by Kenn Alan

By now, I’m sure, most of the plants you are going to grow this year are in your garden beds and showing off their beauty and offering their exciting seasonal flavors you will enjoy all summer long.

Let us take a few moments and discuss the excitement factor of gardening. That’s when you get pleasant surprises popping up when you least expect them. I like to create my own excitement factor and I do it on several levels by adding seeds directly sown between my existing flowers in the garden I planted two months ago.

For veggies, place one or two seeds between each of your tomato plants now for late season fruits. Try new varieties with this method. I would recommend a determinate-type though. Some tomatoes take 90-days to produce and you will want them to come in quickly when they start to fruit because we’re looking at September for maturity. Plant a few more cucumber seeds for pickling cucs. Also, add a few dill seeds to your flowerbeds for a nice accent plant.

It never hurts to sow some ornamental pepper seeds in small containers that already have flowers or herbs in them. Even if they are just starting to show color at frost time, you can always bring them indoors and enjoy them in a sunny window this fall.

In your flower garden beds, sow some zinnias, sunflowers, bells of Ireland and bachelor buttons for cut flowers through frost. Also put in curled parsley, spicy bush basil, borage and any other low-growing, fast-maturing herbs to add more texture to your garden.

Follow the instructions on the seed packages for sowing depth and plant spacing.

Sow those seeds now and just wait for those exciting surprises to pop up and make you smile!

Next month, we’ll touch on the subject of the ethics of plant sharing.

E-mail me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it if you would like to know more about late-season seed starting.

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