10 Awesome Veggies You Should Plant In July Right Now!

In this video, I share 10 awesome veggies you should plant in July right now! July brings the hottest weather of the year, but don’t be fooled: now is when seed starting season ramps back up! In addition to sowing new summer garden crops to replace tired, old plants, now is the time to start a fall garden, and crops we sow in July will reward us with big harvests in pleasant fall weather.

Don’t give up planting seeds and keeping up with your vegetable garden in the summer heat. A little work now will reap big rewards in perfect fall gardening weather!

Gardening in July heat can be tough, but these gardening products* can help you grow bigger:
Shade Cloth (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/4bLbv72
Grow Bags (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/3x4bJXO
Insect Netting (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/3TYm134
Drip Irrigation Sprinkler Hose (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/4eQSSki
Weed Barrier (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/4dUWVeC
Jobe’s Organic Vegetable Fertilizer (4lbs): https://amzn.to/45YHmh2
Espoma Plant Tone (36lbs): https://amzn.to/3Zgk98f
Jobe’s Bone Meal (4lb): https://amzn.to/3uC5klp
Espoma Bone Meal (10lb): https://amzn.to/3X9s88a
Alaska Fish Fertilizer (Gallon): https://amzn.to/3XP5EHU
Alaska Fish Fertilizer (Quart): https://amzn.to/3wTE7Ms
Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3KyPTzg
Jack’s All Purpose 20-20-20 (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/3MQ4I2A
Jack’s / JR Peters All Purpose 20-20-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/44DUV58
Jack’s Blossom Booster 10-30-20 (25lb): https://amzn.to/45FIuXh
Full Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 When To Plant Seeds In July
1:03 Crops #’s 1-2: Cucumbers & Summer Squash
3:12 Crop #3: Small Melons
5:02 Crop #4: Small Winter Squash
6:22 Crop #5: Fall Tomatoes
9:57 Crop #6: Potatoes
11:00 Crop #7: Corn
12:01 Crop #8: String Beans
12:58 Crop #9: Warm Season Lettuce
14:49 Crop #10: Flowers
16:29 Crops Most Gardeners Should Avoid In July
19:26 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about crops to sow in July for summer gardening, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

***********************************
VISIT MY AMAZON STOREFRONT FOR PRODUCTS I USE MOST OFTEN IN MY GARDEN*
https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

***********************************
VISIT MY MERCHANDISE STORE
https://shop.spreadshirt.com/themillennialgardener

***********************************
SUPPORT MY SECOND CHANNEL!
https://www.youtube.com/c/2MinuteGardenTips

***********************************
EQUIPMENT I MOST OFTEN USE IN MY GARDEN*:

Miracle-Gro Soluble All Purpose Plant Food https://amzn.to/3qNPkXk
Miracle-Gro Soluble Bloom Booster Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GKYG0j
Miracle-Gro Soluble Tomato Plant Food https://amzn.to/2GDgJ8n
Jack’s Fertilizer, 20-20-20, 25 lb. https://amzn.to/3CW6xCK

Southern Ag Liquid Copper Fungicide https://amzn.to/2HTCKRd
Southern Ag Natural Pyrethrin Concentrate https://amzn.to/2UHSNGE
Monterey Organic Spinosad Concentrate https://amzn.to/3qOU8f5
Safer Brand Caterpillar Killer (BT Concentrate) https://amzn.to/2SMXL8D

Cordless ULV Fogger Machine https://amzn.to/36e96Sl
Weed Barrier with UV Resistance https://amzn.to/3yp3MaJ
Organza Bags (Fig-size) https://amzn.to/3AyaMUz
Organza Bags (Tomato-size) https://amzn.to/36fy4Re

Injection Molded Nursery Pots https://amzn.to/3AucVAB
Heavy Duty Plant Grow Bags https://amzn.to/2UqvsgC
6.5 Inch Hand Pruner Pruning Shears https://amzn.to/3jHI1yL
Japanese Pruning Saw with Blade https://amzn.to/3wjpw6o

Double Tomato Hooks with Twine https://amzn.to/3Awptr9
String Trellis Tomato Support Clips https://amzn.to/3wiBjlB
Nylon Mason Line, 500FT https://amzn.to/3wd9cEo
Expandable Vinyl Garden Tape https://amzn.to/3jL7JCI

***********************************
SOCIAL MEDIA
Follow Me on TWITTER (@NCGardening) https://twitter.com/NCGardening
Follow Me on INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/millennialgardener/

***********************************
ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

***********************************
*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #summergardening #seedstarting

what’s growing on gardeners July has begun and believe it or not now is the time of year where seed starting begins to ramp back up again that’s why on today’s video I’m going to share with you 10 veggies that nearly every Gardener can plant in July right now if you’re new to the Channel Please Subscribe and hit the Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden an awesome custom designed apparel and other gear your support is greatly appreciated as a point of reference I live on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina Zone 8B so keep that in mind as we move forward when I’m giving these seed starting recommendations however July is a pretty long month so at some point in July almost all gardeners will be able to start these seeds so if you’re south of me maybe you’ll need to start these things in the latter half of July if you’re north of me maybe you will need to start these things in the former half of July when it’s still really early that way you can beat the frost so please keep location in mind and scale it to your timeline accordingly veggies 1 and two that you should be planting in July are cucumbers and your summer squashes like zucchini it is a tremendous mistake that gardeners tried to keep their initial plantings of cucumbers and zucchini alive all season your summer squashes like zucchinis and your cucumbers generally only have a lifespan of about 2 to 3 months after transplant and our growing Seasons tend to be a whole lot longer than that even locations with short growing season so surprisingly my initial zucchini plants look fantastic for the time of year that we’re in but they are starting to slow down and quit on me and while I still have some really goodlooking cucumber plants I’m starting to have some pests bore into them some of the vines have had to be cut back to nothing and probably can’t be saved I’m starting to get a little bit of disease on some of them you’re starting to see some of the vines Wilt and again these are my initial PL ings of cucumbers and zucchini from the beginning of April so they’re tired at this time there is no reason to keep them alive all throughout the season don’t fight nature just replace these plants now in the business we call this succession planting it is a terrible mistake to try and keep these short-lived plants alive all throughout the growing season so you should be trying to replace the plants with new seedlings roughly every 6 to 8 weeks or so so even if you live in a very short season climate you should probably be growing two to three crops of cucumbers and zucchinis if you live in a long season climate you may need to grow four to six crops throughout the course of the spring summer and fall I usually average about four crops of cucumbers and zucchini I just started fresh batches of cucumbers and zucchini 2 and 1/2 days ago and they are already breaking the surface I’m seeing one here one here one here that is how quickly your cuer bits like your cucumbers and zucchini germinate so please if you haven’t started a new crop do it now make fresh transplants they will be ready for transplanting out into your garden in 3 or so weeks and you’ll probably be harvesting them in only about 45 to 60 days crop number three that you should be starting from seed in July are your small fruited melons now melons are also part of the cucurbit family same as cucumbers and zucchini and other types of squashes so they have a very rapid germination rate of only about 3 to 4 days and they ready for transplant and only about 3 weeks after germination now whereas large fruited melons like watermelons can take all season to grow because the fruit is huge and you really only get one or two shots to plant them smaller fruited melons can fruit very quickly some of these small fruited melons fruit as quickly as 45 to 60 days after transplant and that is what you see right here you see a wide variety of small fruited melons that I have trellised up this cattle panel and these plants well they not only fruit quickly but they begin dying back quickly as well they have shorter lifespans they burn that candle very rapidly so we don’t want to try and keep these alive all season long eventually these Vines are going to quit on us and they are just easier to replace now there are some incredible small fruited melons out there and when I say small fruited I mean melons that usually weigh about 1 lb or less these are great options for not just short season climates but for long season climates where there’s a lot of disease and pest pressure because they grow and mature in Fruit very quickly so you can just keep replacing the plants things like the me the lemon drop watermelon we have things like the kajari melon we have these small individually portioned honey Rock cantaloupes these are all fantastic options and I’d recommend them all for successive planting throughout the season as well as for cooler short season climates that have trouble growing things like watermelon because you need a lot of heat and a long growing season for them to mature and ripen crop number four are winter storage squashes these are varieties of squash that store for long periods of time 2 3 4 months or more and the goal is to plant these later into the season that way the fruit matures a couple of weeks before your last frost when your garage or your basement has cooled down sufficiently because if you harvest them before Frost they will store for the maximum lifespan now here where I live I strugg to grow very large winter squashes like pumpkins or other squashes that get several pounds in size because we have issues with Vine bores with cabbage moths with squash bugs it’s really tough here as well as a lot of heat and humidity however a couple that work out well for me are your bush butternut squashes and smaller winter storage squashes like this red curry right here because this red curry squash is so small I can get a harvest off of it before or the pests and the diseases attack The Vines and things like your butternut squashes are often immune or at least resistant toine bores so things like this I like to plant now that way the plants can grow throughout late summer and into early fall and I can get a harvest of them in the midall and then store them in my garage where they can last 3 to 5 months crop number five that Gardener should be starting from seed in July are fall tomatoes and this holds true for almost all all gardeners even in locations where the tomatoes that you planted back in Spring survive all the way until Frost let me explain it should come as no surprise to gardeners that live in the Southeast the Deep South Florida Texas California and other areas of the country with very hot summers and long growing Seasons that growing a fall tomato crop is a no-brainer that is a great way to extend the growing season deep into the fall maybe even early winter because here in our hot humid wet climates a lot of times the summer heat is too intense and it kills our original spring planting of tomatoes but what about Growers that live in the northeast or the Midwest or the Pacific Northwest where the Summers aren’t persistently hot enough to kill all of your tomatoes and when Frost comes in late September October maybe even early November your plants are still hanging on well the reason why you should still start a fall tomato crop is because even if your plants don’t outwardly die from the conditions of the summer they will still be tired they will be covered in disease they will be attacked by insects they will be Shaggy and ragged looking they just won’t look great come the end of the season and their production will be pretty lousy so if you go the extra mile and you start yourself a fall tomato crop that is a great way to get a final Harvest to store and can for The Long Winter and pick a whole bunch of green tomatoes that you can then keep in your garage or your basement and bring them upstairs a couple at a time to ripen on your countertop and you can have some amount of ripened Tomatoes throughout the late fall and early winter to extend your Harvest now for the overwhelming majority of us we begin losing day length and warmth rapidly once we start entering September so for that reason you’re working against the clock when it comes to Growing fall Tomatoes instead of working with the clock during the Spring where it warms and your day length gets longer and longer so you really need to be several weeks ahead of the game to account for the cooling temperatures and the shortening days so for that reason I recommend that most Growers grow determinant style tomatoes and not indeterminant style tomatoes because determinants they tend to ripen their crop a lot more quickly than indeterminant and if you grow an indeterminant beef steak you’ll probably wind up with a whole bunch of small malformed Tomatoes come the end of your growing season don’t make that mistake I will be growing this heat tolerant variety called red snapper which did great for me this year I like starting these heat tolerant varieties of determinant tomatoes because when they go in the ground it is still going to be very hot and humid so I need something disease resistant but because these are an F1 hybrid determinant they will ripen fairly quickly and efficiently if you don’t want to grow a determinant variety and you want to grow something indeterminate you will probably want a short seasoned Cherry variety I don’t think you’ll have a lot of luck with indeterminate larger fruited varieties of tomatoes unless you live somewhere that is very warm deep into the winter like Central or South Florida South Texas Southern California maybe the Phoenix area etc for Growers north of me I recommend you focus specifically on early season determinant varieties like settes legend or early girl go for varieties of determinant tomatoes that are less than 60 days to maturity crop number six is one of my absolute favorite low maintenance fall crops out there and that is a fall planting of potatoes potatoes are one of the easiest fall crops that you can grow and fall is the perfect time to grow a second crop of potatoes the weather is just perfect and what you see right here are my spring planting of potatoes that I harvested a few weeks ago I’ve been eating them for several weeks now I’ve mostly eaten the best potatoes in the whole lot and some of the potatoes that you see in this lot are a little bit inferior they’re they’re already starting to sprout or they have a little bit of Greening on them and you don’t really want to eat very green potatoes so those are perfect to repurpose as seed potatoes for another fall planting so not only are they low maintenance very easy to grow and they grow perfect in the fall but if you repurpose your Old Spring potatoes you have everything you need to grow potatoes for practically free and of course potatoes are fantastic winter storage crops when cured and stored properly they can stay fresh for many months crop number seven that is perfect for planting in July is corn corn is one of the few plants out there that can actually take the extreme heat and the Sun so it is typical to grow corn as long as you can all throughout the spring summer and into the fall typically most people will plant their first crop of corn after last frost and then Harvest it into the early to mid summer then they will plant another crop of corn either in late spring or early summer for a fall Harvest and for many of us the very beginning of July is the perfect opportunity now one of the things that you may want to look at for your fall corn is one that has a fairly low days to maturity don’t grow corn that takes 90 95 100 days to maturity because remember we are working against the calendar we are starting to lose daylight so our days get shorter and shorter the temperatures will get cooler and cooler so early varieties of corn are going to do better for a fall planting veggie number eight that is perfect to plant in Fall are string beans now string beans are one of those crops that are very easy to grow but they don’t do well in extreme heat they tend to yellow and the beans get really tough and woodlike and they don’t taste really good so here in the Southeast we grow our first crop immediately after last frost we Harvest them all throughout May into early June then it gets really really hot and it will destroy your initial crop if you haven’t harvested it well a good time to plant another planting is going to be at some point in July depending on your climate that way it can grow throughout August as it starts to slowly cool down and you want these available for Harvest probably in September maybe early to mid October so this is again something that makes great for fall planting it’s usually low days to maturity so they handle the shortening days of the Fall pretty well and they’re absolutely delicious when harvested in fall v number nine that is perfect for planting in July are your warm season lettuce now all lettuce do not like the same conditions there’s a lot of variability in different types of lettuces for example your very heavily ruffled and curled leaf lettuce and your red leaf lettuce they like very cool temperatures they want it to be downright chilly and they handle hard Frost and freeze very well so those are lettuces that are often grown in the fall winter and early spring but your your romae lettuce especially your heat tolerant varieties like this giant Caesar right here they don’t like any Frost at all in fact even a light frost can damage your Roma lettuce they like warmer temperatures now here in July where I live it is way too hot to grow any type of lettuce even the most heat tolerant of your Roma varieties is going to struggle it’s going to bolt it’s going to taste very bitter but now is a great time to start your transplants indoors so for me here in the coastal Southeast I will start my Roma transplants indoors where it is cool and temperature regulated come the end of July that way I can plant them out into my garden in the beginning middle of September because they will take 6 to 8 weeks to germinate and turn into nice transplants Come Around September 15th it will finally be cooling off enough that I can plant my romae lettu uses out into my garden I may have to put a little bit of shade cloth over them if it’s still a little bit hot but then they will grow through the late September and early October weather and they will grow very nice heads before it frosts come the middle of November that’s usually when we get our first Frost so timing is very important when it comes to Growing your lettuce for the overwhelming majority of people July is a good time to indoor sew your Roma lettuce in a controlled environment and crop number 10 that is perfect for planting in July isn’t really a crop it’s more a category and that is flowers as gardeners we are constantly thinking about all of the Edibles that we can plant out into our Gardens but we can’t forget all of the pollinators and other support species that work so hard for us and our garden and they need flowers to survive and the fact of the matter is now that heat stress is at Absolute Peak and most of the flowering of our fruit trees and things like that the native plants are long behind us in the spring there is a minimal amount of flowers out in the garden despite the fact that the insect pop population is growing and growing so we really need to support those good insects that really Thrive and need flowers so we don’t get overwhelmed by the bad insects so my initial planting of sunflowers is looking pretty pathetic right now they are all dying back so it is very important that I plant new flowers out into my garden and some of the favorites that I like growing are sunflowers nerum and sweet alysum I’m going to direct sew all of these right now we are going to plant some sunflower seeds about an inch deep some Nerium seeds about an inch deep and we are going to sprinkle some sweet alysum and then water them in and they will germinate in a matter of a week or two we really want to get progressive waves of flowers throughout our garden at all times to support those beneficial insects that thrive on flowers You Are by no means obligated to plant the exact flowers I planted in this video plant any flowers your heart desires anything you like that will also support your native pollinator species now I do see some gardeners recommend things like starting carrots and brassas and peas this time of year but I really disagree with that largely and I think it’s too early for most gardeners unless you live in only the absolute shortest of growing seasons for the overwhelming majority of gardeners that don’t see Frost until October or November it is probably way too early to start those plants because they are all very sensitive to heat I would rather start my brassas and peas a little late than a little bit early because although your broccoli and cauliflower heads and your pea pods will take damage in a hard Frost you can cover them and as long as you cover them with an agricultural fabric if it’s going to frost or freeze they will generally be fine especially in the early to mid-fall when the freezes aren’t so severe but because those plants are so intolerant of heat temperatures above 70 to 75° really do a lot of damage to them if you plant them out too early the heat can literally destroy your entire crop so it’s much easier in the cases of these plants to protect them against the cold than it is to protect them against the Heat as for things like carrots the sweetness of a carrot is proportional to the coolness so the cooler the weather the higher the sugar content the hotter the weather the starchier they will be so carrots are extremely tolerant of cold so you definitely don’t want to R brush them out into the garden because you don’t want them forming Roots when it is still relatively warm out otherwise you will wind up with a starchy not very sweet carrot that is my opinion that’s why I’m not going to recommend all of those plants until August but again you know your own climate best you may be an exception to this rule if you have extremely mild Summers or you have very early Winters so don’t take everything I say as gospel again I’m in zone 8B I’m just giving you a rough idea of what I do this time of year and why I think the way I think and that right there are 10 crops the overwhelming majority of gardeners can start from seed in July I know it’s really hot right now and the heat may have some of us down and not in the gardening mood but I promise you if you start these crops once it cools down in the fall you will be so happy you did because you will still have a beautiful garden growing on so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these if you’re curious about any of the products that I use in real life in my garden I will place links to all of them down in the video description in my Amazon storefront so expand the video description click on the Amazon link and you’ll see everything I use in my garden in real life and while you’re down there please check out my spreadsh shop for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video boy oh boy is is it a hot and sunny day I wonder where my best boy Dale is oh there he is Dale you are a smart boy you know that I think you found yourself a little shady spot haven’t you Dale do you want to go inside it’s getting a little hot come on I’ll take you inside it is clear that you are done with your fun in the sun for the day let’s go inside and cool off Mr hands and pants