Right now your vegetable garden is probably looking bedraggled and bug eaten. The squash and bean bugs have hatched multiple times and have taken over the garden. It's time to hang it up and move on to other things and let nature take it's course.
If that is the way you feel, you are what I call a 'fair weather' gardener. But we still have at least 12 weeks of frost free growing time so don't hang up those gardening gloves just yet. Rip out the nearly dead and completely dead vegetable plants and get ready for some fresh beginnings.
With the recent rains we've had, now is the time to go to the nursery and pick up some fresh transplants, or to search for some half price seed packets that the stores are dying to get rid of.
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I've just finished planting some leftover seeds for summer squash, spinach, lettuce, arugula, cukes, cilantro, beets, sunflowers and radish. When I order my seeds in the fall, I make sure I have extras in hand when the first rush of planting is over in the spring. At this time of the year, once in the ground, the seeds jump out of the earth and shoot up because of all the warm nights. Not like in the spring, when nights were chilly and the ground was cold and the seeds were more likely to rot than germinate.
My planted seeds, kept moist with these recent rains, germinated in two days and are making strong growth. I should have young lettuce, spinach, and radishes within 3-4 weeks. The squash and cukes will take a bit longer, but will be ripening in the last days of Indian summer when most other gardens are long done. And when all my sunflowers have been picked over for seeds, I will have a fresh crop coming along with some spanking new flowers.
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Other crops that will do well this time of year are broccoli, cauliflower, swiss chard, cabbage and peas. If in doubt, check on the back of the seed packet for the number of days until maturity and count up the days left without a killing frost. Frost in Maryland usually happens around Halloween or later. Forget pumpkins, gourds, and melons as they need a long growing season so will not have time to mature.
So, get out to the garden now and get planting!
