Timing Your Hot Season Crops

Last frost does not mean the day — or even week — to plant the garden in full. A sage and seasoned gardener knows this. But this is particularly true and crucial for truly hot season crops that will downright revolt in soils that are not warm enough. Trust me. I’ve tried time and again to push the season with them, with appalling results.

I used to sow my cucumbers directly into the garden in early June. At this property even, for the first year, I gave it a try. We had zero cucumbers that first season; they all died a terrible and early death now that I remember it. I can’t recall what it was, but in hindsight our tomatoes also did terribly too. And one possible culprit could have been the remaining roots and juglone that remained in the soil where the black walnut stood right next to the barn door. I digress.

If you rush these very fast growing, heat loving plants, you gain nothing. And yes, waiting can be painful, especially if these are some of your most favorite things to grow in summer. So this is why I started to fold newspaper pots and sow them indoors a few weeks ahead of transplanting.

Now, instead of sowing seeds directly into the ground in early June, a time of year here than can either be very summery or very damp and springlike, I have hardy and happy transplants that will be ready for the perfect long-term forecast to acclimate into the garden. I sow my heat loving cucurbits and my first round of sunflowers right around mid-May, which is just about one week after our average last frost date here in my zone.

Even with this extra start, I am still looking for soil temperatures at depth to be in the 70s for transplanting. Sowing these crops indoors is never a must-do, not by a long shot. But I really have come to rely on these seasonal rituals that coalesce and bring so much meaning to my spring weeks that I cannot imagine ever going back to direct seeding these crops. If you prefer to direct seed them, really make sure you have warm soil and a really great, warm forecast to give them their very best start in your summer garden.

I’ll be folding more newspaper pots this weekend and sowing these seeds early next week. Honestly, with the cooler air returning here and what has been a very unseasonably cool spring, I feel little rush to start these too soon this spring, so I may even wait until next weekend. Although a juicy, warm, garden-ripe cucumber in early July is haunting my taste buds this morning so the promise of July’s heat is probably going to win me over — maybe I should sow them in 4” pots to give me an extra week indoors. Oh the things we do for our summer garden.