A reader in North Carolina posted this comment last week:

Love the articles! I’m buying a house and will finally have a yard to start a garden. I’d love to get your opinion on the best times of the year to plant certain foods and some that would be easier for a first time gardener.

Thanks!

So we’re going to oblige.  Because we’re cool like that.  And believe that if you have the means to buy a house, you most definitely should rock a garden in the backyard.

This is a cool photo that has nothing to do with the content of this blog post

The best way to find out what plants will succeed when planted mid-Summer is to check with a local plant nursery or find region-specific info on the internet.  Since a plant’s suitability to your garden depends significantly on the temperature and on frost, the answer to your question varies depending on where you live.

Also, a good rule of thumb for less experienced gardeners is to buy seedlings, rather than seeds, to plant.  Doing this will give you an added advantage in that you’ll save time that you don’t want to spare since we’re already well into the season.

So, some recs…

Tomatoes! Good, homegrown, heirloom tomatoes are about the best thing you’ll ever taste.  They typically take up to two months to produce fruit, but if you pick up some seedlings at a nursery and get them into the ground, you’ll probably be able to start harvesting by mid-September, only about a month beyond when the “normal” tomato crop comes in.  The plants will keep producing well into Fall; I routinely continue to harvest tomatoes in Brooklyn in mid-October. Continue reading →