- It's early July and you
might find yourself thinking, "I've missed this season,
I can't plant anything." - But that couldn't be
further from the truth. - So in today's video we're
giving you five perfect plants that you can put in your garden right now no matter where you live. Our first crop is one that doesn't need any special seed starting equipment, you don't need a trellis of any kind, it's prolific, delicious, and nutritious, and that crop is the humble bean. - One of my favorite bush
beans is the contender. This is a very dependable
variety that does well in heat and other environments, and it's really great
to actually use beans to fill in any empty spots in your garden. So right now between these peppers, I could throw these beans in and still get a second harvest, and by the time the peppers
are actually nice and tall, the beans will be ready
to start harvesting. - The variety I like this
season is called gold rush. It has these beautiful sort
of goldish yellow bean pods, but it's actually resistant
to a ton of diseases. So this is how you would plant it if you want to pop it into a raised bed in its own dedicated area. But these are also great container plants, so don't be afraid if
you don't have a space to have a raise bed, you can
just do it in a container. So here's what I do. You just pull a furrow
down with your finger, give the soil a little karate chop, and do it over here as well
to about an inch or so, and then just drop a seed every
four inches just like this and then you just cover
it up and water it in. And that's all you have to do. You'll have beans coming up in no time. Our next plant is one that
a lot of gardeners think is the plant to grow in summer, and they think that if you miss a season, you're completely screwed and
there's nothing you can do. And you might think you
see it in this very shot, but you couldn't be
further from the truth. And that plant is a determinate tomato. - And determinate tomatoes
are really different than those polar indeterminates because they don't grow forever. They generally all harvest at once and they don't really
need that much support. - That's why they're the perfect
choice to plant right now in early July. The one I'm going with is called supremo. It's a 68 day saucing or
paste styled tomatoes. So if I plant this in, and we do recommend not
direct sowing your tomatoes, put them in some kind
of seed starting tray. We have our Epic six cell trays here, which we're always
releasing fun colors of. And this is a great one to grab some sauce at the end of the season. So what do you got Jacque? - I have one that I actually
haven't tried growing before which is called patio choice yellow. The cool thing about this one is that it says it's ready
after 45 days from transplant. - Wow. - And you could even grow it in a tiny basket or like one gallon pot, and you'll get tons of tiny tomatoes that actually won the AAS selection award which means that it tastes good and it has a lot of disease resistance. - Perfect. And so all you need to do is
just grab some sort of tray, put it in maybe an eighth
of an inch below the soil, cover it up, get it nice and moist, and you're good to go with
this beautiful midsummer crop. This next crop is one that
is near and dear to my heart, especially this season. You see our Epic hens
in the coop behind me. Unfortunately, we lost
one of the original six, Gucci, my gold laced wine dot, and I actually buried her right here about two feet below this
selection to plant in early July in the hopes that I could
reuse her body, right? The way that nature intended
to grow this beautiful pumpkin. - This probably isn't the
pumpkin you're thinking of and it's the red kuri squash. I grow it 'cause it tastes better and it's more useful in cooking. So the way I like to grow my squash is actually just direct sowing 'em. I'm going to be doing it on
this cattle panel trellis. The idea here is that by putting the seed straight
down into the ground, it'll start climbing this trellis and then there'll be tons of pumpkins hanging down throughout the season. But there is actually a way to
make these grow even faster. - So my selection is classically
considered a pumpkin. It is the lumina variety
and it's a 90 day crop. So even right now in
most areas of the world, you can get this in the ground and I'll show you exactly how to do it. So with pumpkins, if you're
going directly in the ground and not growing it up at trellis, you can plant it in a mound, and that would be two or
three seeds per mound. So grab a handful. This one will plant three mounds worth. And the little trick
that Jacques mentioned is very handy when you
have these large seeds. All you need to do is take a look for the pointy side of the seed, grab some snips, and very
carefully just snip off a tiny amount, almost the
smallest amount you can cut off of the tip of the seed. What that does is it allows
moisture to get in quicker and speeds up germination,
which is really important when you're planting later
in the season like we are with this early July planting. So what you can do is
snip the tip of the three, pop 'em in here, and then
go ahead and cover them up, and they'll grow and sprawl like crazy. Our next selection is one that
many gardeners often neglect, but it really is the Robin to the classic garden crop's Batman. It's the biggest bang
for buck in your garden and it also adds by far the most flavor, and that would be herbs. - The herb that I'm growing is tetra dill. If you've grown dill before,
you've normally seen it go to flour and you get
all those seed heads, which are great, but sometimes I actually
want to eat the actual leaf. So tetra dill produces more leafs, it's heat resistant, bolt tolerant, it's just a great all around dill. - The one that I've chosen is, you might say boring,
you might say classic, you might say, "Why did
you even pick this, Kevin?" But it is basil. It's just not any normal basil. The Genevieve varieties
are great, they're classic, but I've gone with everleaf emerald towers and I'll tell you why. The reason is because a
lot of people struggle not only with basil getting disease, but with basil flowering. And this is a columnar
style that really has a lot of leaf growth
and not flower growth. In fact, the flower growth is stalled for about three months
longer than the average basil and that's why I chose
it to plant right now. The only thing I'll say
about actually Jacques both your dill and my basil, is while we do recommend
starting them in seed trays, they can take a little bit longer to start than your average plant. So just have some patience. But once you get them in
the ground and transplant, you'll have them for
many, many months to come. You've seen this next plant
throughout the entire video, you just didn't know it. This is a North American native
that has gorgeous flowers, but we often think about
eating it for its seeds. Something that I actually ate when I played baseball as a kid, and funnily enough, you can
actually eat the entire thing. That plant, of course, is the sunflower. - Sunflowers are prolific self seeders. And in fact, almost every single sunflower you see in this garden was
actually sown by birds. And actually, my two favorite
types of sunflowers to grow are the kind that have a lot of colors and a lot of branching. Evening sun is a really wonderful color. And the cool thing about sunflowers is that they're actually
extremely drought tolerant. If you take a look at how
giant that sunflower is there is no irrigation there
and it's growing just fine. The way you wanna grow sunflowers is generally direct seeding
because they have a taproot and they'll just get their
full bigger potential if you put 'em right in the spot where you want them to grow. - The beauty of sunflowers
is their variety. This one is lemon queen,
one of my favorites, you actually see it behind me right here. And then sunspot, which
is a dwarf variety, but still has a nice big head. So good for a container gardener. And of course these are all available at botanical interests, our seed company. So you know how to start these
seeds we just recommended, but do you know how to get them all the way to bloom? Right here we'll show you how
to do that with sunflowers. Good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
