Muskmelon Cucumis melo var.

reticulatus
Some gardeners raise honeydews, crenshaws, true cantaloupes, and other melons, but muskmelons are the most widely planted. Days to Maturity: 75 to 90 When to plant: For sowing directly into the garden, wait until the soil is thoroughly warm (late May here in Pennsylvania). If you start seedlings indoors, sow them in May. How to plant: Direct-seed melons in hills 4 to 6 feet apart. Thin to four or five plants to a hill, but not too soon, because some may die of wilt if cucumber beetles strike. Muskmelons need heat. Plants may suffer a setback at t below 500F (100C). The seeds germinate rather unevenly outside, especially if the ground turns the least bit cool, so Ive taken to presprouting seeds in a moist paper towel kept in a place where the temperature is 700F to 80 0F (210C to 27 0C). Then I plant the germinate seeds in a peat pot indoors in early May. This gives me many more plants than when I planted the seeds directly in the pot and far more than I got from planting outside. You cant transplant melon seedlings from flats because they are so succulent. Keep the roots contained by either a degradable pot or a cardboard plant band, or plant the seeds in small plastic pots from which they can gently turned out into the soil. Growing conditions: Site, as well as soil, is important for good melons. A southern slope is excellent. The soil should be rich in humus and not root acid. Fertilize the potted seedlings with diluted fish emulsion twice a week, using a one-half or three-quarter strength solution. Pests: I plant a ring of radishes around each hill of melons, often sowing the radish seeds seven to ten days before melon planting-out time so the leaves will be up and growing when theyre needed to fend off the marauding cucumber beetle.

Okra Abelmoschus esculentus

Days to Maturity: 50 to 60 When to plant : These ornamental pod-forming vegetable plants need plenty of heat, but they grow quickly. Wait to plant seeds outdoors until night temperatures stay above 550F (130C) and soil temperature is 650F to 70 0F (180C to 21 0C). This means no sooner than the end of May for us here in Pennsylvania; earlier, of course, in the southern states; and well into June for New England and the north central states. How to plant: Okra doesnt take kindly to transplanting, but you can get a head start by planting the seeds inside in pots about a month before setting them out. Use deep pots or milk cartons, because okra develops a taproot early. For direct seeding, presoak the seeds for about 12 hours and plant about three or four seeds to the foot and no more than an inch deep. Later, thin manure dwarf plants, the kind usually planed in the northern states, to stand 18 to 24 inches apart. Tall okra needs 3 to 4 feet of space. Growing conditions: Okra is not particular about soil (although some gardeners say it dislikes highly acid soil), but generous fertilizing will encourage quick growth that will increase

your field. Most varieties of okra are sensitive to day-length: generally, they flower earlier with short days. Some cultivars seem to be day-neutral, and a few (unfortunately not available in the United States) even respond to long days. Varieties: The best choices for gardeners in the northern states, where summer days are longer, are probably Clemson Spineless, Lee, and Annie Oakley. Evertender is good, too, if you can find seeds for it. Remarks: Okra seeds have a short period of viability, especially if not kept dry, so you can improve your odds by sowing fresh seeds. Pods form five to seven days after the blossom opens. Pick them at least every other day, because large pods turn woody and signal the plant to stop producing.

Onion Allium cepa

Easily grown from seed if you get an early start and control weeds while plants are spindly and defenseless. If possible, plant onions to follow either a vegetable that requires clean cultivation or a weed-smothering cover crop. Days to Maturity: 92 to 115 When to plant: Sow onion seed indoor in January or February; outdoors in April or May. Why it is necessary to get such an early start with onions from seed? Because the onions ability to form a bulb is influenced by the length of the day. Its the short dark period that makes the onions shape up. Onions suitable for the northern states are called long-day onions. They start to form bulbs when days grow long and nights grow short. If youve gotten a head start with your seedlings, your onion plants will be well developed at building time and therefore vigorous enough to produce a good-size bulb. When the day length becomes right, a spindly young onion plant will bulb up on cue just like an older one, but the bulb will be puny. Our southern states, being closer to the equator, have somewhat longer summer nights, so growers there choose short-day varieties, which dont require such a short dark period to trigger bulbing. How to Plant: Plant onion seeds in flats indoors. Use fresh seeds, onion seeds lose mulch of their viability if not kept cool dry. For good strong plants, transplant the onion seedlings, leaving 1 inch between plants. If youre short of space, or if you grow so many onions that you end up tripping over flats of onion seedlings scattered everywhere, you can carefully space the seed 1/4 inch apart when planting them, and then leave them in the same flat until time to plant them in the row. You can also plant onion seeds directly in the ground for summer-bunching or fall-storage onions. Sow the seeds in April or May, no more than 1/2 inch deep (1/4 inch in heavy soils) and thin to 4 inches apart when the top spears have become as thick as spears of chives. Onion seeds germinate best at 650F to 80 0F (180C to 27 0C), but young plants should be grown in cooler temperatures, near 600F (160C) and no higher than 700F (210C) by day and 500F (100C) at night. Set them out after proper hardening-off a good month or six weeks before your frost-free date. Wide bands of onion plants spaced 4 inches apart make the best use of space. Growing conditions: Onions prefer soil that is not strongly acid. When grown in potassium-deficient soil, they will keep poorly, and phosphorus-deficient soil causes thick necks

and delayed maturity. For sweeter onions, avoid fertilizing with gypsum, which contains sulfur. Weeds are you worst enemy when plants are young. They sometimes shoulder ahead of seeds planted in mid-spring before the grasslike seedlings can get off the ground. Bulbing. As summer progresses, days become longer and warmer. Both of these conditions encourage bulbing, which is really the formation of additional storage tissue. If the weather is too cold, onions wont bulb up no matter how long the days are. The size of the onion is also important. As it grows larger, it becomes increasingly sensitive to the bulb-inducing influences of longer day length and warmer temperature. The day length necessary to initiate bulbing varies according to the variety but in generally 12 to 16 hours. A day length considerably longer than the minimum necessary to start bulb formation will exert a very strong impetus toward bulbing. Within the plants normal critical day-length range, though, bulbing is more susceptible to the influence of environmental factors. For example, high soil nitrogen tends to delay bulbing within the critical photoperiod but not in an extra-long day. Warmth alone wont trigger bulbing, but it is necessary for the development of a good-sized bulb. Day length remains constant from year to year but soil and air temperatures change considerably, so even if you duplicate varieties planted and the treatment given your onion plants, crop quality may vary from year to year because of the weather. Onion sets: perhaps youd like to try growing your own onion sets, those miniature dry bulbs that grow into eating-sized onions when planted in their second spring, just set aside a bed a few feet square, or a wide row, and in early spring, scatter about an ounce of seeds in a row 2 inches wide and 25 feet long. Dont thin the onions. Crowding keeps them small. Pull the plants late in July before they reach a diameter of 3/4 inch. The smaller sets will give you larger bulbs and are less likely to bolt to seed next year. Any sets larger than 1 inch in diameter should be tossed into the pickle crock. Cure the sets in the sun until the tops are thoroughly dry - a week or ten days - and then remove the tops at the neck of the small bulb. Store in a dry, airy, cool but not freezing place. When planting sets in the spring, push them into the soft earth just far enough to hold them in place, if your soil is heavy. In sandy soil plant them a trifle deeper, but dont cover them. If you have a cat likes to scratch in the garden, as we do, you might have to do some resetting of bulbs for a week or two until roots grow.

Parsnip Pastinaca sativa

Days to Maturity: 100 to 120 When to plant : Plant parsnips in April or May at the latest, but not before the daffodils bloom. How to plant: Seeds should be sown outside in the open ground. Be sure to use fresh seeds, and sow even those thickly (at least one every inch) because parsnip seeds are notoriously low in vitality. Ive gotten a decent stand from year-old seeds sown in a practically continuous band, but I wouldnt count on it. The seedlings are weak-kneed and easily overwhelmed by a heavy soil cover, so pull no more than 1/2 inch of fine light soil over the furrow. A light sowing of radish seeds that will emerge early and break the soil crust will make things easier for the young

parsnip plants to push through. If a week passes without rain before the seeds have germinated, sprinkle the row with water. Germination is slow; allow at least three weeks. Growing conditions: Thin seedlings to stand 3 to 4 inches apart, and keep them well weeded. The plants will form straighter roots if well watered when young. Deeply worked soil will support longer, better-shaped parsnips. They do not transplant well. Once established, the plants need little care. Remarks: The sweet-flavored, frost-proof make up for their wobbly start by feeding your family faithfully through the coldest days of fall and even winter, as long as the ground can be dug. (Flavor is best after frost.)

Peanut Arachis hypogaea

Although youd probably have to live in the South to make a living growing peanuts, gardeners can grow these attractive plants as far as the upper Midwest, New England, and even in Canada. If your garden produces decent melons, you can raise peanuts. Like other legumes, peanuts harbor nodules of nitrogen-fixing bacteria on their roots. If you want to inoculate your peanuts with these bacteria as you do your peas and beans, youll need to buy a special peanut inoculant. (See Sources at the back of this book). Days to Maturity: 110 to 120 When to Plant : If youre just growing a few peanuts, you can start seeds in pots four to six weeks before your last frost date. Usually its safe to plant peanuts when the maple leaves are the size of squirrel ears. Southern gardeners can afford to wait two weeks or so after their last frost to let the soil warm up, since their will still be plenty od time for the nuts to manure before fall frost. How to plant: shelled peanuts germinate more readily than those still encased in the shell. Take care to leave the papery skin intact and to keep the nut whole, split nuts wont sprout. Peanuts make good container plants. They do not transplant well, so should be slipped from the pot without disturbing the roots when placing them in the garden. Plant seeds 1 to 1 1/2 inch deep, very 3 inches, preferably in a 4-inch high ridge of soil in a wide raised row or raised bed. Thin seedlings to 12 inches apart in the row. Seeds of extra-large peanuts like Parks Whopper should be sprouted indoors because they have a low germination rate if soil is cool and damp. Some northern gardeners presprout all their peanut seeds, and most choose the earlier-maturing Spanish types, although Tennessee Red has also produced well in northern states. Growing conditions : Ideal peanut soil is a loose, sandy loam, well supplied with humus. Its better to add manure the fall before planting, rather than in the spring, so the decomposing material wont cause the seeds to rot. You might try prewarming the soil with a mulch of black plastic - just be sure to remove the plastic when the plants start to flower. Peanuts have their own way of doing things. About six weeks after germination, the nowbushy cloverlike plant begins to produce yellow flowers. The fertilized ovary of each flower enlarges and extends into a peduncle that promptly carries its new plant embryo below the soil surface - a process called pegging. It is there, underground, that the tip of the shoot swells and develops into a pod of peanuts. Now you know why there should be plenty of loose soil and no

barriers between the plant and the soil flowering time. Better yet, mound up each side of the row as you would do with potatoes when the plant is a foot high. Peanuts need extra calcium at flowering time, so some careful growers spread a dusting of gypsum (calcium sulfate) or limestone around the plant then.

Pea Pisum sativum

Days to Maturity: 55 to 75 When to plant: you can sow early, mid-season, and late varieties on the same day, or make successive plantings of pea seeds throughout the cool weeks of early spring, but theres no point in sowing most kinds of peas later than two to three weeks before the frost-free date, because the yield of peas maturing in warm weather seldom justifies the space they take. Young plants grow best at 590F to 68 0F (150C to 20 0C). An exception is Wando, a good pea for those who must wait in the spring until their community gardens have been plowed. For fall peas, plant seeds in late July or early August. Mature pea plants are more easily killed by frost than the hardier seedlings. To put peas on table, you must get them in the ground early, and to do that, you often need to prepare the row in the fall. Some gardeners even plant pea seeds in late fall during a February thaw. However, although its safe to plant peas in cold soil, because they can sprout at temperatures as low as 400F (40C) - although it may take them a month to do so - its not wise to work the garden while the earth is still heavily sodden. We get around this, here in our garden, by doing a late-fall plowing, burying all the mulch and leaves and leaving rough mounds. Frost action pulverizes that exposed soil over the winter, and I find that I can usually get out there with a hoe in early March and pull open a furrow of fairly loose soil, going along the top of a ridge left by the plow, not in the deeper, colder valley between ridges. How to Plant : Shake some garden legume inoculant on the moistened seeds before planting. Legume plants growing in zinc-deficient soil have less nitrogen-fixing ability. Plant peas thickly, about one every rich, and cover the seeds with 1 to 1 1/2 inches of soil. Double rows of peas, spaced about 4 to 6 inches apart, make more efficient use of soil space than single rows. Wide rows of peas, up to 3 feet or so, are even more efficient. At one time, I thinned my peas to stand 2 to 4 inches apart, but since Ive found that slight crowding doesnt seem to reduce production, Ive stooped thinning them. Peas dont transplant well. Growing Conditions: Pea roots are weak and small, easily dislodged in weeding, so I usually let some weeds grow, closet to the plants, to prevent root damage and also to help shade the pea roots, which prefer cool growing weather. They also need plenty of oxygen, so plants grown in compacted or waterlogged soil will not produce as well as those in well-aerated ground. Peas also prefer soil that is not highly acid. They are fairly drought tolerant until flowering, when their moisture needs increase to an inch a week. The first peas appear about three weeks after blossoming. Staking : Except for leafless kinds like Novella, which is pretty much self-supporting when grown in a triple row, your peas will need some support, even the low-growing ones. Cuttings of brush that have lots of twigs are excellent for all kinds of peas and the best choice for wide rows. For tall-growing vines like Sugar Snap and Mammoth Melting Sugar, grown in single rows, I supplement the brush with binders twine stung the length of the row between three steel