Plant These 10 Awesome Crops In July RIGHT NOW!

In this video, I share the best vegetables to plant in July. Don’t let the hot July weather fool you: now is not the time to stop starting seeds. July 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 reward ourselves with big harvests in pleasant fall weather. Plant these 10 awesome crops in July right now!

Don’t quit planting seeds in the summer heat. A little work now will reap big harvests in perfect fall gardening weather!

Seeds featured in this video can be purchased** here:
Merlin Cucumber: https://fxo.co/Iylx
H-19 Little Leaf: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/cucumbers/pickling-cucumbers/h-19-little-leaf-organic-cucumber-seed-331G.html
Dunja Zucchini: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/vegetables/squash/summer-squash/dunja-organic-f1-zucchini-squash-seed-3843G.html
Waltham Butternut: https://amzn.to/3G2DMf1
Honey Rock Cantaloupe: https://fxo.co/Iylv
Kajari Melon: https://www.rareseeds.com/melon-kajari
SuperSweet 100 Tomato: https://fxo.co/Iyly
Celebrity Plus Tomato: https://growhoss.com/products/celebrity-plus-tomato
Red Snapper Tomato: https://growhoss.com/products/red-snapper-tomato
Dixie Red Tomato: https://growhoss.com/products/dixie-red-tomato
Bobcat Tomato: https://www.pntra.com/t/8-12781-345111-269073?url=https%3A%2F%2Fterritorialseed.com%2Fproducts%2Ftomato-bobcat
Prospera Italian Basil: https://www.pntrac.com/t/8-12781-345111-269073?url=https%3A%2F%2Fterritorialseed.com%2Fproducts%2Fbasil-prospera
Prospera Red Basil: https://www.johnnyseeds.com/herbs/basil/purple-basil/prospera-red-dmr-organic-f1-basil-seed-4650G.html
Parsley: https://amzn.to/4hmv9JS
Lemongrass: https://amzn.to/44Dttr0
Granex Onion: https://amzn.to/4epVpBY
Zebrune Shallot: https://www.rareseeds.com/onion-zebrune-shallot

Gardening in July can be tough, but these gardening products* can help you grow bigger:
Shade Cloth (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/49bqveh
Insect Netting: https://amzn.to/3I3QTgx
Drip Irrigation Sprinkler Hoses: https://amzn.to/44uCqSo
Grow Bags (Black): https://amzn.to/4a0MHa5
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Weed Barrier: https://amzn.to/4mj7nkl
PVC Snap Clamps (1/2in): https://amzn.to/3SJHjS0
Tomato Hooks & Plant Clips Kit: https://amzn.to/4mCptOE
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Surround WP Kaolin Clay: https://amzn.to/4jVhVDV
4 Gal Battery Backpack Sprayer: https://amzn.to/3HyCBUU
Jiffy Organic Seed Starting Mix, 10QT: https://amzn.to/3VZby9F
BNLINK Seedling Heat Mat (Many Sizes): https://amzn.to/3Pyk3Fb
BNLINK Heat Mat Thermostat: https://amzn.to/3PbRDQP
True Organic All Purpose Fertilizer [5-4-5] (4lb): https://amzn.to/4mroKji
Alaska Fish Fertilizer [5-1-1] (Gallon): https://amzn.to/4d9c1x7
Espoma Bone Meal (10lb): https://amzn.to/4ieYapY
True Organic Blood Meal (3lbs): https://amzn.to/3DvlzVJ
Espoma PlantTone Fertilizer [5-3-3] (36lb): https://amzn.to/4lgP9PW
Espoma PlantTone Fertilizer [5-3-3] (50lb): https://amzn.to/4lgPbr2
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (1.5lb): https://amzn.to/4iRWtRc
Jack’s All Purpose [20-20-20] (25lb): https://amzn.to/3ZSJeGW
DALE’S PEANUT BUTTER & BANANA DOG TREATS: https://amzn.to/3I7rVNe
Full Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/shop/themillennialgardener

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 When To Plant Seeds In July
1:05 July Crops 1-2: Cucumbers, Zucchini
2:55 July Crop #3: Butternut Squash
4:22 July Crop #4: Small Melons
5:54 July Crop #5: Fall Tomatoes
8:26 July Crop #6: Parsley
10:16 July Crop #7: Basil
12:16 July Crop #8: Lemongrass
13:48 July Crops 9-10: Onions, Shallots
16:33 Every Variety I’m Planting In July
17:40 Adventures With Dale

If you have any questions about crops to sow in July for summer gardening, want to learn more about growing fruit trees or 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!

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

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© The Millennial Gardener

#gardening #garden #seedstarting #vegetablegardening #vegetablegarden

what’s going on gardeners it’s July it’s hot and the last thing on our minds right now is starting seeds for our vegetable garden don’t fall into that trap july is a fantastic time to start seeds for your vegetable garden and on today’s video I am going to show you the 10 different crops that I am starting from seed in July right now and be sure to stay until the end of the video where I will give you a full list of every single variety that I’m starting in July if you’re new to the channel please subscribe hit the bell for notifications and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear as a point of reference I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina zone 8b but plant hardiness zones don’t really matter for starting seeds all that matters for seed starting is how many days you have left in your growing season and what the days to maturity of what you are planting are so keep that in mind as I go through this video pretty much everybody will be able to start these seeds right now i will also place some direct links to some of the seed varieties that I’m featuring in this video for your convenience crops one and two that I am starting from seed in July right now are cucumbers and zucchini and while these are different species I am lumping them together for a very specific reason cucumbers and zucchini are both part of the cucurbit family and they have very rapid lifespans they germinate in only about 3 to 4 days and they will start producing fruit from you in anywhere from 45 to 60 days after germination so for that reason from the day you plant that seed you are generally harvesting things off of these plants within 2 months or less a huge mistake I see so many gardeners make is they try to keep their initial planting of cucumbers and zucchini alive all season it is a total waste of time my first wave of zucchini that I planted back in April have already been removed from my garden and my initial planting of cucumbers are starting to get diseases and they are dying back because they have short lifespans and they just don’t live that long we want to be succession planting our cucumbers and zucchini we should be starting new seed roughly every 6 weeks that way we always have young vibrant plants that are in peak production and we’re not relying on those tired old vines to give us fruit my first wave of zucchini and cucumbers are already dead or dying my second wave are in key production as we speak and I’m already starting my third wave from seed right now here in North Carolina I usually plant five waves of cucumbers and zucchini throughout the summer my growing season is long enough to do that and even if your growing season is really short you probably have ample time to plant three waves at least so let this be a lesson for you start new zucchini and cucumber seeds right now if you start them in early July you will be harvesting off those plants by mid to late August they are that fast producing crop number three that I’m starting from seed in July is butternut squash and while butternut squash is closely related to zucchini they are treated very differently whereas zucchini grows rapidly and fruits rapidly butternut squash take a longer time they are a winter squash and a lot of these varieties can take up to 90 to 100 days to mature now the reason why we can start these late in the season is because butternut squash is vine borer resistant so if you’re like me and you have very high vine borer pressure and squash bug pressure they don’t really like the butternut squash variety so you can plant this out in your garden in the middle of the summer and they are relatively pestfree compared to your typical zucchini that are a magnet for those insects the other reason why you want to start butternut squash later in the year is because they will store for many many months in a cool garage or basement so this is the ultimate winter storage crop so if I start my seeds right now around July 1st they will germinate in about 3 to 4 days so these will be ready for harvest at some point in probably late September early October which is perfect for me for cool storage and if you have a shorter growing season than I do let’s say you start getting frosts and freezes in early October you can just grow yourself a smaller bush type butternut squash they will mature a lot more quickly but they store just as well crop number four that I’m starting from seed in July are small melons and small melons is key here because if you start something like a watermelon that takes a very long time to mature and needs very warm weather throughout the maturation process unless you live in a place with a very long growing season that takes you deep into late November early December it’s probably too late for watermelons for you however you can grow supplemental succession crops of smaller melons and two of my favorite that I have been growing over the years are the kajari melon which tastes like a cross between a cantaloupe and a honeydew and a very small cantaloupe called honey rock these are both fantastic and they mature in a fraction of the amount of time of regular melons now admittedly I don’t grow a ton of melons in my garden and the reason why is I don’t like really large melons they take up so much room in your refrigerator and once you crack open some giant 10 to 20 lb melon you feel like you’re obligated to eat it for days but the reason why I like these melons so much is they are personalized this is enough for one person or you can split it between two people they’re just the right amount and because they mature so quickly if you live in a cooler climate where it’s more difficult to grow large watermelons well these are actually perfect for you these are the solution for succession planting for short season climates or if you just want a melon fix deep into fall when your larger melons aren’t really producing anymore crop number five that I’m starting in July are tomatoes and these tomatoes are specifically for a fall planting now I understand that many gardeners probably don’t grow fall tomatoes because in many climates your growing season is so short that you can get tomatoes all the way until frost and you really only need one big wave of indeterminate tomatoes to get you through the growing season but for those of us with longer growing seasons especially those of us in the humid south well our tomatoes are killed off in July and August because it is too hot humid and wet we actually have to grow tomatoes in the shoulder seasons we grow them from basically mid to late March all the way until early July where they start to die or are outright killed so here in the south our tomato season ends early unless you start yourself a fall tomato crop and the beginning of July for most of us is about the right time to do it i’ve been experimenting with growing fall tomatoes for years and if there is one thing that I have learned over those years it all comes down to timing and variety selection when it comes to successful fall tomatoes and that’s because unlike spring where the days get longer and warmer as the season progresses the seasons actually work against you in fall the days get shorter and cooler as the season progresses so the days to maturity on these seed packets for tomatoes don’t really work out you actually need more time than those days to maturity let on because they assume that your temperatures are increasing and your days are getting longer and longer when you’re planting out in the spring so therefore unless you live in a climate like South Florida or Southern California or Southern Arizona where you basically don’t get frost or freeze and it’s warm and the days are pretty long all throughout the winter you really have to grow yourself early season varieties so pretty much all of the tomatoes that I grow are going to be earlier determinants with days to maturity of 70 or less because they ripen more quickly indeterminate tomatoes do not do well at all in a fall planting for climates where you’re going to see frost and freeze in November uh because they just take too long to ripen the only exception are some cherry varieties that are 55 to 65 days to maturity so I will plant two indeterminate cherry varieties for fun but pretty much everything else that I’m growing is going to be a shorter stature determinant variety because they ripen more efficiently in the cooler season and in the shorter days of fall crop number six that I’m starting from seed in July is parsley parsley is one of those things that I can grow all year long here on the southeastern coast of North Carolina because it can both take warm temperatures and it’s cold hearty all the way down until about 10° so here in zone 8 I can grow it all winter long as well here where I live it’s actually much more difficult to grow parsley in the summer because the hot summer sun and our very humid weather causes the parsley to bolt to get really tough and flower and go to seed so the way that I try and accommodate that is I plant my parsley out in early spring in all different orientations i put some out in direct sun and then I plant some underneath deciduous trees so they will be protected by the shade in the summer so the plants that are grown out in full sun well they grow quickly and I have nice fresh parsley all throughout the spring and into early summer but then they kind of bolt on me and they get really rough and haggarded looking and then I can start harvesting off of the parsley plants underneath the shade trees they will last a little bit longer but still come the end of summer pretty much all of my parsley plants are looking really bad so I start more seeds right about now that way I can plant my parsley out as transplants at some point in uh early fall when it starts cooling down and then what will happen is that parsley will get nice and mature and be pretty hardened off and be large enough that it can take the deep frosts and freezes of of winter that we get here in the Wilmington North Carolina area so that is how I plant my parsley and it gives me harvests 365 days a year you just have to plan out if you have very very hot summers that stress out your parsley if you do July is a good time to start new transplants crop number seven that I’m starting from seed in July is basil and when it comes to growing basil just like with parsley I like having different waves of basil planted out in my garden in different levels of maturity and that’s because while basil is more heat tolerant than parsley it is also shorter lived it has a fairly quick life cycle so if all you do is you plant out a wave of basil in late March early April like I do once your frosts and freezes stop well by mid August chances are they’re all going to be bolting on you flowering and going to seed so the way you get around that problem is you plant multiple waves of basil throughout the growing season which is really easy because they germinate in a snap and then since you’ll always have young plants you’ll have a crop that is resistant to bolting now that being said here in the humid East we have a major problem when it comes to growing basil that pops up late in the season and that is downy mildew last year all of my basil plants were perfect heading into early to mid August but then come late August they all got hit by a blight of downey mildew and come the middle of September all of my basil plants were dead it was terrible so this year I am experimenting with these new varieties of basil called Prospera they are F1 basil hybrids that are supposedly resistant to downey mildew and I am incredibly excited about this because that’s the key to helping me have basil all the way until frost here in the coastal deep south so if you also struggle with downy mildew try these new Prospera varieties both of these plants that you see right here that are beautiful and perfect are the Prospera red variety and this plant right here is the Prospera large leaf variety so I’m going to start new seed now because eventually these are going to flower and bolt on me and I want these beautiful plants growing at all times throughout my season crop number eight that I’m starting from seed in July is one that I’ve never started from seed before and that is lemongrass if you like cooking Thai food having a fresh supply of lemongrass in your kitchen is pivotal now last year I went out and I spent about $20 on a lemongrass plant which are not particularly frost and freeze hardy but they can die back to the ground in zone 9 climates and then come back the next year from the roots so I decided to plant one in ground well we had such a bad winter filled with ice and snow it completely killed the plant so I guess they’re not really perennial hearty here in zone 8b so what I’m going to do is I’m going to start some from seed and I’m just going to keep it in a pot in my sun room over the winter and I’ll just have a little potted lemongrass plant now me being of Italian-American heritage I don’t cook a lot of Thai food but I really do love it so when I do make it I want to have some fresh lemongrass at my disposal so for somebody like me that just needs it on occasion having a lemongrass plant is going to be awesome they also smell incredible so if you want to add some fragrance to your indoor garden or your patio garden well consider growing lemongrass because it’s a beautiful ornamental grass that smells great even if you’re not familiar with cooking with it so I really think it’s a cool herb to grow the seeds are really inexpensive and that way you can always have one that is in some form of healthiness producing for you even if you live in a cold climate and crops 9 and 10 that I am starting from seed in July are bulbing onions and shallots up until this point I have been a seasonal onion and shallot grower because of my understanding as to how onions and shallots bulb they bulb based on the day length so for that reason I have only planted them in winter time so they would basically start bulbing when my days were sufficiently long at least 12 hours or more because that day length is actually what triggers the bulbing so I always planted them in winter so they would start bulbing when we would have peak daylength in spring and that would give me nice big onion bulbs however last winter I tried something new and I planted some onions in late summer and I let them overwinter and they bulb really well now did they bulb as well as the onions that I plant at the normal time in late winter no they didn’t but they still did bulb for me so for that reason I’m going to consider onions and shallots here in zone 8 something I can grow yearround now because days are shorter during the fall and the winter I am growing short day varieties so they can still bulb when our day length is only 10 or 11 hours a long day or intermediate day onion would not work very well so I’m going to plant these and experiment with them and see how they do and since they’re basically a pest-free disease-free plant and there’s zero effort I really have nothing to lose also as an added bonus I will be able to go through and periodically harvest and snip a green or two off each plant as I go so I can eat them as green onions or spring onions now you want to be careful when you do that because the greenery is the solar panel of the onions it’s what they use to collect sunlight and photosynthesize so you can’t snip a whole lot off of them but you can periodically if you just need four or five little bits of spring onion you can take a green here and there from the plant especially a smaller more newly formed leaf if you need green onions for dinner so if you’re in a milder zone like a seven or warmer you can grow onions and shallots all throughout the winter because these are hardy to something like 10° F if you live in a cooler zone where onions aren’t really going to survive you can still start onions now because when you start them from seed in July they will be ready for transplant outdoors in late August and you should be harvesting them at some point in October maybe November and because they are frost and freeze hardy even if you live in a really cold zone you should still be able to pick them in October and November because it’s not really that cold yet anywhere in the United States and as promised here is a list of every single variety of seed that I am starting right now in July i will place direct links down in the video description to as many of these varieties as I can for your convenience if you are interested in any of them and that right there are 10 crops that I’m starting from seed in July right now and I bet you can too 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 the notification bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these for any of the seed varieties that I featured in this video I will place direct links to as many of them as I can down in the video description for your convenience for everything I use in real life in my garden to start seed or just grow a vegetable garden in general they are all linked down in the video description in the Amazon storefront link so expand the video description click on the Amazon storefront link and you’ll see everything I use in real life while you’re down there please consider checking out my spreadshop if you want to support my channel by purchasing some custom merch thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video well we had a nasty loud thunderstorm about 2 hours ago and Dale’s been hiding out but he finally came out from behind the couch and I think it’s time to reward his bravery with a treat and I just got him these peanut butter banana treats and they honestly have the best ingredients I have ever seen in a dog treat oats barley peanut butter coconut oil banana rosemary extract no funny stuff no preservatives and I can’t wait to give him one so here is what they look like and they smell pretty good so let’s give one to Mr handsome Pants all right buddy now you be gentle oh that’s very good buddy you’ve gotten so good at taking treats what do you think does it taste good honestly buddy these ingredients are so good i think I’m actually going to try one because they are human grade it’s a little dry but I’m glad you like them buddy they’re not for me but then again I don’t think they were made for me turns out humans don’t really like cookies unless they are loaded up with butter and sugar without them they just don’t taste very good but I’m glad you enjoy them and I promise you buddy you’re going to get every single one of the cookies in that bag because no one else wants