You MUST Plant These Crops in JUNE

What's going on growers? It's James Frigioni coming to you live from Jersey. Today I'm going to share with you 10 crops you gotta get planted in June. Let's go! Now that it's June and the temperatures are climbing, it's the perfect time to get some warm weather crops growing. You might be thinking, oh no, it's too late. Well, don't stress. There's still plenty of time to get some sowing going and a great place to start is with cucumbers. There's nothing better than grabbing some fresh cucumbers straight from the garden during the summer heat. They're crisp, juicy and so much tastier than the bland ones you find at the grocery store. There's still plenty of time to get some cucumber seeds directly sown into the garden or you can start them in a veggo seed cell just like this one then transplant them out. They'll sprout in about three to ten days. They love the heat and hate the cold, making right now the ideal time to get some cucumbers going. Cucumber beetles are one of the biggest challenges when growing cucumbers, but we can outsmart them by growing some varieties that are less attractive to the cucumber beetle. Burpless varieties like the tender green cucumber and also the Suyolong have low levels of cucurbitacin. This is a chemical compound found in cucumbers that makes them bitter. It's also the compound that draws in the cucumber beetles. So it's smart if we plant some kinds that are burpless, ones that the cucumber beetles don't like. When your plants are young you can protect them with an insect netting. This will keep the cucumber beetles off your young plants and help them get a good footing. Just make sure when your plants start to flower that you remove that insect netting. This way the bees can get in and pollinate your plants. Another way to protect your plants from the cucumber beetle is by spraying them with surround kaolin clay. This will act as a protectant and make your plants much less appetizing for the cucumber beetle. The beetle will go in there looking for a bite of your cucumber plant and end up with a mouth full of clay. Cucumbers are one of those crops where the more you pick the more you get. So make sure you go out there and grab some cukes while they're young. If you allow even one cucumber to fully ripen on the vine then the whole vine will quit producing. Keep your plants focused on production instead of on the ripening of seed by going out there and grabbing some cukes while they're young. The heat is here. The soil is warm making it the ideal time to get some green beans planted. You can see here I plant my beans in a square foot method and grow nine plants in one square foot and they grow great. These beans are just a little further along than the others. Nine per square foot looking fantastic. Look at the health of those beans. We're gonna get nice production out of this one. Beans are an easy crop to grow and they only take about a week or so to sprout. You always want to direct sow your beans because they do not like being transplanted out. If you have never tried growing the dragon tongue bean I suggest you do. It's my favorite variety of bush bean. If you're growing pole beans especially something like the scarlet runner bean those things grow vigorously. Make sure you have a trellis for them to grow up. If you don't and you let them sprawl along the ground then what they'll do is they'll attach to some of your annuals or other plants around it and pull down at them. So when growing pole beans make sure you have a trellis. The next crop is a sun loving one that you still have plenty of time to get planted. I'm talking about squash. I also want to mention if you might notice we've got some new merch that we just dropped and I'm super proud of it. You'll notice we've got the tomato. It's growing from seed along the growth stages up to the fruit with a let it grow underneath it. I'm really happy with the design. I love how it came out. Let me know down in the comments if you enjoy it and if you do think it looks nice grab one over at teamgrow.us. Squash come in so many shapes and colors. There's a lot of diversity which makes them very fun and a rewarding crop to grow. For summer squash I always grow the Castato Romanesco Zucchini, the Englisher Custard Squash and the White Scallop Squash. For winter squash I love the Butternut Squash with their beautiful orange flesh and the Buttercup Squash. Right now is the perfect time to direct sow some squash. It's quick and easy to do. Just make a hole, drop the seed in, cover it up and water it in. Make sure to mix in some all-purpose fertilizer before you do or you could start squash in cells just like this. Make sure you use a large cell though because the plants get big quick. Just drop your seed into the cell. In just a few days it'll sprout and these things get big fast. When the weather is right like it is right now your squash plants will essentially double in size every few days. Sometimes it feels like you come out here, you take a look at the plant, you turn around and then you look back and the thing is bigger. Like cucumbers, summer squash will continue to produce fruit up until the frost as long as you stay on top of picking. So don't be afraid to go out there and grab some of the zucchinis while they're small. They're so good like that. They're delicate with just an incredible flavor and nice and soft. If you allow the zucchini or whatever summer squash to get really large on the plant and start to ripen the seed then the plant will focus on ripening that seed instead of producing more fruit. So don't be afraid to get out there and grab your summer squash while it's young. A common issue when growing squash are the squash vine bores. I suggest you plant around a squash now and then plant another round of squash in late June early July because if you plant it then you will be outside of the window of time when the adult vine bores are laying their eggs. A good way to protect your plants is to use an insect netting on your squash plants when they're young or you can spray them with a surround kaolin clay to keep the vine bores from going after your precious plants. In June right now it's still a great time to get some melons planted. I love growing watermelons. Big red juicy ones, small yellow ones and even tasty white ones. Cantaloupes are exceptional as well. Delicate orange ones that are so sweet they taste like candy. When I would eat them I could never keep tuck away. Melons thrive in the heat and like squash when the weather is perfect like it is now they seem to grow so quickly you go inside go to sleep come back out and then overnight it's like the melons doubled in size. Right now there's still plenty of time to direct sow some melons or you can plant them in cells just like this. They should only take about three to ten days to sprout based on the temperature of the soil but right now when the soil has warmed they should only take about five days tops. If you have a short growing season it's a good idea to plant some varieties of melon that produce quickly. For instance when it comes to watermelons you can plant something like the black tail watermelon. This one only takes about 70 days from seed to harvest. As opposed to the moon and stars watermelon this one typically takes about a hundred days from seed to harvest. Just like cucumbers and squash some of your issues will arise from the cucumber beetles and the squash vine borers. Just use some of those preventative measures that I shared with you earlier in the video. Also make sure that once your watermelons or any of your melons start to produce fruit that you stay on top of watering. What you don't want is the soil to completely dry out and then a big rain to come. That could split your melons and that'd be really unfortunate. Another thing you can do is add some diced leaf mulch or even wood chip mulch around the base of your plants. This will help keep the soil consistently moist and help reduce the chance of your melons splitting. In early June you still have time to plant one of the best crops you could possibly grow in a backyard garden or you could just transplant it out. I'm talking about tomatoes. Every year I grow so many different varieties of tomatoes there's an incredible amount of diversity in the color, the size, and the taste. It's truly one of the most fun crops to grow. It is June 4th today and I believe you still have plenty of time to direct sow some tomatoes. When it comes down to it tomatoes take on average about 70 to 100 days to actually start fruiting and where I live right now we still have 135 days until our first expected frost date. So you can direct sow some tomatoes today or start them in cells and transplant them into the garden. But ideally it would be better if you had some tomatoes that you could transplant out now. Even if you have to go to a big box store like Lowe's, I grabbed this a super sweet 100 my favorite variety. They're selling it over at Lowe's. It's more expensive than buying some packs of seed and planting them yourself but if you take a look around at some of these tomatoes around us right now is the ideal time for these tomatoes to be soaking up the sun and growing. So yes you could still plant them from seed right now but ideally it would be better to transplant them in. When transplanting your tomatoes it's actually a good idea to bury them deeper than they come out of the pot. If you bury the stem new roots will actually form from that stem because this is a vine. Also when transplanting make sure to mix in some all-purpose fertilizer. This way your plants can explode into growth once they hit the soil. Another thing is now that the weather is heating up and it's hot out I suggest that you transplant your tomatoes into the garden either in the evening or on a cloudy day. This way when the hot sun is just beating down it doesn't cook your tomato plants before they transition into their new home. I also suggest you trellis your tomatoes or grow them vertical and prune them. This will allow you to grow more tomatoes in a smaller amount of space. Also when trellising and pruning it makes it easier to go out there and work on the tomatoes when they're at a manageable height and grab harvests from them. Not to mention when growing vertical like this your plants will have better airflow and better access to light meaning less chance of diseases. If you have some tomatoes growing you need to make sure you get some basil planted as well. The typical Genovese basil is a great option and I suggest you grow that. I also think you should try your hand at growing some purple basil something like the dark opal purple basil. It looks incredible so striking the dark purples on it but it also has a good flavor. Another thing for your basil is you want to go out there and continually harvest from it. If you see the plant starting to flower you want to go out there remove the tops where the flowers are. What this will do is it will trick the basil to keep producing. It will take it out of trying to go into that flowering state and producing flowers and by removing them it'll bring it back to the vegetative state so it keeps pushing out keeps getting bigger and increases your harvests. It's similar to the summer squash or the cucumbers. The more you pick the more you get. In June you still have time to get some sweet potatoes planted. Sweet potato vines are beautiful looking plants and their tubers are packed with vitamins and minerals. Sweet potatoes also grow fantastic in containers so just because they're a vine that doesn't mean they need to take up a lot of space. You can even plant them in containers on a patio. Sweet potatoes love the heat which makes right now a great time to get them planted. We grow them from slips. You could either grow your own slips from a sweet potato from last year that you have or you can order some slips some good varieties from a reputable company. I like ordering mine from Fedco. Because we're growing sweet potatoes for the tubers we want to make sure the soil is loose, drains well and has a high level of organic matter. This will give us the best production. Another thing is we want to make sure we're providing our sweet potatoes with some fertilizer and we want to make sure that the fertilizer isn't super high in nitrogen. We want our potato plants to focus on those tubers and growing those tubers. We don't want the plants to focus on just leaf production. So a good option is something like an all-purpose fertilizer. This will be good. Another one that I've used in the past is the TurboTuber fertilizer from Fedco. I've used that and I've had some good results with that one as well. Just make sure it's not a fertilizer that's super high in nitrogen. Again we need our plants to focus on tuber production not leaf production. Right now is the perfect time to get your peppers transplanted into the garden. I love some fresh peppers. Tuck love them too. We grab them right off the plants and snack right on them. Grabbing a bowl full of peppers is a great feeling. Because peppers take a long time to produce I like growing them in containers. This way they're not taking up space in my garden when I transition from a summer garden into a fall garden. They're not just in the way. Instead they're in their own containers and I can just leave them and allow them to produce up until a frost. Right now is an excellent time to get some eggplants transplanted into your garden. I grow purple ones like the Rosita eggplant. Purple and white ones like the Lestata de Gandia and even all white ones like the Japanese white eggplant. Like peppers my eggplants produce late for me. Because of that I grow the majority of them in containers. This is nice because I can even take these containers and move them around into different locations. Say my eggplant needs a little bit of shade I can bring it to a spot and give it a little shade. Say it wants more light I can bring it to a spot that's super sunny. Another thing is it frees up more space in my when I'm not planting them in my raised beds. This way I can use this space to plant a quick crop in the summer and then I can get another crop planted in the fall. Eggplants and peppers take a considerable amount of time to go from seed to harvest. That's why I want to suggest planting either eggplants or peppers right now directly from seed. It's the perfect time to transplant into the garden if you already have them growing but there's just not enough time to go from seed. Right now in June there's still plenty of time to give your garden some more color and draw in some beneficial insects by planting some flowers. When it comes to flowers I suggest you add some borage and some marigolds. Those are some of my favorite functional flowers. You can't forget about growing some sunflowers too. All different colors there's like some of the ones that are bright yellow and some of the darker ones they just look stunning. Another great flower is the calendula. I really enjoy that one and also my favorite looking flower is probably the zinnia. They're absolutely beautiful and the butterflies love them too. You can't forget about some of the perennial flowers too. Echinacea being my all-time favorite. I planted that thing one time in my garden. Now it just spreads itself everywhere and I love that. Not to mention the eastern goldfishes love it. Before I let you go I want to leave you with a bonus crop. I'm not growing in here because I don't really have the space. I'm talking about corn. You still have time to get that planted into the ground. One of the reasons I'm mentioning it is because in my new homestead I'll be able to have the space to get some corn planted there and I'm super excited about that. Not this year but next year. So make sure you guys hit that subscribe button to stick around to see us plant some corn in the new homestead. We also have some cool ideas where I'll be planting some wheat and I may even try my hand at growing some rice. I think it would be fun although we may not have enough water. Who cares? We'll try our hand at it. But when it comes down to it there's still time to get some corn planted. That's today's video growers thing to watch and I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you got something out of it. I truly hope you get out there and get some of these crops planted. A good way to find out when you have time to still plant is to find out how many frost free days you have left. All you have to do is take the date today and then find your first expected frost date. Mine's like October 15th. That'll let you know how many days you have left. I have about 135 days left from today. That helps me understand what I still have time to grow. Just make sure if you only have like 135 days and you want to grow something you don't want to grow a watermelon that takes like 130 days because you just might not have enough time. And I'll tell you it really stinks when you have a watermelon that's almost ripe but doesn't have enough time. It just never quite gets there. It kind of stinks but overall I still want you to get out there and get a lot of this stuff in the ground because even if you do have that watermelon that doesn't end up ripening it's still a fun process to grow the whole entire thing. I had a blast out here and I hope you got some true value out of this video. I also want to mention that you got to go over to teamgrow.us to check out the community. We have over 1,500 members that have come together that are pooling our resources to help learn from one another. Another thing is you got to check out the new merch over at teamgrow.us. We've got the tomato on it with the let it grow. I think it came out fantastic. Let me know down in the comments if you think it's a nice design and if you enjoy the shirt. I also want to send a thank you to one of our new channel members Barbara Gibson. Thanks for being a part of team grow. Thanks for having your hand in everything we're doing out here. Now that it's June it's really heating up. Earlier this morning it was like relatively cool like 55 degrees so I went with pants but as the day has gone on the sun's been out and it's really starting to cook out here so I'm thankful that we're finishing up on this video so I could get some shorts on and enjoy some of the sun. The cherries are right on the cusp of being ripe the rainier cherries and boy they look incredible. In a short period of time we're going to bring you out give you a tour and let you just see how well everything is growing because there's stuff that's already ready to grab a harvest from like some of the frail cabbage. An early producer a great one and we're ready to grab some fresh cabbage from it. If you guys enjoyed the video hit the like button hit the subscribe button and do not forget to share this with your friends. We'll be back to you on with another one real soon. We out!