May happened to be a busy month for me, with an out-of-town trip to celebrate a college graduation. I managed to plant the tomato seedlings I bought at the Napa County Master Gardener tomato sale, and a few peppers and eggplants found their way into the bed reserved for them. However, I am way behind on planting beans, squash, basil, cucumbers and melons.
Fortunately, planting a garden is not a now-or-never activity. The vegetables that love warm weather are still available in June, and we have a long summer, with plenty of time to grow many vegetables to maturity.
Before you plant, add fertilizer and compost to your vegetable patch. Warm-season vegetables need food to produce a crop, and it is easier to feed with a balanced fertilizer before planting than to try to fertilize around the plant roots later.
Determine how much space the full-grown plant requires before planting the seedling. Tomatoes, pumpkins and some squash take up a lot of room, and they can overwhelm smaller vegetables planted nearby. Consider what support your plants will need, and set that up at planting time so you don't disturb roots or break plant limbs when you get around to it later.
Vegetables to plant as seedlings include tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash and cucumbers. You can sow seeds for beans, corn, cucumbers, melons and pumpkins directly in the ground. Check seed packets or plant tags for “days to maturity” to be sure the plant has time to mature before days start getting short and cool in October. If you plant a tomato or pumpkin variety that matures in 80 days or fewer, chances are good that you will get a harvest. Varieties that need 100 days or more may not ripen by the end of summer.
Many cool-season vegetables thrive in Napa Valley if planted in June, including beets, carrots, chard, fennel, green onions, leeks, lettuce, parsnips and radishes. In the hottest parts of the valley, plant them in areas that get afternoon shade.
Several annual herbs can be planted in June. Sweet basil comes in many different forms and flavors and can be an ornamental addition to the garden. Cilantro grows rapidly from seed to flower, so sow several times throughout the summer. You can also sow dill seeds now.
It is not too late to plant many annual flowers. Because I am trying to use less water, I'm not starting any new garden beds, but I am adding flowers to my vegetable beds wherever there is space. Some annual flowers that you can easily start from seed include marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, tithonia, cosmos, sunflowers and statice. These annuals and others are also available as seedlings at nurseries.
Be sure any flowers you plant won't shade sun-loving vegetables. My spring vegetable bed produced lots of salad greens, carrots, beets andpakchoias well as bachelor buttons and volunteer larkspur. These flowers kept the ground covered as I harvested vegetables, and they looked great, too.
Give your fruit trees a good, deep soaking in June, then apply a thick layer of mulch. I use homemade and purchased compost for this purpose. Mulching is important in the vegetable garden, too. I mulch the tops of beds with compost and the sides and pathways with straw. Besides conserving precious moisture, mulch makes the beds look tidy.
Soon I will have planted most of the summer vegetables I intend to grow this year. But now the spring vegetable bed has a lot of bare space. What can I plant there? For an avid vegetable gardener, the garden is never complete.
Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will host a workshop on the drought on Saturday, June 6, from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. at the University of California Cooperative Extension Office, 1710 Soscol Avenue, Napa. Understand the implications of drought in California and learn irrigation tips and strategies for low water use in a sustainable yard. We will also cover low water use landscaping plant resources.Online registration (credit card only)Mail-in registration (cash or check only).This workshop will be repeated in Yountville on June 14.
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners ( http://ucanr.org/ucmgnapa/) are available to answer gardening questions in person or by phone, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to Noon, at the U. C. Cooperative Extension office, 1710 Soscol Avenue, Suite 4, Napa, 707-253-4143, or from outside City of Napa toll-free at 877-279-3065. Or e-mail your garden questions by following the guidelines on our web site. Click on Napa, then on Have Garden Questions? Find us on Facebook under UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.
The first decision is what to plant, a choice that should be based on what you and your family like to eat. If only one person in your family of five likes okra, you may be better off buying it occasionally at the farmers' market. If everyone enjoys tomatoes, chiles, bell peppers, zucchini, eggplant, snap beans, cucumbers, sweet corn and cantaloupes, then these are the fruits and vegetables to focus on.
Next you must decide where to plant. Maybe in years past, your vegetable garden started out in full sun, but by Labor Day, the sun's path had moved behind the trees. If so, your tomatoes were probably still green at Halloween. Did gophers and voles enjoy too much of last year's crop? Consider building a few raised beds with hardware cloth on the bottom. You will need a sunny spot away from trees, preferably with a hose bib nearby.
Let's imagine that you have three new 4- by 8-foot raised beds to work with. Now you need to decide how much to plant. A raised bed of that size can accommodate four to six tomato plants, so there goes one bed. In a second bed, you can fit 10 to 12 plants of chiles, bell peppers, eggplants, or snap beans. Now you have one bed left.
If you planted two zucchini plants last year, you probably discovered that the yield was more than your family could eat. Maybe you took the excess to the Napa Crop Swap but found that everyone else also had zucchini to swap. So one zucchini plant should suffice this year.
If you want snap beans throughout the summer, leave space for succession planting. You'll want to set out two or three plants every three weeks. One or two cucumber plants satisfy most households, so you've now used up half to two-thirds of your last raised bed. Still left to plant are cantaloupe and corn, and you don't have enough room for both. Corn grows more thaneight feet tall andmay cast shadeon yourother sun-loving crops. Better to plant cantaloupe in the remaining space and buy your sweet corn at the farmers' market.
If you want to start plants from seed, you need to get started right away. It takes six to eight weeks for the seeds to germinate and the seedlingsto grow large enough to transplant. If you prefer to plant nursery seedlings, you can relax as you don't need to purchase those until you are ready to plant. Wait to plant summer vegetables until the danger of frost has passed, which is usually around mid-April. To be safe, plant no earlier than the last week of April.
Although we have had rain recently, we are still in a drought. Consider this when you make your vegetable selections. It may be wiser to plant a ‘Stupice' tomato that matures in 62 days rather than a ‘Cherokee Purple' that needs 85 days to reach maturity. (Seed packets indicate days to maturity.) Faster maturation means fewer days of irrigation.
To help your soil retain moisture, work in several inches of compost. Don't feed plants too much nitrogen as this will encourage leafy growth that requires water to sustain. Once your garden is planted, add a layer of mulch several inches thick. Mulch will keep the soil cool, conserve water and inhibit weeds.
Tomato Plant Sale: Napa County Master Gardeners will hold their second annual “Tomato Plant Sale and Education Day” on Saturday, April 19, in the South Oxbow parking lot on First Street in Napa. The sale will be held from 9:00 a.m. until sold out. All the seedlings have been started from seed and grown by Napa County Master Gardeners. More than 50 varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomato plants will be available. Master Gardeners will staff information tables on tomato support structures, common tomato pests and diseases, composting, good bug/bad bug displays and a mobile help desk. For a list of available tomato varieties, visit http://ucanr.org/ucmgnapa or call the Help Desk (hours below).
Workshop: Napa County Master Gardeners will conduct a workshop on “The Small Home Vineyard” on Saturday, March 29, from 9:30 am to 11:30 am, and from 12:30 pm to 2:30 pm. at the Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington Street, Yountville. The morning session will focus on bud break to harvest. Learn the basics of managing a small vineyard including grape physiology, canopy management, vine nutrition, fertilization, irrigation and cover crop. The afternoon session will focus on identifying and managing the most common vineyard pests, especially powdery mildew. To register,call the Parks & Recreation Department at 707-944-8712 or visit its web site.
Napa County Master Gardeners welcome the public to visit their demonstration garden at Connolly Ranch on Thursdays, from 10:00 a.m. until noon, except the last Thursday of the month. Connolly Ranch is at 3141 Browns Valley Road at Thompson Avenue in Napa. Enter on Thompson Avenue.
Master Gardeners are volunteers who help the University of California reach the gardening public with home gardening information. Napa County Master Gardeners ( http://ucanr.org/ucmgnapa/) are available to answer gardening questions in person or by phone, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 9 a.m. to Noon, at the U. C. Cooperative Extension office, 1710 Soscol Avenue, Suite 4, Napa, 707-253-4143, or from outside City of Napa toll-free at 877-279-3065. Or e-mail your garden questions by following the guidelines on our web site. Click on Napa, then on Have Garden Questions? Find us on Facebook under UC Master Gardeners of Napa County.