I have a 4’ deep, 6’ wide patch of full-sun garden space. The soil is relatively prepared (i.e., double dug, mixed with compost/leaf mould), ready to be attached to a drip irrigation system, and right next to an 8’ tall deer fence.
My main question is what to plant. I know there are late season crops, and I’ve heard suggestions to replant late in the season after a first crop is harvested, but I don’t know what will take, grow, and harvest within the remaining growing season. Brussels sprouts? Too early to replant lettuce? Spinach? If the fence is ok to grow on, any climbers? (The deer fence is a plus/minus. On the one hand, it is a perfect trellis for climbing plants. On the other hand, do I really want to attract deer right to the border of the gardens?)
I am gardening in a Win XP Pro box with an Asus Mobo, Athlo… oh, wait. Wrong type of thread. I’m in Downstate New York, about midway between the City and the Catskills. Elevation is ‘bout 500’, so that’s not much of a climate difference.
Oh, and we already have about 3/4 of an acre of perennial beds, so there’s no impetus to plant flowers.
Thanks!
Rhythm
(Mods: Sorry if this should have been in Café Society. Gardening advice seems like a CS topic, but this seems like an answerable question. Of course, move at your discretion.)
Courgettes (zuchinnis) are incredibly fast growing (I had mine in a propagator for the first few days - within two days they were already two inches tall). Mine are doing well, and just coming into a second flowering now.
I think you’d be able to get away planting them now. Conditions for growing can’t be much worse where you are than here, anyway.
PS. they’re big plants, so you’ll only need to plant a few - they’re heavy cropping anyway.
Oh, perhaps I should have posted – I have a section already going, with a couple varieties of sweet corn, green and yellow squash, tomatoes (cherry and full-size), eggplant, edible sunflowers, three types of pumpkin (field, sugar, and giant), and cantaloupe (we’ll see). There is about ten feet between the edge of that bed and the beginning of the bed in question, so there are no sunlight/watering entanglements.
[aside to Laughing Lagomorph] I’m over on the West Side now, but I lived in Brewster many years ago. I think it was on Rt. 22, near the Red Rooster diner or whatnot. I rented a house from the Elks Lodge.[/aside]
Beets and turnips work nicely, if that’s what floats yer boat. They have the advantage of being edible even at small sizes, and are fairly frost-resistant, so the frost-date “get 'em out of the ground” clock doesn’t tick quite as loudly as for, say, tomatoes.
Also, spinach. Radishes, if you didn’t get heartily sick of them last spring.
I’d go ahead and start planting some various sorts of lettuce and other kinds of greens (mache, rocket, etc.) once a week for the next month or so–even if it’s too hot and dry right now, you never can tell about the weather, and if one week’s planting succumbs, subsequent plantings might “take”, and you can have lots of nice greens all fall.
You should be able to plant cucumbers, squash, zucchini, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. I’d also like to thank you for calling your neighborhood “downstate”. When I lived in Glens Falls and told people I was from upstate New York they’d always go “Westchester?”
Peas are also frost resistant and don’t take too long to produce a crop. They also don’t take up too much space. Leaf lettuce would also probably work.