when is too late to start planting?

Novice gardener, or would-be novice gardener, needs help. We're putting in some raised garden beds in our yard along with landscaping around the house. Unfortunately, the landscape company won't be able to actually do the work until mid-June. So assuming that they actually come and finish when they're scheduled, will it be too late to start planting veggies? I would imagine it's too late to hope for sugar snap peas and tomatoes. What about zucchini & patty pan squash? How about jalapenos or serranos? Any other ideas? Maybe some butternut squash? What's hard for a black thumb like mine to kill?

gtgirl wrote:Novice gardener, or would-be novice gardener, needs help. We're putting in some raised garden beds in our yard along with landscaping around the house. Unfortunately, the landscape company won't be able to actually do the work until mid-June. So assuming that they actually come and finish when they're scheduled, will it be too late to start planting veggies? I would imagine it's too late to hope for sugar snap peas and tomatoes. What about zucchini & patty pan squash? How about jalapenos or serranos? Any other ideas? Maybe some butternut squash? What's hard for a black thumb like mine to kill?

If you get tomatoes and pepper plants you should be fine planting in mid-June.

As David said, you must start with plants. They will be hard to get at that time, most likely. At least well taken care of plants will be. They will likely be pot bound and stressed and the ones ignored by others because they didn't look happy.

Do you have a container you can plant some things in until the landscaping is complete? While I wouldn't want to transplant a large tomato, you could get smaller plants right now and put them in a 2-3 gallon container, then transplant them again in a couple weeks. Transplanting is a shock, so be careful if you try this. I'd think it would be better, however, than leaving them in too small of pots, but that's just my guess, not based on any real knowledge as I haven't tried that.

Per each thing you grow, choose things with a short "days to maturity" if you can. For example, some peppers might be 95 days and others 70. Choose the 70. Same with the tomatoes. Choose an plant that matures more quickly, or you won't have tomatoes or peppers until middle of September, even if you start it from a potted plant.

Also, green beans are often only about 50-60 days, so they are doable to plant seeds in mid June. Late uly or early August, you can plant things that like the cooler autumn, such as lettuce, choy sum, gai lohn, etc.

Getting tomato and pepper plants that are not overaged, rootbound garbage in mid-June will be tough but the way to go if you can find them. If you can find small young plants, the odds on potting in something like a quart yogurt container right away and then moving to a larger container are pretty good. Forget about beefsteak tomatoes and red ripe peppers, though. One other possibility is to start some Early Girl tomatoes right away. The plants will be about three to four weeks old when they go in the ground and should take off very fast with minimal transplanting shock.

Butternut squash and other winter squash will not mature properly with late June planting in Chicago. A later planting of summer squash in early to mid July is often done for late production after powdery mildew knocks out the May plantings. Late planting also avoids squash vine borers and bacterial wilts spread by cucumber beetles. Vine borers do not like cukes, but the other problems apply. For late planting I suggest Picklebush, which as its name suggests is a pickling cucumber with short vines and early maturity.

July planting of bush beans is often used for later production as bush beans tend to poop out after a few weeks of production even if you keep them picked closely.

Red beets, golden beets and carrots all work well with planting in July after peas die off from the heat and powdery mildew, so there is no problem with somewhat earlier planting. Turnips, particularly the white Japanese varieties, work well planted in late August. The thinnings of beets and turnips make great cooked greens that you probably cannot get any other way than growing them yourself.

Fall crops of peas are risky in Chicago but can work with seeding in mid-August using fairly early varieties such as Sugar Ann sugar snap or Oregon Sugar Pod snow peas.

Most cool season greens can be grown by planting in late August. Lettuce seed will not germinate if the soil is too warm, so fall lettuce should be started indoors. Kale is best as a fall crop because it needs some cold weather including some frost to have the best flavor.

I wouldn't imagine it would be too late to direct seed pole beans, bush beans, etc. Also, I would imagine anything from starts would be perfectly fine, assuming you could find good ones like ekreider mentioned that weren't root bound.

loftyendeavors wrote:I wouldn't imagine it would be too late to direct seed pole beans

I put in some Kentucky Wonder Beans very late in the summer and they grew up just fine, very lush and fruitful.

I don't think its ever too late - just depends on what you want to plant. Here is a great spring and fall planting calendar that will lay it out based on your first and last frost dates. The dates I used were:

Last Spring frost:
May 15 2009

First Fall Frost:
Oct 15 2009

Spring calendar:
http://bioarray.us/Skippy%27s%20plantin ... endar.html

Fall Calendar:
http://bioarray.us/Skippy%27s%20fall%20 ... endar.html