Is it really too late to put in a vegetable garden
June 15, 2011
360
With the wet spring weve had, it has made it very difficult to get into the garden and get things planted. Weve also heard lately about the plight of area farmers not being able to get their corn or soybeans planted and how its almost getting too late. People who raise a garden might think they are in the same boat. But if you look in the past, Memorial Day weekend has long been the traditional date to actually put in a vegetable garden.
Part of the reason for this was that many of the seeds we had years ago would not germinate well in cooler soils. But with many of the new hybrids that have come on the market since then, their ability to germinate in cooler soils allowed people to plant as early as mid-May. And though this sometimes gave an earlier harvest, sometimes the plants would emerge early only to have their growth stunted by cool air and soil temperatures, postponing the harvest for several weeks. By planting when soil temperatures are warmer as they are now, seed germination rates are likely to be higher and emergence will be quicker. And because the plants will not be as likely to get stunted we may actually get a harvest just as quickly as we would have had we planted earlier.
So now the question - when is it actually too late to put a certain type of vegetable crop in our garden? It actually depends on what crop youre working with. For some crops such as corn, green beans and summer squash that can be planted several times throughout the summer as succession crops, weve only missed out on the first one or two plantings, and can continue to plant up till mid July. By going to the horticultural section of our web page at http://www.wayne.osu.edu you can access a chart that lists the final planting dates for different vegetable crops, according to when the first frost is expected. You may not get sweet corn out of your garden by the Fourth of July, but you wont necessarily miss out on your beans and potatoes either. And for some crops like brussels sprouts and turnips, a little nip of frost actually makes them taste better. Crops that we may be getting too late for are lima beans, watermelon, potato, sweet potato and eggplant.
Ron Becker is an OSU Extension Agricultural and Natural Resources program coordinator and may be reached at Becker.4@osu.edu.
