Get local news delivered to your inbox!

July has ended but the growing season continues. Now is the time to begin planting flowers, herbs and vegetables to enjoy from late summer into fall.

Arugula greens have become a popular salad ingredient and pizza topping. The heat tolerant Astro variety is ready to harvest in only 21 days so be sure to sow seeds more than once for harvesting into late fall.

Beets will produce a good crop of deep red, golden or white roots if you sow their seeds soon. Seedlings need to be thinned to a two-inch spacing after their first month of growth and all of the young plants you pull up are good to eat in salads, stir fries and smoothies.

Snap beans or green beans come in green, purple and yellow and they will produce succulent protein rich pods into the fall if planted soon. Bean varieties are available with round or flat pods in pole (climbing) or bush (compact) forms.

It is time to plant members of the cabbage or crucifer family. These cold hardy vegetables range from red, green, savoy and Chinese cabbages to cauliflower, broccoli and pak choi.

Also known as bok choy, pac choi is an Asian green with fat succulent green or white stems topped with clusters of green leaves. Varieties such as Rosie and Purple Lady have contrasting deep red leaves to give your salads and stir fries some added color.

Other cabbage relatives are pot herbs or greens, often cooked in a pot before serving. They include collards, kale, turnip and mustard which germinate readily in the warm summer soil.

Lettuce seeds sown in the next month will provide a long term supply of sweet tender heads unlike anything sold in stores. You can grow romaine (dwarf or standard), iceberg, loose leaf, butterhead and oakleaf lettuces, and all of them come in various shades of red and green.

Growing organic lettuce is simple. There is no need for pesticides because slugs or aphids are the only pests of importance and they can be washed off in your kitchen sink.

The same is true of spinach. It is rare for any pests to attack this cold, hardy crop.

Two classes of spinach are available, smooth leaf and savoyed leaf. One is easy to rinse clean at the kitchen sink and the other has nooks and crannies where sand and dirt can hide.

Bloomsdale is a heavily-savoyed spinach, introduced in 1874 by D. Landreth and Sons Seed Company in Philadelphia. It still is popular and widely planted.

A smooth leaf modern spinach called Space has leaves approaching 12 inches long. All kinds of spinach grow well as an autumn crop and their seeds germinate best when the soil cools off around a month from now.

The time is right to plant more seeds of ornamentals such as flowering kale and cabbage. Seeds of cosmos bipinnatus sown soon will provide plenty of white, pink and purple color until killed by frost in fall.

Don Davis is a retired Virginia Cooperative Extension agent. He can be reached at dodavis2@vt.edu.

Get local news delivered to your inbox!

Winridge Manor, tucked in rural Madison Heights, transformed into a bed and breakfast and a wedding venue since its initial construction as a private home — and its service-minded owner has visions for preserving its history while expanding the property's offerings.

Summer’s warm weather and long days make it the ideal time to complete some projects in your home. Set aside some time — and some cash — to gi…

Gardeners have two priorities in July. One is to keep the yard looking good and the other is to enjoy the flavor of freshly-picked tomatoes.

Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.