too late to seed?

Yep, I would use some plants. It's June 1st - way too late for seed up here.

It depends on how late your growing season is. You don't want to start tomatoes or peppers from seeds at this point but I think your growing season is probably long enough for squash and melons. I'm clueless about potatoes and peanuts.

I can literally grow here to december

The frost , if any before dec 25 ( lets use that as a cut off ) those frosts are so light I can cover the plants with plastic at night
remove it in the morning.

With prime , full sun, continues summer light being now until november

I am about to plant some Morning Glories from seed...but I am in the South..so it should be fine. Was last year. I am always a little late in my planting. I get lucky sometimes - We don't get really cold until well after Halloween. We'll see though. It is always a guess.

Why not do both?

Buy one or two seedlings and plant them. Then also sow all the seeds you wish to start. By the time the purchased seedlings mature and produce veggies, the seeds will be just a few weeks behind them and you'll have their veggies well into late in the season. In the meantime, you'll have the veggies from the plants to tide you over and won't have to wait so long to reap the benefits of your home garden.

Just be sure to have the first batch of plants on one end of your planter box and all the seeds on the other end because their water requirements will be different during the various stages of growth.


What type of squash and melons are you going to grow? Those plants are vines and will take up a lot of room as they spread.

Tomatos and bell peppers are good companion plants. I'd suggest planting a few marigold plants in there too as a natural pest deterent.

One suggestion for your planter box that will help you manage the space is to also build or buy a piece of lattice and attach it to the back side of your planter box. You'll be able to support the plants and encourage them to grow upward in height rather than spreading out horizontally and hogging all the room in your planter box. If you do this, be sure the lattice supports are installed on the shady side of the box so it doesn't block the sun from the plants when they start growing on it.

I'm listening too.

root crop seeds can be sown until the 4th of July and then in early September for a late fall crop. Potatoes are fun if you grow them as "new" spuds. Cut up your seed "eyes" from sprouting potatoes and then plant them in a shallow row. Cover the row with straw and dont let it dry out. The spuds will grow and set in the starw and youll have wonderfully clean and small potatoes from August on.

You can plant cuke and tomatoes from plants and melons and squash fom seed. (I plant about 2 acres of gourds and I dont plant them till about June 10th)

Your problem in Texas is the same I used to have in STockton Cal. It was just too dry too early. In STockton, wed start our seeds before Christmas and begin sowing plants in JAnuary. Out there, your gardening season was burned out by mid June, and unless you irrigated and refreshed your soil , the summer temps and low humidity would turn plant beds into graveyards of crispy stems.