Tucson Gardening Now! Winter Seed Saving & Summer Planting
SAVE SEED AND GET MORE, HIGHER QUALITY FOOD WITH LESS WORK!!
It’s the end of April and we’re rolling into the summertime temperatures of May. Many of us are pulling up the last of our winter crops, maybe leaving a plant or two for the seed stems and collection of our favorite broccoli, beet, or chard seed. We do this to save the seed to plant in fall! These three vegetable plants are all easy to harvest seed from. By harvesting our own seed, we localize and hopefully maintain the genes of our favorite seed and plants. This enables the plant to adjust to the local environment and produce more easily an increase of high quality fruit and veggies. As seed savers, we get, more high quality food with less work and less cost. Now you are a smart seed saver too!
So, if you can spare the space in your garden, save a plant, cover the seed stem from birds, harvest and save the seed for seed fall!
APRIL - MAY GARDEN MAINTENANCE AND PLANTING SCHEDULE
Summer is a bountiful season here in Tucson. Stay cool, plant this time of the year, in the morning….. then go ahead…go swimming!! You’ll quickly learn to love summer planting!! Have fun😊
Additional things you may want to do if you haven’t already:
Deep watering of all in garden
Fertilize vegetables
Fertilize corn every 3 weeks till it flowers
Pull weeds, especially easy to do after a rain
Last chance to plant: bush beans, carrots, radish and tomato.
Time to plant: black eyed peas, Chinese pole beans, Armenian cucumber, cucumber, eggplant, melons, peppers, Malabar spinach, pumpkins, winter and summer squash, sweet potatoes and FINALLY, because the air’s low temperatures is now over 50*F - Basil.
