Starting A Vegetable Garden

There’s nothing like a fresh, home-grown vegetable. Growing your own is easier than you might think.

Select a sunny spot that gets 6-8 hours of sunlight each day. Most veggies need full sun for best results.

August is the time of year when the mettle of a vegetable gardener in Greater Columbus can be tested. August is the month when most vegetable gardeners experience their greatest yields of the season as well as the greatest variety of vegetables ripening at the same time. But it can also be the point in the season when some gardeners look forward to the end of the growing season.

By August, many gardeners have battled insects, diseases, hot weather, and uneven rainfall. It can be the time in the growing season when weeds have overtaken certain areas of the garden and raccoons are harvesting a majority of the sweet corn.

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warm-season vegetables like tomatoes, squash, sweet corn, melons, peppers and others take over the Ohio vegetable garden. These crops love the hot temperatures that send many a gardener in search of a shade tree and a cold glass of lemonade.

Other crops such as carrots, beets, radish, kale, leafy greens, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and others prefer the cooler soil and air temperatures of late winter, early spring, and fall, and thus, are known as cool-season crops.

Many vegetable gardeners plant cool-season crops in late winter for spring and early summer harvest, but many cool-season crops can also be planted in the ground or in raised beds in late summer for harvest throughout the fall and in some years through the end of the calendar year without the use of any season-extension techniques. Cool-season vegetables may grow in warmer temperatures, but the quality of the produce may be reduced due to higher temperatures.

winter vegetable gardening requires the gardener to know the average date of the first frost in the fall, the number of days to harvest for the cool-season vegetables to be grown, and the cold weather tolerance of those cool-season vegetables.

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leaf lettuce for harvest before the first frost, and the variety of lettuce you wish to grow requires 55 days before harvest, you will need to plant the lettuce by Aug. 16. A variety of carrot that requires 60 days to harvest would need to be planted closer to this past Thursday in order to harvest before the first frost.

It’s cool to be sweet

The beauty of planting cool-season crops in August is that many of them don’t need to be harvested before the first frost. In fact, many cool-season crops taste better after several frosts because the cold temperatures cause these vegetables to turn starches into sugars, which act as an anti-freezing agent for their cells. Cool-season vegetables that will be sweeter after frost include carrots, beets, rutabagas, turnips, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, and most leafy greens.

go.osu.edu/fallveggiesvarieties.

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The hot temperatures and dry weather typically experienced in August can sometimes make it difficult for some seeds to germinate. Before planting, to ensure that the soil is better able to retain moisture, work in a half-inch of compost to the seedbed. And be sure to irrigate between rains in order to keep newly seeded or transplanted crops watered. A 2-to-3-inch layer of mulch can help keep soils from drying out quickly.

Many gardeners who plant a fall and winter vegetable garden find that there can be fewer challenges than when growing vegetables in the heat of summer. There tends to be fewer insects, diseases, and weeds during the fall and winter months; rainfall tends to be more reliable; and soils retain more moisture in cooler temperatures.

hogan.1@osu.edu

Source: dispatch.com