Procrastinators, we have some good news for you.
If life got a little busy this spring and your garden still has empty space in it instead of seedlings, it’s not too late to turn that around. But it will take a little strategizing to optimize your harvest, according to Caragh Fitzgerald, a University of Maine Cooperative Extension gardening expert.
“Missing a couple of weeks in the season when the season is already short can be difficult,” she said Thursday. “But if you have open space and now is when you have time, just look around and see what you can plant.”
A late-planted garden may look a little different than gardens that were planted earlier in the season. It takes longer to grow the same crop when it’s planted in summer compared to in spring when the days are shorter, the sunlight is less intense, and the late-season weather is cooler, she wrote in the June edition of Maine Home Garden News, a newsletter published by the cooperative extension.
But a late-planted garden still can be bountiful, she said, encouraging procrastinators to take a look at a basic planting calendar shared by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. According to it, mid-June gardeners can still plant seeds for faster-growing or heat-loving vegetables and herbs such as green beans, radishes, beets, turnips, rutabaga, cilantro and dill. There’s still time to plant carrots, too, but if you do, Fitzgerald recommends daily watering and also perhaps adding a light layer of mulch, such as grass clippings, to keep the soil moist.
“Carrots can be slow to germinate and they’re really sensitive to dry soils,” she said. “If we get enough sun and heat and, especially this spring, wind, it can dry out that critical quarter-inch. If they dry out, the carrots won’t germinate. They need that constant moisture to get started.”
It’s been dry this spring and not much rain is in the short-term forecast so paying attention to watering is probably a good idea for all gardeners right now, regardless of when they planted, she said.
“Gardens are dry already,” Fitzgerald said. “People need to keep an eye on garden status so plants put on their early growth correctly.”
Late season gardeners also need to consider the temperature outside and how that will affect what they plant. Some vegetables, such as lettuce, don’t do very well in the hottest weeks of the summer, and savvy home gardeners will want to substitute other, heat-loving plants for their salads instead.
“Many varieties will tend to get bitter in the heat of the summer,” she said. “But greens like Swiss chard will thrive in the summer heat.”
It’s still possible to grow lettuce for a fall harvest, but Fitzgerald recommends starting seeds indoors, in order to better control the conditions, and then plant them outside about a month later. It might be a good idea to wait until early July to start your seeds so they don’t go in the ground until August.
“With any seedlings, when you’re moving from indoors to outdoors, you need to give them some time to harden off,” she said. “Get them gradually used to being outside, with stronger sunlight and drying winds. Get them accustomed to being outdoors before you put them in the ground.”
And if you want to grow tomatoes but haven’t gotten around to getting your seedlings yet, don’t despair — but act fast, she said.
“If you have your heart set on tomatoes, look at short-season varieties, instead of long-growing heirloom varieties,” Fitzgerald said, adding that people who live in northern Maine will want to plant the fastest-growing tomato varieties they can find. “And then plan on covering plants in the fall for those first few frosts.”
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