What I’m Growing In My Summer Garden

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If you are jumping headfirst into growing your first ever garden this year, this post is going to help you navigate and get your started on your journey toward planting your summer garden.

My husband, Nick and I have been talking and dreaming for a long time of being more self-sufficient when it comes to food. We’ve been talking of having a stocked larder for years now, just incase the world were ever to shut down and we need to be prepared.

Well, that day came and we didn’t have shit.

If there was anything good that came of this worldwide shutdown, it was a sense of urgency and renewed purpose to be self sufficient in every way that we could…especially food.

Homesteading has been on my heart for some time now…and if feels as if there is no better time than the present to get started.

I made a big goal for my family this year: I am aiming to being able to grow all of our family’s food for a year. Of course, this wouldn’t happen all in one year. I’m thinking it will be more of a 2-3 year long process. But all of my high aspirations got my heart all in a flutter this spring, and whether I got in over my head or not, the seeds have been planted.

So I thought that I would share with you some of the things that I have learned between the garden we created last year, all of it’s flops and failures; and the garden we planted this year, and the major differences. I’ll share what we’re growing and which varieties as well.

Warm season crops

So apparently it matters when you plant things in the ground, and at what time of year. Who would have thought. The biggest difference between our garden last year (which was our first garden in this home), and our garden this year is that I did my homework. I researched the heck out of what plants are happiest being planted at what time of year (and even what time of the season).

What I found is that there is absolutely NO wonder now why our garden majorly flopped last year.

My poor husband poured heart and soul into our garden last year (for some reason I wasn’t fully on board with the actual process of creating the garden…super on board with the result though :-p).

After all the hard work he put in, the garden hardly “put out”.

We thought maybe it was our soil, the sunlight, the amount of watering…etc. But the more I poured myself into learning about the proper times to plan things, I think it just may have been that we planted “cool season crops” in a “warm season” season!

Here are some ideal “warm season” crops:

• cantaloupe
• corn
• cucumbers
• eggplants
• green beans
• melons
• okra
• peppers
• pumpkins and winter squash
• summer squash and zucchini
• sweet potatoes
• tomatoes
• watermelon
• herbs
• basil

Now let me take a moment to interject for a moment. I want to give you FULL permission to completely avoid planting eggplants if no one in your family likes them. Just because it’s time for warm season crops, does not mean you need to plant all the warm season crops.

Sorry eggplant, nothing personal…

But seriously though, if you HATE tomatoes and everyone under the sun is running out to the local nursery to buy out tomato starts… don’t give in to the peer pressure. Chances are that the food won’t be eaten, which will contribute to the growing food waste epidemic. Let’s not do that.

Here’s the thing…it’s YOUR garden. Don’t waste the money on planting or growing food that no one in your home is going to be stoked to eat. Plain and simple…grow what you love.

What we are planting this year in our summer garden

I mentioned that I made a big goal of being able to feed my family for the whole year from our land alone. And with all my baby gardener enthusiasm, I went a little nuts in the dirt.

Corn (Peach and Cream variety)

I have never grown corn before and I am blown away with how quickly it popped out of the dirt. It literally was 5 days after sowing the seeds directly into the soil. Since this is my first time growing corn, and we don’t have a ton of growing space yet, I planted 16 plants (planted 32, to be thinned to 16), which will yield between 16-32 ears of corn. Not a ton, but we really only eat corn in the summer anyway (when it’s in season!).

Tomatoes (San Marzano and Big Mama, and Sun Gold Cherry Tomatoes)

I’m honestly not a huge fan of tomatoes on their own, but we use tomato products like they’re going out of style… tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, ketchup! So I mainly planted paste tomatoes which are perfect for canning and sauces (San Marzano and Big Mama roma varieties). I also threw in a Sun Gold cherry plant because sun ripened cherry tomatoes are insane, and might as well be candy.

We bought starts for our tomato plants this year and I will save seeds for next year.

Yard Long Beans

I always get so excited when the yard long beans are available at the farmers market. Another name for these delights is Chinese long beans. They are delicious. I feel like they taste a little “meatier” than your average green beans.

I planted a bunch of these plants in front of a trellis that my husband built last year because they are a vining bean. Vertical growing is great if you are short on space!

Bush Beans (Contender)

I also planted a whole bunch of bush beans mainly because I really love green beans and these particular beans mature in 50 days! So I did a little experiment and interplanted spaghetti squash in the same area because the squash takes 90 days to mature (so they can take the same space but not interfere with each other…in theory! We’ll see if this experiment works!)

Sweet Potatoes

We eat a lot of sweet potatoes. We don’t eat a lot of carbs in other varieties, but man do we love our potatoes. So I was over the moon excited when I found out that sweet potatoes LOVE long hot growing seasons…and that describes where I live to a “T”.

Next year I plan on planting my own slips that I start, but this year I ended up buying starts to jump in on time. I planted 12 plants, and each plant can produce roughly 3-5 sweet potatoes.

read more: 8 Free Resources to Plan Your Victory Garden

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