressures, especially once we get towards, like, the really hot part of the summer. And this is just going to extend your harvest, right? I mean, you can continue to pull things out of your garden. And oftentimes those things, even the summer crops that we have planted in the early spring, by this stage of the game, they might just start looking a little rough and their production may have slowed down. So now's a really good time to do another crop exactly like that one. Just fill in a gap someplace else within your garden or even pull that one if. If one just doesn't seem like it's producing very well, or you're really having a hard time keeping the diseases out of it, or the pests have really done a number and they just look sad sack and sorry, pull them out, refresh the soil a little bit and Then go ahead and plant that same crop again. The key word here is fast, okay? We are looking for things that you can plant in the heat of the summer that will germinate readily in that heat and will thrive in that heat, but also get to maturity within about 40 to 60 days.

Karin Velez [00:05:21]:
We're not really talking about a fall harvest here, although some of these, if they remain healthy, can absolutely continue to be harvested into the fall. But we're not talking about a plan planned fall crop here. We're not talking about things that really thrive in those cooler shoulder seasons. We talked about that a little bit last week. We're going to talk more about that next week, really. We're talking about summer crops or things that actually can stand the heat or enjoy the heat, one of the two that we can harvest fairly quickly. So not every crop is going to be a candidate for this. So we want something that matures in about 30 to 60 days.

Karin Velez [00:05:59]:
We want that fast harvest, something that can handle the warm soil and the direct sun at this time of the year, depending on where you live. And here we are easily 90 degrees Fahrenheit every single day right now, which means oftentimes our heat indices are going up above that. We do get some great breaks here and there, and we've had a lot of rain this season, which has kind of cooled things off a little bit. But in most instances, I need to find something that can really take that heat and also likes that warm soil for germination purposes. Remember, we're not talking about transplanting anything here. We're talking talking about direct sowing in the garden. We also want to make sure that these are things that sort of have clear yield benefits, if that makes sense. We want to make the space that it's taking up in the garden worth it.

Karin Velez [00:06:48]:
We want to make sure that we're getting an actual, you know, harvest out of it. Unless it's something that we want to plant just for aesthetics, you know, and that's perfectly fine, too. We want to make sure that it's something that fits well into this sort of succession timing. Especially if you do have plans for a fall garden, it needs to be something that we can get in, get harvested, and get out okay, before we have to replace it with something else. And then we're looking for things that really don't need a whole lot of infrastructure, just something that we can throw in the ground and water it, throw down some mulch and let it do its thing. If you have infrastructure in place already, like a trellis or something that you can replace a crop with, then that's fine, go ahead and use it. But we want to be very, very simple. Okay.

Karin Velez [00:07:32]:
So with these criteria, I have chosen five sort of fast, mid to late summer crops that you can get a harvest out of before the end of the summer and that will. Will take the heat. And I know I said, you know, we really don't want any, any trellises or, or infrastructure that we have to put into. So this first one might surprise you. And I say cucumbers, okay? There are a lot of cucumber varieties that will get to maturity in less than 60 days, even sooner than that, if you're growing some small snacking varieties, and there are a lot of varieties that don't necessarily need a trellis. You can grow cucumbers across, you know, sprawling across a flat space. I just transplanted some patio type cucumbers. I can't remember what they're called, but they grow fairly quickly.

Karin Velez [00:08:22]:
They're more of a bush variety rather than, you know, a tall, long vining one. And they are just in a raised planter bed. And they. I'm expecting them to just sort of take over that bed and meander and do their thing because they mature very quickly. I'm not too worried about giving them any infrastructure right now. I could have just popped those seeds into the ground and that would have been perfectly fine. I only chose to transplant these because I was starting some other transplants of the the same time. So I said, fine, let me just go ahead and do this all at once.

Karin Velez [00:08:53]:
And the timing just worked out. But by all means, cucumbers will germinate in this nice warm soil temperature, which means they're going to germinate very quickly and they're going to start to grow very quickly. So this is really great, actually, for avoiding pests that might limit the harvest, specifically cucumber beetles. Right. So this is also a good option. If you had already grown cucumbers earlier in the season, or maybe you already still are, but they have have been attacked by cucumber beetles or, you know, other pests that might plague them, and they're starting to look a little funky. And sometimes cucumbers just stall out. They just stop producing.

Karin Velez [00:09:34]:
You might get a ton of flowers and maybe not a whole lot of fruit, or they may just do not produce anything at all. So you can just rip that out and go ahead and fill that space with another cucumber crop, or you can just fill a space or something else you know has already been. Been finished. Okay. Another really good candidate for sowing in the mid to late summer. So to be clear, we're talking around now, so like mid July through the end of July, beginning of August. Oftentimes this is going to be the same time that we're planting other things for fall. But we're specifically talking about these kind of heat lovers that are ready to harvest fairly quickly.

Karin Velez [00:10:14]:
And another one is bush beans. Now, I always sort of took a break on our green beans in the hottest part of the summer because here it does get super, super hot. But what I have found is I can replant them starting around mid July and they will pop up pretty quickly. And so long as I mulch them really, really well and keep that root zone cool and make sure that they are well watered, they'll do just fine and they will produce a crop within 60 days. Now, I plant my beans or I should harvest my beans kind of skinny and slender, right? I don't like beanie beans, if that makes sense. I don't like them when they get kind of bumpy, lumpy. So I am harvesting my green beans very quickly and very early and, you know, very frequently. So this might also be why they seem to do okay, because if you're doing a mid July planting, then generally you're going to start seeing a harvest out of them by about mid September.

Karin Velez [00:11:17]:
September, it is still very warm here. So if your area is like mine, you might wait until late July so that you're getting the harvest around late September when it maybe starts to cool off just a little bit. In any case, you want to go for these kind of compact bush type green beans. Number one, they mature much more quickly and they just kind of can fill in the space. The cool thing about bush types green beans, or any green bean for that matter, is they don't need pollinators. So you don't need to have a whole bunch of plants all together in order to get a crop out of them. So if you have multiple spaces throughout your garden where something else has already vacated that space, you can pop a couple of bush green bean seeds in there and then you can do it over here, and then you can do some more over there and you just have green beans all over the place and they have filled in that gap. They don't need the pollinators and they're also helping to, you know, sort of keep that soil in place and keep it utilized.

Karin Velez [00:12:20]:
This is actually a really great strategy if you have some things that are growing fairly tall right now and can provide those green beans with Just a little bit of shade. It might take them just a little bit longer to get to maturity, but that's going to shade them from that worst part of the heat. And so again, if you're in an area like mine where it's kind of scratching scorching right now, and you're concerned about that, then that is a really good strategy too. Just plant them kind of underneath something else that's growing very tall. These are also really good plants to plant in the garden after you have harvested something that was kind of a nitrogen hog because they're a legume. And so they're going to fix that nitrogen back into the soil again. And that is going to help you for whatever you decide to plant after that, you've kind of repaired the soil just a little bit.

Karin Velez [00:15:02]:
So the third one that you can use as a mid summer planting is okra. Okra loves the heat. As a matter of fact, I generally don't even start my okra at any time until maybe the first week in June. And I think this year I didn't even get around to planting it until I think the third week in June. It really does like those warmer soil temperatures. So this makes it a really good option for planting in mid to late July.

Karin Velez [00:15:36]:
It loves the heat and you have some very fast maturing varieties that can mature in just 45 days. I think Annie Oakley is the one that's the fastest, but if you look at like Clemson Spineless or Red Burgundy, those are both, I think 55 day varieties. So. And this is one that you can continue to harvest into the fall up until like your first frost. It really, really does very, very well in the heat though. And so if you keep it picked, it's going to keep coming on for you. And if you don't love okra, but you like a little bit of okra, then that's fine. You can make it a temporary crop.

Karin Velez [00:16:15]:
You can have it just fill in the space from mid July until, you know, mid September. Harvest off of it for a couple of weeks to get your fill and then pull it for something else, throw something else in there for the fall or place it with, you know, something that likes the cooler weather, some spinach or some, some radishes or something. Right. Even if you don't like okra at all, it gets nice and tall so it can provide shade to some of the other plants in your garden that might appreciate a little bit of that because it's a fairly quick grower too. It gets tall fairly fast and they put off beautiful flowers. So. And it's almost, it's almost a foolproof crop. So long as you just get it in the ground, you can protect anything from eating the young seedlings once it starts to get tall and grow.

Karin Velez [00:17:01]:
There hasn't been a whole lot that I have seen plague our okra that did so much damage that the okra wasn't able to grow. Like, I've seen the grasshoppers grow after them and I've seen Japanese beetles go after it and all kinds of stuff. And it's just a really resilient plant. So you can just grow it for aesthetic purposes if you want to. And then when you no longer have a need for it, something else needs to go in there. Just yank it out. Okay. There's nothing that says if you plant something and it is still productive.

Karin Velez [00:17:31]:
If you're over it, you're over it and you can pull it out. Don't feel like it's. You've got to be stuck with something just because it's still productive and it's taking up space in the garden. No, toss it in the compost and plant something that you're actually going to use. Okay. But if you have an open space and you have some crops that might appreciate some shade, okra is a really good option for you. The fourth one would be any of your summer squashes, specifically the bush varieties. So zucchini and yellow squash, maybe the eight ball squashes, things that you know are a little bit more compact.

Karin Velez [00:18:07]:
They don't need to go super, super viny all over the place. So definitely not a winter squash. But you. Because those need some more longer time to mature. Summer squashes tend to be very quick growers. They harvest usually in less than 45 days. So even a, a mid July planting is going to definitely produce a ton of fruit for you. If you are somewhere that sees a lot in terms of the squash vine borer, this actually might be a more successful time for you to plan plant anyway because at least in my area, the life cycle of the squash vine borer generally ends right around mid July.

Karin Velez [00:18:48]:
So if you can pop those seeds in the ground now, then at least you're likely avoiding the majority of that pest. Now, if you have squash bugs and you have had anything else in your garden during this time that is in the squash family and those squash bugs have shown up, then it's very likely that they're going to move over into the these guys. So if that is an issue for you and you have seen those in the garden, or if this is a succession planting where you know that your first one or two batches of summer squashes are going to succumb to the squash bugs and this is your second or third try at this. I always recommend putting the seeds in the ground and then immediately covering with that insect netting and allowing those plants to get up until the point where they start to, to bloom and then you can go ahead and uncover them to get them pollinated, or if you really want to stay on the bug patrol and keep them covered, then you can hand pollinate. I did this at the beginning of the season. I went through and I was hand pollinating. I was sort of successful with it, but I was Hand pollinating at that point, 175 squash plants. And I just, it got to be too much.

Karin Velez [00:19:58]:
And so I just uncovered them all and said, okay, go for it. But you know, if you only have a handful of plants, you can continue to, you know, do the hand pollinating. But summer squash is a really fast grower. Again, less than 45 days. Usually you are harvesting them. This is one that, as long as you don't have any insect pressure or any disease issues, will continue to produce for you all the way through into the fall. But again, don't think that you have to leave it in there the whole time. Sometimes people just get over it.

Karin Velez [00:20:28]:
When it comes to, like zucchini and you haven't had enough and your neighbors have had enough and they don't want any more zucchini and your freezer is full of zucchini, again, pull the plant out, okay? These really do flourish in warm soil. So it's going to come up quickly, it's going to grow quickly. You want to start harvesting very early. Like as soon as you see those little fruits come on, start harvesting them. Harvest very frequently, unless you really want baseball bat size zucchinis, but also because the more frequently you harvest, that's going to keep the production high. The plant think it needs, it thinks it needs to continue to produce these fruits because it needs to reproduce, because you're pulling them off. So that is a really good way to keep that production going. And you can get a really high production level in a very short period of time.

Karin Velez [00:21:16]:
And then you can choose whether you want to leave it in the garden or let it continue going until the first frost. And once the first frost arrives, then, you know, that's it, they're over and done. And finally, one that might be surprising to you is arugula. So arugula matures really, really quickly. I mean, if you are harvesting it like at baby leaf size, you're looking at only like 20, 25 days, maybe 30 days, 40 days if you want to get it a little bit larger. It really does like cooler nights. But it is fairly heat tolerant if you can give it some shape shade during like the peak sun hours and, and water it very, very frequently. So the other good thing about arugula is that you can, you know, plant it in successions because generally speaking, arugula bolts fairly quickly anyway.

Karin Velez [00:22:06]:
I mean, I usually only get a couple of harvests out of my arugula before it starts to sprout or it starts to go to seed. And so I end up doing Succession plantings anyway of arugula. It also seems to me that it gets a bit spicier the hotter it is outside. So if you can plant this one where it gets some afternoon shade, you're going to be better off. And if you live somewhere where, yeah, it might be scorching hot during the day, but it gets nice and cool at night, you'll have even better success. Our problem here is that our nights in the summertime, like right now, we're lucky if we're dipping below 70 Fahrenheit. It's, and it's just sticky and warm and just kind of gross out. And so, you know, in this instance, I have to make sure that I'm really keeping the arugula well watered because it will just sort of burn up if it gets any remotely dry.

Karin Velez [00:22:59]:
So that is the one thing that I would say is a caveat to this. So for some of you, you may want to wait until a little bit later on, but you know, in a lot of areas this will be just fine. And you can harvest those leaves as they're a little tiny or you can, you know, do a larger leaf and then cut it once and then let it come up again once and again. This is one that's a, you know, a candidate for succession planting. You can harvest or plant every couple of weeks so you can continue to harvest off of them. And there are a couple of like heat tolerant varieties. Rocket and Sandy are two of them and they are better for like really high heat conditions. Of course, before we do any of this, we want to make sure that we are replenishing the soil in between crops.

Karin Velez [00:23:42]:
Okay. So if you have some compost available to you after you have pulled one crop out and you, before you plan to put the next one in, you might want to add about an inch of compost, cover it, likely just kind of zhuzh it into the soil. This is going to boost your nutrients a little bit. It's going to also kind of fluff that bed up a little bit. You know, if you rake it out, even, you know, with, with a hand trowel or a hand rake cultivator I guess is what it's called. Or if you're doing in ground beds, you know, grabbing your garden rake or whatever, this is going to help to minimize that compaction and that's going to help with the roots and stuff. And just keep in mind when you are deciding because, you know, these five that we talked about aren't the only options. There are lots of things that you could, you know, plant in the summer garden, depending on where you are, that are going to do just fine.

Karin Velez [00:24:35]:
You just have to keep in mind how long the maturity date is and if it's going to be something that you're going to harvest in the summer, or if it's going to be more of a fall harvest. And then you have to start thinking about things like the Persephone period, where our daylight hours are getting below 10 hours, or you're starting to get into the time when it's getting cooler. And of course, things aren't maturing nearly as quickly. It's what we talked about last week. Just think about that when you're trying to decide what it is that you want to stuff into your different corners and. And fill the different holes in the garden right now, as always, I always recommend mulch. Okay. But it's even more important when we are planting in the heat.

Karin Velez [00:25:14]:
Not only are you going to protect that soil from just kind of blowing away when you have the breeze and the winds coming through, but you are also retaining that moisture, which is super, super important in the summertime, especially if you're someplace where it's very, very dry. Like I mentioned, we have been very lucky here this year. We have been getting rain weekly, sometimes multiple times a week. And so, I mean, I. We're not watering at all. We have that whole irrigation system that we finally got to set up after years and years and years of not having any irrigation in any of our fields. And we have not turned it on once this year, which I am good with. Like, this has been, you know, absolutely wonderful.

Karin Velez [00:25:57]:
It means the humidity has been a little high, but other than that, we're super happy about it. And of course, we have heavy layers of mulch because we have been used to not having any kind of irrigation. So we. We definitely have always trapped that moisture in the soil anytime we get it. And that's something that I always encourage you to do in the garden. Make sure that you are covering that soil. And I know, I guess I know I talk about it a lot, but I really want you to take a look the next time you're out anywhere, like in a wooded area or out in nature somewhere, and just look around you and realize that Mother Nature doesn't leave bare spots. And there's a really good reason for that.

Karin Velez [00:26:34]:
You will very, very, you know, very few times where you will see bare areas out in nature. And usually that is due to some sort of soil disruption or some natural disaster or something else going on there. So use your mulch to help retain that moisture. It is also going to help to moderate that soil temperature. A lot of the heat response that our plants have is because of the root zone being too warm. Yes, the leaf temperature does matter, but the more we can keep that root zone cool, the more we can mitigate that air temperature. And so that is going to help keep these crops producing even through that heat once they get started. Okay, so mulch, mulch, mulch, please and thank you.

Karin Velez [00:27:26]:
And if you are one of my short season growers, if you are in a cooler region, you have a little bit less of a margin here. I know that your sort of warm season or your number of warm days is very, very limited. So more than likely in this instance, you, you may not have too much time left to be able to do a second sort of succession of your summer crops. I tend to think that in zones three and four, you are very likely, you know, one and dumb when it comes to your very, very warm crops. If you are attempting this, I would prioritize the fastest maturing ones or just wait until the timing is right to start adding those cool season crops back in again for a fall harvest. If you can manage to plant like back to back, you know, so sew some things back to back in, in mid July and late July to double up your chances of being able to get something, then that might be a really good idea for you. But in a lot of instances, I think it's, it's, it's very possible that unless you catch it early enough, you've got a crop that you see is failing and you can immediately pull it and throw some seeds in for that second chance. Your, your window of opportunity here is probably closing pretty quickly.

Karin Velez [00:28:46]:
So if you do decide that you're going to have some gaps, I would absolutely recommend doing that now if you are in a short season. Otherwise you can just wait until next week. And we will talk all about the fall garden and we'll help you plan that instead of filling the gaps in our late summer garden just kind of shows us that gardening isn't linear. It is very dynamic. I know I talk a lot about, you know, garden planning and you know, looking at your calendar and doing a timeline and all these types of things. And yes, I mean that that is important. I think if you are trying to maximize your space and you're trying to get, get the most out of your garden and succession planting is how we do that. We, we make each season sort of continue to produce or produce even more than the previous season.

Karin Velez [00:29:35]:
But that doesn't mean we have to be stuck in it, right. If, if something goes wrong in the garden and we have a gap, let's think about what we can fill that gap with. And most instances in mid summertime it's going to be something that is fast maturing, that likes to have that warm soil for germinating and then can also handle the heat and be able to be harvested before we start moving into like the fall season. Right. So I hope this helps you turn open gaps and spaces in your garden into sort of a late summer bounty. Next week we're really going to get into fall garden planning and how to maximize the space that you have planting in the late summer, harvesting in the fall, all fall long, even into the winter and some of those crops can actually greet you again in the spring. So you don't want to miss next week's episode. Until next time, my gardening friends.

Karin Velez [00:30:33]:
Keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.