Can you start growing seedlings indoors before the move? (I'm sure you're not too busy right?). I usually plant out heat tolerant broccoli in the first weeks of July, using shade cloth to keep them from bolting. You could probably transplant some cucumbers, maybe a few squashes, direct seed beans, certain types of beets and peas, carrots (if you can keep the seed bed wet), and even some corn. In zone 5, you are taking a big gamble: if September and early October is warm and frost free, your gamble will probably pay off. If the frost stays away until late October like it did last fall here, then your gamble will for sure pay off. However, if frost shows up at the end of September or the temperatures turn cold, you will have to employ some season extension measures (like frost covers, clear plastic, water jugs, etc.) or accept that mother nature is going to frustrate your short season and start planning for next year. When it comes to zone 5 and weather, there are no guarantees other than winter will show up eventually.

Carol, I think Rocky Ford Green Flesh is a really good one, and I might still have some seed for it in my seed box. Let me look for it today or tomorrow after the heat has driven me inside from the garden (and since it is already 79 degrees and the sun isn't even up yet, I bet the heat drives me in pretty quickly). I'll be happy to send you some seed of that one if I still have any, and I might have some other melon seeds. I have to look....my memory isn't what it used to be and I haven't bought any melon seed in a couple of years, so I don't remember what all I have. Broccoli seed is remarkably good at germinating, isn't it? I grew twice as many plants as I really intended to this spring just because all the seed germinated and I didn't want to waste the plants.....and I have a lot of broccoli in the freezer as a reward for having 'too many' plants. I have been putting in stuff for fall, but it is slow going with all this heat and wind. The heat alone would be bad enough, but the wind we've had just compounds the damage. Some of my youngest tomato plants at the eastern edge of the garden have taken a real beating from the wind the last two days and may not survive. The older plants have taken such a beating that I may yank out a lot of them. Some of them were marginal to carry over to fall and the wind may have made up my mind about going ahead and removing them. I am about to reach the "sick of tomatoes" phase anyway (not sick of eating them, but tired of picking, washing, sorting and processing, LOL) so it won't bother me tremendously to pull out a few old, tired plants....and I have plenty of others anyway. So far in the ground, I have fall cantaloupe/muskmelons, sweet corn, 3 kinds of green beans, winter squash, small pumpkins (small sugar pie and also Jack-B-Little for fall decorations) black-eyed peas, a lot of cucumbers for pickle-making, tomatoes, and then the okra, pepper and tomato plants I'm carrying over from spring. Still to go into the ground are all the cool-season crops, and most of them are seeded and growing in cups, except for carrots which I need to direct seed soon. I don't know if the winter squash or pumpkins will have time to mature before a frost but will just hope for the best. Most years they do, and fall gardening is sort of risky anyway, in terms of an early frost coming and ruining things. I need to collect more floating row covers and frost blankets because I don't have that many. In recent years, we've tended to have our first early freezing night in mid-October, although it isn't always necessarily a real hard killing freeze....that tends to come about a month later. Our average first freeze is Nov., but the weather does as it will no matter what the averages say! The summer-planted tomato plants do tend to stay small through about the end of August even though they look healthy and are blooming/setting fruit. My tallest fall tomato plants so far are (not surprisingly) the cherry types and they are about 20-24" tall. The others range from about 10-20" tall and they look fine, but short. The fall plants normally grow like crazy in September just as soon as the worst of the August heat breaks. I am excited about the fall garden, but would be more excited if it would rain or if we'd get some heat relief. We've had less than an inch of rain this month and with temps in the upper 90s and heat index numbers in the low 100s, I've just "had it" with summer and am so ready for fall. To make matters worse, the snakes are up and moving around during the day, which is abnormal in this heat, so I assume they are getting short of food. My white cat with black spots, appropriately named Spots, was bitten by a copperhead yesterday afternoon. She ought to be dead by now as this is her fourth copperhead bite, and the vet said the second one usually kills a cat that has survived one bite already. Her paw is swollen up huge and she is very cranky, but she survived the night and still has an appetite, so I think she'll survive this snakebite as well. She is our second cat named "Spots" and she replaced a "Spots" who died after HER second snakebite. I hate snakes. Now that we've had a copperhead out in broad daylight, I'll be jumpy (I prefer to think of it as being 'extra-cautious') for the next few days. Until yesterday, we hadn't had a snake seen in the yard in several weeks so I was considering it a pretty good summer. If I can make my way through a mound of peppers and tomatoes sitting in the kitchen today...I am thinking of canning the green jalapenos, and roasting the red ones to make chipotles, and dehydrating the small tomatoes and saucing the big ones, then I may find myself 'caught up' with putting food up for winter and have a few days off. All I can say is that it is about time. Dawn

? ? ? ? ? I did not see any plant on the chart that bears 'all season' and don't see how I implied it in my post. The one that bears the longest on the entire chart is squash and it only bears for 3 months in her area according to the chart. What the chart does help with is figuring out what to plant and when so you can have a variety of things in your garden at all times. Even the chart isn't the answer to everything under the sun. As an example, my local ag. office says we can plant bush beans here from May 1 - Aug 15 in 2 week succession plantings with harvesting June 21 - Oct 15 (and even plant as early as April 1 using row covers). But if you look at the zone 7 chart (my area), it only shows planting May 15 - July 15 and harvesting July 1 - September 1. BUT, the chart is certainly better than nothing and I think the chart is a good start to figuring out what & when. Especially for a beginner like me who had no idea that broccoli should not be grown in the heat of July in my area. I am growing for immediate consumption, not for storing, so I also did not want gallons of bags of beans (or squash or tomatoes or whatever) ready at one time. I wanted a little bit of a bunch of different things ready each week. I did not want to have beans for dinner *every* night !! One thing I had to figure out was what was the recommended number of plants for 2 people to be able to consume the harvest. Also what plants are a once and done plant and what plants would be able to be harvested over a long period from one plant. For example, squash are harvested for a long period from one plant, but bush beans are for approx 2 weeks. Carrots, obviously, once you pull the carrot out, that plant is done ... no more producing carrots from that plant, LOL. So ... 1 or 2 squash plants might be enough for 2 people for the whole time squash produces. But 20-80 carrot plants (depending on how much you like carrots) split up into succession planting of 4-10 carrots every week from Feb 1 - Mar 1 would give you 4-10 carrots ready every week once they start producing, rather than 20-80 carrots all ready at one time. I also think 40sf is a good size. Our garden is 36sf (11 feet of that is trellised) and I have open squares that I am not using right now. But as soon as I am able to plant fall crops, I will have room to start them early without pulling a summer plant. Then as the summer plants are done I can start pulling them and planting more fall crops in those newly emptied squares to extend the harvest. The one thing I would like is a little more trellis for my summer plants (or I need to cut back on my tomatoes some!!). I would like to have some honeydew on the trellis and more cantaloupe, and maybe have moved my watermelon to the trellis(?). As it is now, my trellis is divided as follows ... each square is 1 plant per square except the cucumber ... 6 squares tomato (2 each of 3 kinds), 2 squares cantaloupe, 2 squares squash, 1 square cucumber (2 plants in 1 square). However, in the fall, the only thing I have planned that will be trellised is peas. I doubt I need 11 squares of peas !!! That being said, this is my first ever garden and I am very excited about it so far. I have read a lot on the internet, but I am not an expert ... I haven't even eaten my first veggie yet !!

I've had spinach winter over and start growing again in the early spring without any covering. See if there are any local growers around who might have seedlings available. The backyard grower I get tomato plants from in spring is now offering seedlings for fall. Also, check with any gardening neighbors if you live in a hilly area. I'm in the colder part of zone 5 but because we're at a low elevation with hills on three sides, my garden gets a light frost around Sept 18. If I cover with something like Remay (I have a portable tunnel covered with Agribon) I can keep bush beans going for another couple of weeks. After a couple of cool nights, it usually gets warm again. Bush beans are about 6" high right now so I'm not sure I got them in early enough this year.