What to grow in summer : what to plant in the garden in summer, a guide to summer crops in the home garden .
What to plant in the garden in summer
Summer is a transitional period for the vegetable garden. In reality, those who decide to start a vegetable garden in the summer must be prepared to face various adversities:
- Drought (more frequent irrigation, especially if starting from sowing)
- Weeds (the competition for nutrients in the soil is high and mechanical weeding and fertilization are necessary)
- Shorter growing cycles (especially if you start with seeding)
Generally, the ideal is to start the vegetable garden between April and May so as to obtain, for the summer, well-developed plants, with root systems capable of dealing with weeds, more resistant to drought and above all ready to give continuous harvests. Those who start growing the vegetable garden in the summer only set aside the beginning of autumn for the harvest, because the plant, with the summer heat, will take about a month to grow and give its fruits. Of course, the heat is an advantage because it favors the growth of the plants, but if the season is unfavorable and autumn arrives early, the harvests will end in a short time. Having made this necessary premise, know that in the summer you can plant any vegetable and greens for summer harvest… it will simply be the harvest times that will be shortened!
Then there are some things that can be sown in the summer and then harvested in the autumn, this is the case of fennel for autumn harvest and many varieties of cabbage, chicory and broccoli.
What to Grow in Summer
In the summer months it is possible to sow or plant chard, dwarf green beans, parsley, carrots, and early fennel.
What to Grow in Early Summer
In the first half of summer, you can still plant tomatoes, eggplants, cardoons , cucumbers, courgettes and watermelons in the garden. Even vegetables such as endive, lettuce, leek and escarole should not be planted beyond the month of July.
What to Grow in Midsummer
From July onwards, you can plant or sow in summer those vegetables typical of autumn, namely: cauliflower, broccoli, winter cabbage, Brussels sprouts, celery, Savoy cabbage… between July and August, you can sow different varieties of chicory, fennel and Chioggia radicchio.
For more information: How to Grow Brussels Sprouts
What to Grow in Late Summer
From August to September, therefore in the last part of the summer, it is possible to carry out those slow-growing crops that we will find ourselves throughout the autumn months and the first winter. What to grow in August? Spinach, chicory, cutting lettuce, radish, lamb’s lettuce and rocket.
Carrots and parsley can be sown throughout the summer.
Also at the end of summer you can plant in the garden the radicchio di Chioggia (late varieties), the radicchio di Treviso (always late) and the radicchio di Castefranco. Until the beginning of September you can also plant the aforementioned escarole.
Also towards the end of the summer months it is possible to sow white onion (parsley and carrot again) and radish in the open field .
It is possible to plant sugarloaf chicory, Catalogna chicory (it is a little bitter but tasty) and late radicchio from Verona.
To add some color to your dishes, you can also grow unusual varieties, such as yellow tomatoes or purple carrots. You can sow in the open ground or you can sow in a flowerbed on the balcony, as long as it is deep enough. At “ this Amazon page ” you can find a sachet of the Spanish purple carrot variety Forrajera Morada. The purple carrot has two peculiarities, the first is undoubtedly the characteristic color, the second is the flavor: purple carrots are very sweet, more than orange carrots and the Forrajera variety is particularly so.
What to Grow in Autumn
With the arrival of autumn, the home garden will have to make room for the cultivation of legumes. If summer is the month in which we leave room for the sowing of vegetables and cut greens, autumn is the month in which we leave room for the sowing of legumes, for further information I recommend the article: how to grow cicerchie .
