Planting My Late Start Vegetable Garden

So much has happened since my last blog post! The warm season is my busiest time of the year. I don’t have much time to write after finishing my projects, and documenting the whole processes with photos and video clips. So I will try to catch you up when I can whenever things slow down a bit.

My garden has been planted for a few weeks now, but if you look at the image of me above you will notice that I’m wearing a goofy looking hat. I now call it “The Magic Hat”! Lol!

It was 107°F/42°C that day, and I spent over 8 hours of the hottest part of the hottest day of the year (so far) planting my garden.

It didn’t rain here in Southeastern Wisconsin for about a month and a half straight, and we were starting to experience drought like conditions. Luckily it started raining here last week, and temperatures are back to normal now.

The Magic Hat as I like to call it is actually a cooling hat! It’s not exactly the style I was looking for, but it was the only one available here at the time so I purchased it. It works great! What you do is soak the hat in some water, ring it out, wave it in the air a few times, and the hat stays at a comfortable 52°F/11°C as long as it’s damp. Which is about 3 hours, then just wet and repeat.

While planting I had a little visitor. Every garden needs a toad!

The nice thing about starting a garden so late in the season is that leftover plants are cheap! I got all of these (pictured in photo above) for 1/3 the cost that they were a month earlier.

Also the leftover plants you get are huge this late in the season! Just look at the size of the tomato plant that I’m holding in the photo above! It will be producing fruit soon.

This year mainly because of time constraints I decided to plant much less than I usually do. I also wanted to give the plants more space to grow larger to see if I can get the same harvest yield with fewer plants. It’s kind of a space experiment. I only planted what I eat the most of this year, along with some Cosmos flower seeds for the pollinators and beauty.

I planted a couple varieties (both vining and bush) of cucumbers. I love cucumbers! I put them on just about everything!

I planted a couple mounds of zucchini. There are so many delicious ways to prepare zucchini!

I planted 5 different varieties of tomatoes. Some I have never tried before! I’ve never tasted a tomato I didn’t like, yet!

I planted a couple of varieties of peppers. You got to have peppers!

I also planted some Cosmos flower seeds that I saved from the flowers of seeds that my friend Nanda Jurela sent me last year. You should check out her blog! She is a gifted writer, fellow gardener, and all around beautiful person. I think you’ll enjoy reading her blog!

Anyway, I thought my vegetable garden turned out pretty well for getting such a late start. The photo above was taken a few days ago, and everything is up and growing fast now!

Thank you for taking the time to read my blog, and happy gardening!