Dan's Garden: Summer planting

Now that we have the potatoes and onions started, it’s time to focus on summer tomatoes and peppers.

This is the time of year we’ve all been waiting for on our gardening because so far we’ve got our potatoes coming up and all our root crops, like carrots, lettuce and radishes, and all that, that we could plant earlier when it was cool. But now that its warmer, we can plant the tender season crops. It looks like there probably won’t be any more freezes for the next week or so, so we are probably safe. If we have to cover them we will cover them.

But these tomatoes plants came out of the green houses, so did the peppers and the cucumbers. I like to harden them off a little before I take them out into the open and the wind and the heat. So I had these in the shade for a few days on the other side of this fence to kind of toughen them up a little bit. So now you can plant your tender season, warm season crops. We even have a row of Marigolds going down to help repel aphids and other kinds of insects that might bother us later.

We are excited about a relatively new plant that called Boomarang lilac: they’re very hearty. It’s a small, little dwarf lilac that only gets four to five feet high and four to five feet wide. Their very hearty to 40 or 45 below zero. They have nice purple flowers that are very fragrant. Fertilize them in the spring and they’ll bloom pretty soon, coming up now. And in the middle of the summer they’ll bloom again, and they’ll bloom on and off until and into the fall.

So if you want a plant that’s nice and tidy, this is it; Boomerang.

Until next week, good gardening.