You can plant okra now for best results. In our zone this in just now okra planting time. Then there is the whole world of squash, both summer and winter varieties. Did you plant any dill for making pickles out of all those cukes?

Dave

I'm worried if i plant okra again now...it will take a month till it gets big enough to start flowering and i won't get a good yield

i updated my OP to include butternut squash that i forgot to list. I tried regular zucchini one year and i never got to harvest any of it. It was full of ants and something, maybe squirrels would take bites out of them. :/

All I can go by is zone recommendations and like I said this is the normal planting time for okra around here. I'll be planting mine this weekend.

In fact many down here don't even plant until July since it requires really warm soil and loves heat.

Never had ants pose any problems in the garden. They generally considered garden neutrals and even benificial in some ways. Squirrels require at least fencing or they will eat everything in the garden.

Dave

I appreciate the advice. Do you have pics of your okra? The okra I've seen don't have their true leaves yet.

Squirrels devour my peach tree. It doesn't produce great fruit so Im happy it keeps them busy. They usually leave everything else alone. Never had them touch my tomatoes or peppers. They did nibble at the squash when they were young. The one year I tried zucchini, cantaloupe and watermelon they would keep taking bites out of them and made me give up trying those again.

Thanks. I ended up planting zucchini. It was the only thing I could find and thought its worth giving another try. 6 plants for $2.50 was also a good price.

If you had any space left, you could plant some bush beans :) You'll still get a crop before frost, and they enhance the soil.

Linda

I might have a pot left to plant something in. I would have to find somewhere that sells bush beans. Its probably way too late to start from seed

No - bush beans mature in 50-60 days from planting seed. You have plenty of time. I have a shorter growing season than you, have planted them in late July and still had great yields.

@Ekgrown - Can you recommend a few specific varieties you've grown well and like?

I really like filet beans, and Maxibel is my favorite filet bush bean. https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/search?item=249&search=maxibel

I also really like Dragon Tongue - It won a back yard taste test one year, beating nickel (another filet) and purple bush beans. https://www.fedcoseeds.com/seeds/search?item=277&search=dragon%20tongue

I'm sure those are both available elsewhere, but we order a lot from fedco, and knew they carried both.

Good luck!!!!! :)

Remember that you can plant things like spinach and bok choy and many lettuce varieties in late summer and harvest them into fall or early winter if you have frost cloth.

Ariel, yard long beans are fun to grow a nd they produce well in the heat, and grow fairly quickly

Are the purple royal eaten the same way as these?

This is the only main way we eat string beans. Cut them and put them in stews. Green beans

Provider is a really good bush bean :)

Linda

I second both Provider and Maxibel fillet. Provider is always the bean I plant first in late April because it germinates well in cool soil compared to most other beans. I will plant some Maxibel in mid July for a fall harvest. Rattlesnake pole beans should provide enough for fresh eating between the 2 bush bean crops as long as it doesn't get too hot.

Im having a hard time thinking of anything else besides what I'm growing now. I think at this point I want to try new things for the sake of growing. It would be a plus if I eat them frequently. String bean sounds good. So does snap peas.

I endes up settling on these. Being purple and having people flowers sounded cool.

Any tips before i direct sow on Friday?

For bush beans I prefer tender greens and carsons

"Hope this helps. Grow what you eat. :)" exactly this! I'd never grow beets or kohlrabi or butternut squash for example because I have no desire to eat them

The beans turn green when cooked. There is a purple podded snow pea that looks great raw in salads. Can't remember if it turned green when cooked though. A really great purple vegetable is purple cauliflower - Graffiti. I grew some last year from plants I had been given in a class. Trying to grow it from seed this year. I wonder if you would eat more vegetables if you grew your own because they taste so much better. I agree with all the previous suggestions for green beans. They taste so much better than store bought fresh beans. I grow Scarlet Runner beans for the red flowers humming birds love. They are edible but I've never tried eating them. I think runner beans are much more popular in England than here in the US.

I eat more vegetables. I couldn't think of any that I eat on a big enough scale to also grow. Tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, squash (butternut and zucchini) and okra are some of my favs. Everything else, that came to mind i couldn't image eating all of them before they spoiled. Thats why I came here for some inspiration.

The string beans was a good addition after the zucchini. I can always freeze the string beans and use them throughout the year.

Ariel, I've grown those exact beans for 2 years now, and they are fun and grow well. I don't even like beans (my husband eats them) but these are a great variety. I also like that I can see them clearly as they ripen against the green leaves. Thinking of doing purple snap peas next year for this very reason (my eyes keep missing a few green ones every time I go to harvest them).

Do you not freeze or can or dehydrate any of your produce for off-season use? The ability to preserve the extra food you grow is one of the biggest benefits of gardening. Not only saves money but insures better quality and flavor and nutrition during the off season.

Dave

@digdirt2 - I've never really had extra from the past couple of years. I had a lot fewer plants growing last year. We ate all the tomatoes and made a couple of pasta sauces that we ate right away. Cucumbers we pickled and put fresh in salads, finished it all as they grew. Okra was the same. The only thing that lasted was cayenne, which I dried and made into powder.

@Laura - I like the pic! Do you have more of the whole plant?

OK. I misunderstood your comment above then.

" Everything else, that came to mind i couldn't image eating all of them before they spoiled. Thats why I came here for some inspiration."

That's where food preservation like caning comes is. No need to worry about things spoiling before eating them. And you can grow whatever you want and in whatever amounts you have room for.

Dave

Digdirt2, what are you growing this year?

haha Ariel - the list of things Dave doesn't grow would probably be shorter!!

lol he must have a big place to grow that many things!

I only have a far away shot of the beans. Here's my whole garden setup. Containers on the left (beans are in a 5-gallon pot, circled in red) and a covered raised bed on the right. It's all looking pretty jungle-y at this growing stage!

Jack is probably right. ;-) There are few things I don't grow any more - arugula, burpless cukes, figs, grains, and English peas come to mind. And we actually have cut back some this year as old age and bad knees catch up with you eventually. But we have family help too.

But wife and I both come from a long line of penny-pinching farmers and canning/food preservation history so we garden to do lots of canning, dehydrating, and freezing. We have lots of gardening room and sell at the local Farmer's market too so nothing goes to waste.

Dave

Why did you stop growing figs?