Garden Plot
If you have been following along with this year’s Garden Plot, by now you are harvesting all kinds of wonderful vegetables and herbs from your. Most gardens are by now providing most of what you will need for your dinner table providing you with a fully opportunity to take advantage of eating local and fresh.
One of the things you are perhaps noticing is that your supply of lettuce is beginning to dwindle and that is normal during the hot, dry days of summer. One of the advantages of having planned your potager early in the season is that you can now sow seeds for your late producing crop such as winter squash, i.e. pumpkin and butternut.
Here are a couple of tips:
- To get started, turn over the soil, removing the lettuce stalks to the compost for later use. Saturate the ground, if dry, in order to prepare the ground for planting.
- Plant your seeds very early in the morning and if possible plant in areas that will be shaded by some of the vegetables that are now mature and will produce throughout the summer. This will help to keep the seedlings protected and out of the direct rays of the sun.
- Once planted, keep the area watered but bear in mind that depending on where you live, you will have afternoon rains and you don’t want to cause the seedlings to rot by over-watering.
- As different areas of your garden finishes producing, plant a replacement making sure to plant vegetables that can survive the heat and take you into the cooler months.
Next month we will talk about putting away or canning some of those vegetables for use over the winter.
Until then, enjoy the bounty!
