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oldokie

what to plant when rains stop

11 years ago

I have never started over this late in the year. I expect to see the rain stop or really slow down. The temperature to go to the upper 90's by July 4. I am wondering what i could plant that will survive the summer months without a lot of watering. It is a swamp here not but 2 weeks without rain and hot days and warm nights the moisture will not last long

I do not have these vegetables or they are stunted and need to be replanted:

okra, squash, cucumbers, green beans,

sweet corn may produce some it is stunted by the water. I think i have enough tomatoes that they will produce enough. there is blight like disease starting on them with all this rain lower leaves are turning yellow and red looking spots



Comments (6)

  • 11 years ago

    I don't have those things either except for green beans. My bush beans are blooming and my pole beans are looking really good. I planted 16 feet (double row) of cukes and I think I have one plant, so I have to start over with those also. Okra should be fine planted now and I will try squash, but I think it may be difficult. We are at 2.38 inches in the last 24 hours so it is not getting better. My potato vines are starting to yellow, and I don't know if they are finishing up or have just had too much water (or both). Still, all I lost was a garden and others are losing much more.

  • 11 years ago

    I am with Carol. My garden looks very bad, but I have a home and family. I will plant something whenever the rain stops. I don't depend on my garden to have food for the winter, and it does not make anything I expect to survive, but my heart goes out to so many that have lost so much.

  • 11 years ago

    Squash tends (for me) to go into decline when it gets hot (which is what is going to happen when it quits raining).
    Corn, peppers, and okra will probably do well.


  • 11 years ago

    I have summer squash planted that is doing well, cukes are blooming as are the potatoes. Tomatoes are doing GREAT, peppers are struggling but they'll pull through IF they get a chance to dry out....but I have raised beds that still have about a third of the total space vacant. Beans and PEPH peas and maybe some okra will fill in the rest. I think I'm probably going to have to pass on melons and winter squash. Isn't it too late for those?

  • 11 years ago

    My okra and melons both are quite stalled. I will probably replant some of both and leave some of each to see how they do. Broccoli and potatoes both have yellowing leaves. But both will be out soon. Tomatoes have some disease issues too. I want them to last til frost.


  • 11 years ago

    I have green beans galore and have been filling up the freezer with them. They have bean rust in some cases, but it is only on the leaves and not on the beans, so I'll keep harvesting from them for as long as possible. When the beans come out, I will plant icebox melons in their place, I think, or maybe okra. I don't have either one in the ground yet. When the early corn comes out, I'm going to plant winter squash there, and when the cabbage comes out, I will plant cantaloupes and muskmelons there. Are they late? A little, but if they'd been in the ground now, they would have rotted, so it all works out in the end.

    I have a whole row of yellow squash that is blooming but every fruit rots, so I am disgusted with that. Still, I'll let the plants stay where they are so that maybe they'll produce better fruit as we dry out. I won't plant a succession crop of summer squash unless I plant it under row cover or netting because it is about time for the squash vine borers to show up here. The winter squash I grow is C. moschata and it is pretty resistant to squash vine borer damage.

    Cukes should do okay even if planted late, but you might have to fight the cucumber beetles, They seem to be present in large numbers this year. Last year I hardly noticed any at all.

    Do you like southern peas? They are very heat-tolerant and fairly drought-tolerant. I rarely water mine even in drought years, though they will produce better in drought if you water them occasionally. I generally grow pink eye purple hull peas, but some years will plant zipper, cream and lady peas as well. They produce like crazy in the heat.

    Peppers would need some irrigation if the rain dries up and stops falling, but peppers also are hugely productive so they are worth growing.

    My tomato plants are developing spotty yellow leaves, and I understand it because they have been ridiculously wet forever and forever. I'll just remove the lower leaves, and then may or may not spray them with a fungicide. I want to see how they do with a few days of sunshine and no rainfall. That might be all they need. We'll get lots of tomatoes barring the onset of one disease or another as the rain has given us monster plants that look pretty healthy all things considered.

    Sweet potatoes also do perfectly well even when planted this late. While they do like water occasionally, they aren't huge water guzzlers....or, at least, mine aren't. They've had to learn to live with what little water I give them in our often dry and droughty summers.

    If you like summer greens, Swiss chard often is productive all summer, especially if you harvest the outer leaves while small on a continual basis. Malabar spinach is a nice spinach substitute and it is very pretty. There's a green-stemmed one, but I like the red-stemmed one better. It is very lovely when climbing a trellis or fence. Egyptian spinach and golden purslane are other greens you can grow in summer.

    Remember that beginning in late June, we can start putting in plants to harvest in the fall. This year, we may have more productive gardens in fall than in spring, depending on what the weather does. In a way, I'm not ready to let my mind jump ahead to fall gardening, but then again, planting in summer through early autumn for fall and early winter harvesting is just another way to extend the garden harvest.

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