Category Archives: Garden Advice

Garden Advice

7 Crops You Can Plant in July

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Spring and summer always seem to go so fast. There’s so much to get done in the garden. We’re headed into July, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t still get some plants in. Here are a few summer crops you can sow this month.

Beans

Beans are a productive, quick-growing crop that’s perfect for sowing late in the season. You’ll need to water them thoroughly, especially as they get established, but they tolerate the midsummer heat with no problems. 

For late sowings, some of our favorites are bush snap beans like Provider, Royalty Purple Pod, Contender (Buff Valentine), and Blue Lake Bush (Blue Lake 274). These varieties are all ready to harvest in 48 to 55 days. 

Collards

The classic hot weather green, collards can be sowed right through summer. During the summer, they’re lovely shredded and added to stir-fries, salads, and slaws or blended into smoothies. As the weather cools in the fall, you can add them to soups and chili. They can also be fermented to make kraut or kimchi.

Some of our favorite varieties for summer planting include Georgia Green (Georgia Southern, Creole) Collards, Green Glaze Collards, Whaley’s Favorite Cabbage Collards, and Vates Collards. They’re ready to harvest in as little as 68 days. 

Corn

Corn thrives during the summer heat. It’s an excellent crop for succession planting to spread out your harvest. When selecting a variety, check the days to harvest to ensure that you choose a variety that will mature before your area’s first frost date. 

A few quick maturing varieties include Buhl Sweet Corn (81 days), Chires Baby Sweet Corn (75 days), Country Gentleman Sweet Corn (93 days), and Bodacious RM (75 days) which is one of the few hybrid corn varieties we carry. 

You may notice a few dent corn varieties, such as Reid’s Yellow Dent Corn, have two maturity dates listed. The first date is for roasting, and the second is for grinding and drying. If you’re interested in roasting, Reid’s (85/110 days), Hickory King (85/110 days), and Hickory Cane (85/110 days) are options.

Homemade Pickles Pickling Cucumber

Cucumbers

Both pickling and slicing cucumbers are dependable summer crops. They can be sown in July and tolerate the heat well as long as they’re watered consistently. 

Some of our favorite options for pickling cucumbers include Arkansas Little Leaf (59 days) and Homemade Pickles (55 days). They’re both vigorous, productive, and disease resistant. 

If you’re want to sow slicing cucumbers, this July some of our favorites include White Wonder (58 days), which is very productive in hot weather, and Marketmore 76 (57 days) and Straight Eight (57 days), which are very dependable and productive. 

Southern Peas

Southern peas are also called cowpeas, crowder peas, field peas, or black-eyed peas. They’re an incredibly productive staple crop that can be grown when both days and nights are warm for a period of 60-90 days.

They’re drought-resistant and do well in warm soil. We still have some varieties available. However, the pandemic seed orders sales surge has especially affected our inventory for southern peas. New seed crops are being grown out – we’ll have more seed available again in Nov/Dec 2021!

Summer Squash and Zucchini

Summer squash and zucchini thrive in the summer heat. They’re quick to mature and are ready to harvest in between 48 and 68 days. 

Some of the varieties we recommend include Black Beauty Zucchini (48 days), Early Prolific Straightneck Summer Squash (48 days), Benning’s Green Tint Summer Squash (52 days). They’re vigorous and productive. 

Swiss Chard

Many greens don’t stand up to the summer heat, but Swiss chard will produce all summer and into fall. They can be harvested in as little as 25 days for baby greens or 50 to 60 days for mature leaves.

Perpetual Spinach (Leaf Beet Chard) is a great hot weather substitute for spinach in the southeast. Rainbow Swiss chard is a great way to add both beauty and flavor to the garden. Barese is sweeter than other chard varieties.

Add a few of these to your garden this July for delicious late summer and fall harvests. 

Garden Advice

6 Tips to Maximize small garden productivity

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A well-planned and cared for small garden can be more productive than a poorly tended larger one. If you’re short on space, there are several ways you can maximize your garden’s potential and productivity. 

Choose Compact Varieties

You might not be able to grow giant pumpkins that will win prizes at the state fair in your tiny backyard, but there are many varieties that are more suitable for small plots. Some of our favorites for small space growing include:

We love Alston Everlasting Cherry Tomatoes for small spaces because they’re are a large cherry that keeps for up to three weeks after harvest. Sally’s Hot Peppers bear lots of colorful peppers with medium heat and their small stature and beauty means they’re easy to tuck into a landscape or container garden. Table Queen squash is a wonderful way to put up some winter squash without long, trailing vines. Rainbow Chard won’t bolt in the heat and is beautiful and flavorful. These varieties and many more compact choices bring a lot of flavor to small spaces and container gardens. 

Don’t Be Afraid to Mix Vegetables and Flowers

If you’re trying to get the most out of a small garden, it can be tempting to forget flowers altogether. However, flowers improve more than the look of a garden. They help to attract and support pollinators and beneficial insects. 

Grow edible flowers like nasturtiums, Johnny-jump-ups, and bachelor’s buttons to add to salads or use to decorate baked goods. Plant tall, sturdy sunflower varieties to use as trellises for pole beans. Grow morning glories in window boxes and let them trail around porch railings. Plant marigolds in between vegetables to help deter whiteflies and nematodes. There are many ways to add flowers to a small space.

Use Containers or Raised Beds

If you don’t have a lot of open ground, consider adding containers or raised beds. Containers and raised beds can allow you to grow on patios, rooftops, and even unused parking spaces. Just make sure that if you’re growing on a surface that could contain harmful chemicals (like pavement), your bed has a non-permeable barrier at the bottom. Check out our best tips for container gardening here.

Grow Vertically

Trellising crops is a huge space saver. Pole beans, cucumbers, peas, indeterminate tomatoes, melons, squashes, gourds, and various flowers can all be grown on trellises. You can utilize existing fencing on your property or check out our vertical gardening blog post for more trellis tips.

Don’t Forget Perennials

Perennials add a lot of productivity to your garden for relatively little time and effort. You don’t need the space for a full-fledged orchard to enjoy their benefits.

Chives, walking onions, rhubarb, salad burnet, thyme, lemon balm, strawberries, and asparagus can all be grown in small gardens. Thyme and strawberries make excellent ground cover beneath other plants.

You can also espalier dwarf fruit trees or use them to create a fruit tree guild, grow grapes or hops on a trellis, grow raspberries or blackberries along a privacy fence, or plant low-bush blueberries along a border. 

Succession Plant

Spreading out your planting and re-planting beds as soon as a crop is finished will ensure you can enjoy your harvest over a more extended period. Last year, Pam Dawling contributed a post to the SESE blog, “Summer Succession Planting: Avoiding Gluts & Shortages,” which is an excellent resource for learning more about succession planting.

Garden Advice

Cottage Garden: Growing Hollyhocks

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Hollyhocks are tall, easy to grow, biennial flowers. They’re perfect for adding a colorful backdrop to garden beds and look excellent along fences. Hollyhocks are a mainstay in English and cottage-style gardens and are great for attracting bees.

As biennials, they don’t bloom their first year. They spend the first year growing attractive dark green rosettes of foliage and storing energy. In the second year, the tall stalks grow, and the hollyhocks bloom and produce seed. They typically bloom from around June until August.

These incredible flowers are native to Southwest and Central Asia. Their roots were often used in herbal medicine. The blooms are also edible and can be used to make tea.

At SESE, we offer two hollyhock varieties.

Black Hollyhocks

This dramatic heirloom is a show-stopper in any cottage garden and dates back to pre-1830. It features magnificent spikes of satiny blue-black single flowers that form the second year from first-year leafy 18 inch leaf rosettes. 

Find seeds here.

Outhouse Hollyhocks

This mixed-color beauty was traditionally grown around outhouses. The spires of single pink, white, red, and burgundy flowers grow up to 9 feet tall and made perfect screens for outhouses. You didn’t have to ask where the bathroom was; you could just look for the hollyhocks!

Find seeds here.

Outhouse Hollyhocks

Planting & Care

Hollyhocks can be grown with relative ease. They can be started indoors or direct sown. They germinate best when the soil temperature is around 60°F. Germination can take 14 to 21 days; you’ll have to be patient with these flowers!

Location

When planting out, select a location with well-drained soil and full sun. As tall plants with heavy flowers, Hollyhocks do best in areas sheltered from the wind. They thrive in fertile soil with a neutral pH.

Spacing

Hollyhocks are large, tall flowers, so proper spacing is crucial, plant them 12 to 24 inches apart. If they’re too crowded, hollyhocks are also susceptible to rust (Puccinia malvacearum), a fungal disease that typically begins on the lower leaves.

Watering

Watering your hollyhocks is most important when they’re germinating and newly planted. Keep them consistently moist during this time. After they’re established, hollyhocks are quite drought tolerant. Over-watering established plants can make them more prone to lodging and diseases.

Staking

Hollyhocks benefit from a bit of support and can be prone to lodging, especially in windy areas. Grow hollyhocks along a fence, trellis, or use stakes to keep flower stalks upright. 

Should I Deadhead Hollyhocks?

As with many flowers, deadheading hollyhocks isn’t necessary, but it can encourage them to bloom more. However, deadheading hollyhocks means you will get fewer seeds. Many gardeners like to save seeds from hollyhocks and re-plant or let them self-sow. Allowing plants to self-sow or re-planting them yourself will ensure that you have some hollyhocks blooming each year.

Soil Care

Hollyhocks aren’t super heavy feeders, but you still need to take care of the soil, especially if you allow hollyhocks to keep re-seeding in the same bed. Adding a layer of compost each spring can help keep the soil healthy.

Hollyhocks are a fun, easy-to-grow flower great for adding lots of color and height to your garden. Following these tips can help you have success with them.