September 4, 2025 – Well, we’ve had a nice warm(?) summer, and some of your crops have produced well while others not so well. In my case, for whatever reason, the okra produced like mad, but two weeks ago, most of the leaves fell off and the stalks turned brown. So, what to do with the 9 X 17 raised bed garden?
There are several vegetables our local Safety Crisis Center (battered people shelter) can use, such as spinach, radishes, snap peas, leaf lettuce, cabbage, and kale. The literature also suggests green onions, but planting now means they stay in the ground through winter to be harvested in the spring.
I chose sugar snap peas and radishes. Radishes come in three sizes, and I chose the largest. Seeds were soaked overnight and then sown the next day. I just scattered them in the garden and then leaf-raked the area, which is much faster than lightly covering them with soil! They have a very short growing time, around 25 days, so there is no worry about frost, plus they like cooler weather. Until the seeds sprout and immediately thereafter, water AT LEAST once a day to keep the top soil moist.
My other choice was snap peas or more commonly sugar snap peas. With a normal first frost around 15 November, they need to be planted during September. Again, the seeds were soaked overnight and then planted the next day. Unlike sowing radish seeds, I put the peas 1-2” deep and rows 18-36” apart. peas in a starter mix and will transfer them to the garden when the seedlings are 2-3” tall.
Snap peas can be planted 1-2” apart, and they can be transplanted right in the middle of the radishes. Avoid high nitrogen fertilizers, and they result in lush growth and few seed pods.
