A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum 2nd planting?

It's mid-July here in central PA, which means hot and humid weather should arrive soon. I just added a third raised vegetable garden. What can I still plant for this year? Lettuce, snow peas, green beans? I had planted green and yellow beans in one of the gardens but ended up with some type of large squash plants, seeds must have been mispackaged. Thanks.

This is a tricky time of year for anyone. It gets especially hot here, and I can't say with certainty what you can plant there. India Red Mustard has some heat tolerance. Simpson's Seedless Lettuce has some. You could try growind beets to harvest in the fall. A green bean wirh a short growing season (days to harvest or days to maturity as written on the package) may have time to mature before winter.
In mid August, however, you could plant lettuce, radishes and many other cooler season veggies for a fall garden. Contact your County Extension Agency for a free list of planting times and fall garden crops.

I'm trying some late summer/fall planting this year. I'm going with yellow squash that has a 50-60 day maturity. (also some zucchini, but they take a few weeks longer) with the yellow squash, from my experience, can mature even a bit sooner than that.
I'm not familiar with PA, but my sugguestion would be to find out how many growing days you have (above freezing) between now and the first frost. then go to your local feed store or where ever you buy seed and read the back of the seed packs to see how many days different ones take.
you could even start some indoors, which I've done with my squash, in order to wait out the hot hot days. then put them out in the garden once the temps have cooled off some.

I would add to what Cricket said-- which is exactly what I do: backward counting counting days. The key issue at this time of year is soil temperature. seeds differ in what the optimal temperature is for germination. So while it's true that "cool season" crops (cabbage, lettuce, peas, etc.) can be grown in spring and fall (but not heat of summer) lettuce seeds simply will not germinate if the soil is too warm (as it is now). That's why most folks start their fall crop of lettuce inside, just as Cricket's doing with her squash (in Texas!).

The veggie planting guide at this site, http://www.heirloomseeds.com/catalog.html, is very useful. YOu could also consider underplanting. The shade created by late-season crops, like winter squash, keeps the soils a tad cooler, and some seeds will germinate, hang out and not really take off until about the time you'd be pulling the squash anyway.

My squash did not take as long to germinate as I thought, they sprouted the next day, so I had to plant them today since they are already 10 inches tall. I put compost in with them and watered well and will keep watering if necessary. What do you think? Will they make it in this terrible heat?

if they are watered well, they should. at least i hope for you.

i'm hoping to get a first planting in soon. since i didn't do squat this spring. except dream.