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Vegetable Gardening

Too late to start vegetable garden

12 years ago

I live in northern Ohio along lake erie (zone 5). We have had a very busy and rainy spring and have not had time to plant my vegetable garden. Is it to late to get something growing? If not, what would you recommend to start growing? I appreciate any recommendations or comments as I am a newbie gardener, this will be my second year.

Thanks

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Comments (9)

denninmi
12 years ago
Heavens no. It's just barely safe for most crops. I'm in the Detroit area, so we have the same climate. It MAY be getting "iffy" for some of the cool weather crops like peas or lettuce, and onions planted now won't be as big as if planted in April, but even with the cool weather crops, it just depends on the season we have. Many years, it's not all that hot and they do fine into the summer.

Realistically, you can plant cool season crops from late March/early April until about the first of June, and then do a fall planting from mid July through mid August (depending upon the crop and days to maturity). With warm season crops, from mid May through mid June, with a few things as late as early July (say, a really late crop of corn).

Get out there and plant! Not a problem at all.
solidago1
12 years ago
It's not too late. The old rule of thumb was plant by Mothers Day, and that was only 2 weeks ago. I just got my garden planted this past weekend.

You have plenty of time for beans, zucchini, tomatoes, greens, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, even corn.

Wait until July and plant some more beets, cabbage, Kale, late beans, broccoli...many things.
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Melons and okra I always start in the garden, usually late this month or early June. Tomatoes I've had sprout up on their own at around the same time and produce fruit in late summer to early autumn. Peppers are the only thing that I wonder if it might be too late for on your list, and even then it might depend on what type. I'd still start the tomatoes inside now just so they have warm nights as well as days. And when ai said melons, I mean cantaloupe types, I don't know about watermelons. Cheers!
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If you have made yourself a shade house/area you could use that later in the season to start your seedlings of broccoli, etc. You've mentioned that your property is windy so you might want to make getting wind protection a high priority. Wind will whisk away water from your plants like you wouldn't believe. Also do a check around for making yourself some plant shaders. Homemade trellising, horticultural mesh and shade cloth - even ancient bedsheets (at a pinch, and out of sight of the curious!) can all help to protect young plants until they are well-settled. If you plan to grow from seed - it definitely pays to have a set up that lets you start plants under shelter (wind, hot sun, any frosts) ready for setting out later. Some plants need to be direct drilled (sown straight into the soil) because they don't transplant well but others you can grow from seeds out of the ground and move in as land becomes free of the last crop. Some of the crops you've mentioned - asparagus and artichoke - are perennial and really need their own custom-assembled grow-site to give you great results. Some of the others - pumpkins and melons - are in for most of the growing time - particularly if you have several varieties on the go. You might want to consider setting up a separate place for crops that aren't going to be around for months at a time. One way past that is to get the vines to grow up a frame. I think there's information about this style of growing in the Square Foot Gardening forum. As summer seems to be a 'quiet' time because of the heat - you could use the interval to set out your beds and build some of the shelter and workspaces you could find useful. (Better than winter, for true!)
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Melissia, It depends on what you want to grow and it depends on where you live in the state. What you choose to plant now will vary based on the days-to-maturity of the veggies you plant and the first autumn freeze in your area. Look at the linked thread from a while back. Compare the list of fast, medium and slow-maturing veggies. Figure out your average first freeze date. Compare the two and then plant what you think will have time to mature and produce. Here in southern OK (and probably in the rest of the state too) there's plenty of time to plant seed now and get a harvest from the plants on the "quick maturity" list. In fact, for most of the cool-season crops on that list, it is still too hot to direct seed them, although you could start seeds in cups where you can control their sun exposure and moisture. For plants on the "Moderate Maturity" list, some likely would have time to mature if planted from seed now and that includes broccoli, Chinese cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, sweet corn (if 65-70 DTM varieties are planted), green onions, kohlrabi, bush lima beans, okra (could fail to produce pods, though, if cool weather comes extra early), parsley, and southern peas. Peppers or cherry tomatoes MIGHT have time to produce before frost, but only if large transplants (from 5-6" pots) are set out ASAP. On the list of slow maturing plants, the cool season ones like brussels sprouts, cabbage, or cauliflower could be planted from seed and likely would produce before a freeze gets them. Of course, these particular vegetables can take some cold weather. Garlic is traditionally planted in fall (Sept.-Oct.) for harvest in late spring to early summer of the following year. For the warm season plants on the Slow Maturity list, it is likely too late for the following from seed or tuber: tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes (might get some from tubers planted now if they are relatively short TM), pumpkins and winter squash or melons. It is definitely too late for melons, peppers, eggplant and tomatoes from seed. With everything else, it varies. For example, bush beans are a safer bet than pole beans at this point because they produce more quickly. Of course, everything hinges on the arrival of the first freezing weather/hard killing frost. Since moving here to Marietta 10 1/2 years ago, we've had a killing frost as early as Sept. 30th and as late as mid-December, so how well your fall garden does can vary a great deal depending on what the weather does. Hope this helps. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Veggies You Can Still Plant For Fall Harvest
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I started seeds in a plastic covered hoop house (high tunnel) in late september through mid-October for a winter garden (direct sown in the soil) and then later put on floating row covers in zone 6 in Massachusetts without issue. I wish I started the plants earlier but I had plenty of greens for the winter. See my pic from late December attached. Assuming that you aren't further north than I am (ie with less light) you might be okay.
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happyday
12 years ago
Plant right now, it's exactly the right time to plant.

We lost our gardens to a severe hailstorm in July a couple years ago, replanted, and we still got something.
nygardener
12 years ago
In a garden I'm growing in zone 5, I'm about to replant carrots, beets, and other cool-season veggies! The seeds I planted in mid-April sat and rotted in the cold. So you didn't lose much by waiting!
franktank232
12 years ago
Heck no... My tomatoes are like 4 inches tall! My peppers look like garbage... My onions and garlic look great...

but no...go ahead and do it now... or maybe try to get it in by June 1... that will give you a solid 100 days of """summer'"" or whatever we get this year.
booberry85
12 years ago
Not too late at all. I usually don't plant out the majority of the garden until Memorial day weekend. Broccoli, peas and potatoes usually go in earlier (but it's been such a cool wet spring that broccoli & potatoes will be going in Memorial Day weekend.) So things I don't even finish planting out until the first or 2nd week in June (things like tomatoes, peppers & beans.)

So plan & plant!
wordwiz
12 years ago
Ditto what all the others have said! I'm in Cincy and really have very few plants in the ground - three days in a row without rain hasn't happened since Moses was a baby (or so it seems!).

When I was a kid, it seemed like we would have a killing frost in late September, anymore it is closer to mid-October. Even early Halloween month would mean over 120 growing days, good enough for just about anything.

Mike
ediej1209 AL Zn 7
12 years ago
We're just an hour or so south of you and my beans have just popped out; corn was planted last night before the latest round of storms started; tomatoes and peppers will go out this next Monday (love those 3-day weekends!) So certainly, now is a good time to get started. Any earlier, especially with this weather, and I think everything would have just sat and sulked or completely rotted anyway.

Edie
thebadseed
12 years ago
You can always cheat and buy some already started. I always wind up doing this with at least one thing I thought I started but forgot :)

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