The Urban Permaculture Farm Magazine

The summer solstice is nearly upon us, but for most of the Northern Hemisphere, summer has already arrived in our gardens. However, for many of us, cool weather, or spring crops have not yet matured, and won't for another month or more.

This presents a few problems. For one, that space is probably needed for summer crops, especially when you're growing salad greens or brassicas like broccoli, cauliflower, or cabbage that takes up a ton of space before it matures. Secondly, whether lettuce wilts as the temperatures get into the 90s, summer storms pound the wide leaves tearing them to shreds, or a signal is sent to the plants to rush to seed, weather isn't always conducive to maturing cole crops.

For anyone who is like me and running into these problems, here is what I've done in my small 150 SF Square Foot Garden. For the space hogs, I have planted seeds for summer crops in amongst them, knowing that they will grow slower until I harvest the spring crops. It works slick if you time it right. For the weather, I'm taking a page from Judy's last month's article trying to extend her salad green harvest as temperatures skyrocketed. I have made use of the screens off of old windows to shade my lettuce and spinach when we hit 90 this week. Of course for my summer planting of lettuce (I can grow one here in the PNW), I intend to use the natural shade of taller plants to keep the next crop from wilting or going to seed too soon. Whatever works.

Summer also means that those potatoes that you threw in the ground or otherwise planted are growing up a storm. Anyone that knows me likely knows me first and foremost for my Build-As-You-Grow Potato Bins. Of course, any way you grow potatoes is great, just grow them, they're easy. The point I'm making is that if you are hilling, you've been doing it far more often than you originally thought you would. I have been adding a board or two a week it seems, and going through a bag of hilling soil every day.

While potato bins are by no means the only way to grow potatoes, they're also not the way to grow early season varieties like Yukon Gold or many reds. They only set fruit once so they don't benefit from hilling, all the potatoes will be in the bottom six inches. For that reason, I threw my sprouted seed stock stored from last year into my beds. They too have shown tremendous growth in just a few weeks.

So, depending where you are and how hot your climate is, you could be harvesting potatoes in the next month or so, or you could be like me and have to wait until October, using a ton of space in your summer garden for a spring crop. Anyone for a garden expansion?