If you’re a beginner in gardening, you might assume that planting seeds is reserved for the spring season. However, with strategic planning, you can enjoy growing your own food throughout the year, including well into the summer months. Don’t worry, it’s not too late to start!
Here are 20 vegetables that you can still consider growing from seed this year, even if it’s already summer:
1. Lettuce
Lettuce can be grown pretty much all year round, especially if you can give your plants a little extra protection in the winter months. The key thing to remember, however, is that there are different types of lettuce: loose leaf, cos/ romaine, butterhead and iceberg.
There are different lettuces within each of these types suited to growing at certain times of the year. All summer long, you can plant loose leaf varieties and enjoy a quick harvest in a month to six weeks time.
In early summer, you can still also plant many cos/romaine type lettuces that will mature before the end of the season, and later in summer, you can plant winter lettuces that will survive the winter with a little protection.
Here’s our guide to growing cut and come again lettuce.
2. Rocket
If you like some variety in your salads, then rocket is another leafy vegetable that can be planted throughout the summer months. This, like loose leaf lettuce, will provide a quick crop within a couple of months, and can also be cut and will come again.
3. Radishes
Another fast-growing crop that you can still sow throughout June, July and August is radishes.
These too can produce a crop before the end of the growing season. Be sure to sow successionally, so you can enjoy radishes over a longer period, and leave one plant to go to flower – not only can you collect more seeds to plant next year, you can also eat the delicious seed pods when they form.
4. Spring Onions
You can sow spring onions in June or July to use as small spring onions later in the season, or sow in August for an overwintering crop that can be harvested in the spring.
As your spring onions grow, thin out the plants – but don’t throw the ones you thin out away, use them in your summer salads.
5. Zucchini & Summer Squash
You might want to get a wriggle on if you want to grow zucchini and summer squash this year. But if you manage to sow these in early summer, before the end of June, you should still get a worthwhile harvest by the end of the year.
You can give your zucchini and squash a little extra time by providing them with protection before the first frosts later in the year.
You can extend your growing season by growing zucchini in pots and moving to a warmer location to extend the growing season.
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