Hey everyone this is Shannie from Baker Creek,
and today we're going to talk about crops that you can squeeze in for the month of July. Maybe you've found that your early spring
planting, things have started to peter out by July, you've got some space in your garden,
you're ready to harvest, clear things out, make some room and start fresh. The season is far from over. It's definitely time to plant your next succession
of crops. You really want a good harvest all season
long, you should be succession planting. You should be putting things in in July. There are some factors you want to keep in
mind. Your growing zone is probably going to be
most important, and your personal climate that you have in your area. We're here in the Missouri Ozarks. Our zone is a zone 6. What I'm gonna be talking about today is most
applicable between zone 5 and zone 7, however I will make some indications for zones warmer
and zones cooler. What I would really recommend is if you are
in a zone that's warmer than zone 7, you can add a few weeks, basically plant a few weeks
later. And if you're in a zone cooler than a zone
5, you're just going to plant these things, take these recommendations and set them back
about a month. You're just going to have a shorter growing
season up north, zones cooler than 5, and you're gonna have a longer growing season
in zones warmer than 7, so apply it in that way. If you have any more specific questions, please
send an email to seeds@rareseeds.com, attention: Horticulture and we'd be happy to give you
some more specific answers. But basically, we're going to be talking about
what you can still get in the ground for the month of July, especially later July, because
thats around the time that we're planting right now. So without further ado, let's get to our list. This is our top 10 favorite plants to get
in the ground in late July. So, lets talk about edible ornamentals for
the later season garden- Basil. Let's try a basil that has incredible culinary
properties, as well as edible ornamental properties. We wanna put something in the landscape that
looks nice and is also applicable in the kitchen. Dark purple opal is absolutely a winner. It's got that really nice Italian basil flavor,
you can make your late season, you know your fall harvest pestos and your pastas, things
like that. But, it also looks fantastic in the landscape. And another bonus- it's also packed with antioxidants-
anthocynin, the purple hued antioxidant. Look at the beautiful dark purple leaves. This is a really nice way to add color to
the fall landscape, to bring that fresh basil flavor. You're gonna have a lot of tomatoes left over
at the end of your season, and you're probably gonna be making sauces or canning them. Don't forget to have some basil left over. Your early season basil might be petered out
by then. It may have gone to get bitter, so get another
succession of basil going.Consider inviting this dramatic purple tone into your edible
landscape for the later season. And don't forget its going to bring you incredible
medicinal benefits, plus it just smells fantastic. Now is the perfect time to start another succession
of beans. Try dragon tongue beans- this is my favorite
variety. It's just got really good crunch and snap. It's really good for pickling, so when you
get a huge harvest at the end of the season, you can just do a huge pickling party. I like to do pickle parties, who knows. Why not? So try this one for pickling, use it for fresh
eating. It's absolutely not too late to get this one
in now. If you find yourself having a clear spot in
your garden, go ahead and give dragon tongue beans a try. So I wanna demystify what has been typically
regarded as a difficult crop to grow- Cauliflower. It doesn't have to be. Actually, right now, if you start your cauliflower
now, in a protected indoor area that's a bit cooler, and you transplant it out to the garden
and it's maturing in the fall, you're gonna find a beautiful harvest of cauliflower. And you're gonna actually find that it's easier
than you may have thought. When you try to get cauliflower to mature
in the high summer months, it's gonna get attacked by bugs. But if you can protect it, keep it cool, and
start it in a pot when it's young, and transfer it out to the garden as it's more mature and
established, you're gonna find that your pest pressure is lower and that it's growing beautifully
in that cooler fall and late summer weather. So give cauliflower a try. Definitely try the variety "Amazing". This is actually the easiest cauliflower we
found to grow and it's really really great for a fall harvest. The best part about cauliflower and the rest
of the brassicas, which are the cabbage family crops, is they actually take on an even sweeter
flavor when you harvest them after a little bit of light frost or cool weather. So this is the ideal fall crop. It does take a long season, which is why you're
gonna want to start it now. So give cauliflower a try. It's not as hard as you think. So there's one essential culinary herb that
I wanna see you guys succession sowing throughout the whole season, but specifically right now
it's a great time. You can be sprinkling cilantro seeds in little
patches, anywhere you find a little blank patch in your garden throughout the season
because it does go to seed quickly, which isn't a bad thing. When cilantro goes to seed, it just turns
into coriander, which is an awesome spice. But you're gonna want to succession sow it
frequently so that you always have a nice supply of it. And this variety in particular is going to
wait a bit longer before bolting, it's called Slo-Bolt cilantro. It's going to bolt eventually, again, you're
just going to get that beautiful coriander, which is an essential ingredient in so many
different recipes. It's got that beautiful essential oil smell
to it, it's really strong. Of course you're gonna use the coriander leaves
in your cooking. So sneak a crop of coriander in now, you can
be succession sowing it really throughout the season. Just get it in wherever you can. Now is the time to get another cucumber crop
in. Cucumbers are one that you're gonna want to
succession plant during the season and right now is a great time. And I love this variety "Beit- Alpha" because
it doesn't require pollination to set fruit. Which means if you're later in the season,
or you're growing in a greenhouse, you're not gonna require those pollinators, which
may be a little more scanty later in the season or growing in a greenhouse. So it doesn't need pollinators, and it's gonna
set a huge, super prolific crop. And the other great thing is that you can
choose to eat them raw, or pickle them. So if you find yourself, at the end of the
season, with a massive bumper crop, you could just put them up, and you're gonna be eating
pickles all winter. So you're gonna have pickles for your winter
time parties, or your meals, whatever you need them for, or you're going to have fresh
snacking cucumbers at the end of your season. Either way, its a win-win. So try the Beit-Alpha cucumber in your greenhouse,
or even outside. It works great in both applications. So it's absolutely not too late to grow squash. A lot of us get our squash crop in right at
the beginning of the season, only to find that they get absolutely ravaged by squash
bugs, and then the harvest is pretty early in the season. What you might not realize is that you can
actually squeeze in a later squash crop. Try a variety like Red Kuri. It's also known as Hokkaido. What I love about this one is that it matures
quickly, so you're going to be able to squeeze in a harvest before the end of the season
and you can either harvest this as an immature summer squash, or as a really nice tasting
winter squash- it's your choice. Another bonus is that you can eat the skin
of this squash; it's so thin and delicate. Yet somehow, when you let it mature to be
a winter squash, it actually holds up in storage. So, it's great for storage, if you're looking
at an early frost, or if you're in one of those more northern parts of the zones we're
discussing, you can still get a harvest in. And if you're looking for a good storage crop
for winter with dense nutrients, high in beta-carotene, try Red Kuri. So we're here in the Baker Creek corn patch. This is our early planting of corn, but did
you know you can actually get a later planting of corn in? So it's not too late to get a sweet corn crop
right now. You might not want to a try a popcorn, because
that needs some drying time, but you can still get some sweet corn. And who doesn't love some fresh sweet corn
in the later part of the summer? That just says harvest party. You can have some sweet corn at your final
hurrah of the garden season. So get your sweet corn in now, don't forget
to plant it in blocks, so that it gets good cross pollination and you're going to have
a beautiful crop for the end of the summer. So maybe you're thinking that if you plant
now, your plants are going to have to survive intense heat at the beginning of the season
and then cooler weather at the end. So for that kind of scenario, you're gonna
want something like Swiss chard. And this variety is called "Five Color Silver
Beet" and I love it because it can handle the heat in the earlier part of the season,
but it's gonna really thrive in the cooler weather too. So it's highly adaptable, it's gonna take
whatever weather conditions you throw at it. It's incredibly nutrient dense and it's just
going to be a nice greens for the fall. So go ahead and start sowing that any time,
it's nice to start sowing it in a cooler area just to encourage good germination, but once
it takes off, it is a really hardy plant. So, we can't forget about the flowers. It is absolutely not too late to plant a later
succession of zinnias right now. I particularly like 'Scabiosa" zinnia. They have a really unique form to them, and
what's really great is that they mature early, and they're very vibrant. You don't always get that color at the end
of the season. Something else that you'll notice is that
flowers take on a really fantastic color change as the autumn sun sets in. So you're gonna see some really beautiful
color changes. You're just going to want to get some more
color into the garden for the later part of the season, so definitely give zinnias a try. And they're going to feed your pollinators
like crazy, which is so essential. So we've got our early mature sunflower crop. It's starting to finish off. Did you know you can actually put sunflowers
in the ground still? It's absolutely not too late to get a sunflower
crop in right now. And the bonus of doing a late season sunflower
crop is that you can choose to either leave the heads in the garden to feed the birds
over the winter; it's actually an incredible source of nutrition for birds over the winter,
or you can save those seeds for yourself. I love this variety, "Mongolian Giant", because
it has so many seeds. Those seeds are going to provide dense nutrition
for you in the winter months. They keep really nicely. It's just an all around beautiful- it's an
edible ornamental. You're getting the beauty of a sunflower,
the beautiful giant heads, and then you're getting a nice nutritious crop afterwards. So, its just a bonus. And it really says fall- those beautiful yellow
drenched flowers in the landscape just look fantastic. Here's number eleven. This one's a bonus for you guys. In the warmer parts of the zones we're talking
about, you can probably grow any watermelon, but if you're trying to squeeze in one last
watermelon crop in July, your best bet is gonna be "Sugar Baby Bush". It's also great for container gardening or
small spaces, so maybe you could only afford to clear out a small space in your garden. Squeeze in a few of these plants in there
if you can. They're gonna mature early and you're gonna
get a nice bonus at the end of your season- a sweet, delicious, refreshing watermelon
for that Indian summer that you might just get. And we've actually been harvesting our earlier
watermelons here at the Baker Creek garden, so let's check out- wow- okay so it was definitely
ready, it just bursted open like that. So this is a yellow fleshed variety. Oh my goodness. We've been testing out lots of different yellow
fleshed types. I'm just gonna take the heart right out cause
that's my favorite part. Looks like we picked it on the perfect day. It's super juicy, incredibly sweet, so if
you guys want a fall version of this, try Sugar Baby Bush and get it in the ground as
soon as you can. So there you have it. There's your ten, plus one bonus, best crops
to plant in July, specifically in late July. So be sure to check us out on the rareseeds.com
website, and you're gonna find all these crops plus more.
