I do major plantings of flowers approximately five times a year. On my farm, I sow seeds in January, March, May, July, and October. Some of these are sown indoors and some are sown in the field. I have to plan to make sure I have a space to put the seeds or plants when it is time. The May flowers have gone into the beds where you might have picked snapdragons or larkspur a month or two ago.
Once a plant starts to look diseased or bedraggled, it’s time to tear it out and put in new plants. I plant zinnias three times, and I could plant them at least a couple more times, if I wanted, for continuous bloom all summer. These guidelines also apply to vegetables.
The tomato plants I started from seed on April 23 are healthy plants that are covered with green tomatoes that are just about ready to ripen as I publish this on July 31. They never suffered from exposure to the cold since I waited to start the seed until the weather was warm and, although I was expecting them to be ready to can in July, it looks like they will be ready in August for canning. I wanted them to be ready to can in July when flower sales stop and I have time to can tomatoes instead of in early June when I am the busiest selling flowers…instead I’ll be sending children back to school and canning tomatoes and selling flowers. Such is farming.
To decide how long a plant needs to bloom or produce a vegetable, consult the seed packet. I will use tomato seeds as an example. The packet will indicate the number of “days to maturity,” which I count from the day I sow the seed, and my tomatoes are 72 days to maturity. June 23 would be 60 days from the day I sowed the seed, and so they are on track to produce within the 72-day time frame.
This date isn’t exact and does vary according to the temperatures outside, whether the plants received adequate water and fertilizer, whether or not they were properly hardened off before they were planted, and other factors that make gardening both challenging and interesting! If we look at the 72-day example, we can look ahead and see that we have at least 90 days or more until our first frost, and so it might be worth a try to grow some more tomato plants this season in South Carolina. These are general guidelines from which you can begin experimenting.
Daylength and outside temperatures impact plant growth; I am still experimenting to find out just how late into the fall I can sow some seeds for them to produce during the shorter days of fall. No one seems to want 8-inch-tall flowers which I will get if I plant some of them too late. If the summer garden has been taken over by weeds and you are as hot and as tired as I am, mow it, cover the soil with a tarp or large pieces of cardboard, and work on planning for the fall garden of collards, broccoli, and lettuce.