WALDO, Maine — The good folks at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension offices around the state are used to people wandering in with gardening questions and concerns — even with samples of blighted zucchini leaves and pests trapped in resealable bags tucked under their arms.
Rick Kersbergen, an extension professor who works in the Waldo County office, has handled his share of gardening questions over the years. He wanted to let BDN readers know it’s not too late to do another round of planting for fall harvest. Your mid-August garden may look like a wild jungle, full of plump tomatoes finally getting their first blush of rosy color and green beans ripening in what seems like minutes. Yet planning and planting now will reap benefits later in the year.
A gardening friend just told me it’s too late to plant fall crops, unless you have special equipment including greenhouses. True?
No, we still have time to plant a variety of things. You can accelerate the process a little bit if you use some season extension tools, such as low tunnels — polyester material laid over the crops to protect them from early frosts.
That’s a relief! What can I still plant?
The easiest one that most people can grow is spinach, which can be planted right up until the first or second week in September. Beet greens. They’ll do fine. You can probably still start lettuce from seed indoors and then transplant outside. And turnips, you can do those from seed. There’s a lot of greens that could be planted — arugula and things like that. These are crops that like to grow in cool, moist conditions, and hopefully that’s what we’ll see going into September and October.
Any tips for planting seeds this time of year?
If you plant seed and it gets too dry and hot, it’s not going to do very well. The seed needs good soil-to-seed contact. You want it in somewhat firm, not compacted soil. One of the techniques I use to plant spinach seed is to put a piece of board on top of it. That’ll keep it moist, cool and dark. But you’ve got to remember to take the board off pretty quick.
We wouldn’t want to trap the little seedlings in the ground! All right, that answers my questions about planting now for fall crops. Are there other things to plant now that will help my garden later?
You don’t want to have any bare soil coming into the winter, so having a cover crop in the garden is great. Winter rye is a good cover crop that can be sown as soon as you pull your plants out of the ground, like your tomato plants. It’ll grow this fall and grow this spring and protect the soil by keeping the nutrients in it. The other cover crop that people use are oats, which will provide protection into the winter. You can broadcast the seed, but you still need to rake it in. It needs to be in the soil.