Summer Garden
Extending the Season

You love your summer garden and would just love to extend its season. Whether your garden to produce colorful blooms and fragrant flowers that delight the senses or provide you with plenty of vegetables that will keep your family fed throughout the long cold winter months, there is much to be said and enjoyed about keeping a summer garden growing and thriving.

In fact, many of us look for ways to extend the season and prolong the lives of our gardens in order to get that little bit of extra life from the flowers, plants, and vegetables that we plant in them. Keep reading to discover a few ways that can prolong the season a few more days, weeks, or even perhaps with an extra month of color or vegetable production.

One thing you can do to prolong the season is by planting in a raised bed. This is basically planting your vegetables in a specifically designed garden box that rests above ground. These boxes will heat up more quickly and cool down more slowly and allow a little extra growing time. For small flower or vegetable gardens these boxes are often ideal allowing vegetables to continue producing after the initial seasonal frosts that often signal the end of growing for those plants below ground.

If raised beds aren't going to work for you, it is possible to begin the plants in the warmth of your home on smaller raised beds and then transport them once the plants have started to mature and the frost season is over with. This gives your garden a bit of a head start, though it will do little to prolong the life of your garden at the end of summer once the first frost hits. So, you can see that raised beds are truly the most effective method for small gardens.

Those with large crops often find alternate heating methods at acceptable expense to prolong the lives of their gardens or to ward off against frosts that occur after the initial spring planting or early in the fall. You could also invest in garden row covers to protect your plants and extend the season and the life of your plants a little beyond the average growing season or, at the very least, protect your plants through the first frost or so. These covers keep the plants nice and toasty warm. On the other hand, it is important that you monitor them closely when covered to avoid overheating; and do not use the covers unless necessary as this can affect the growth of the plants and the yields negatively as much as it can impact them.

However, please understand that there is no requirement for you to extend the season and prolong the life of your garden. Many people get what they want from their garden whether it be the enjoyment of beauty from the bright and colorful flowers or enough vegetables to last through the leaner winter months when vegetables come at either a premium price or lack in flavor to some degree. Once you've gotten what you want or expect from your garden there really is no reason to prolong its life. There is especially no reason to take extraordinary steps to do so.

That being said, there are many families that feel an extra month of color will help get them through the long and drab winter months of reduced bright and vividly colored flowers. Also, for this reason, they think that an extra week or two to harvest their vegetables will provide an extra month or two of food. These are very valid reasons for making the effort to extend the season and the life of a summer garden.

My hope is that the above information will help you extend your summer season. Good luck with your summer garden. Hopefully you will be able to enjoy it well into the fall or at the very least beyond the year's first frost.