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The Best Vegetables for a Kansas Garden
The Best Vegetables for a Kansas Garden. Kansas is the nation's largest producer of wheat and a major producer of potatoes, corn, beans, and oats. The winters are harsh, the summers sultry. With the exception of tropical vegetables, Kansas gardens provide an opportunity to grow a wide variety of vegetables. One thing to take into consideration when...
Kansas is the nation's largest producer of wheat and a major producer of potatoes, corn, beans, and oats. The winters are harsh, the summers sultry. With the exception of tropical vegetables, Kansas gardens provide an opportunity to grow a wide variety of vegetables. One thing to take into consideration when planting your garden in Kansas are the occasional cold spells in the springtime. It is important to note which vegetables plants are freeze resistant, half-resistant, tender and very tender.
The Best Freeze-Resistant Vegetables
Asparagus, rhubarb, and winter onions are the hardiest frost-resistant vegetables grown in Kansas gardens. These perennials winter underground and sprout again in the spring. Non-perennial varieties can weather a short frost but grow best when the weather is between 50 and 60 degrees. A few of the nearly 2 dozen vegetables labeled freeze-resistant are green onions, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, turnips, peas, and radishes. The best planting time for these vegetables is mid-to-late March before the day time temperatures reach 75 degrees.
The Best Half-Resistant Vegetables
In Kansas a frost can occur as late as April, when overnight temperatures may dip into the low 30s and last a week or longer. A cold spell in the midst of spring was once called a "blackberry winter", purportedly because it was good for stimulating wild blackberry growth. Carrots, Swiss chard, collards, spinach, turnips, beets, and lettuce can tolerate a light freeze fairly well.
The Best Tender Vegetables
Tomatoes, green beans, sweet corn, okra, lima beans, and green peppers cannot survive a frost. They should be seeded or transplanted only when the day time temperatures reach between 75 and 85 degrees.
The Best Very Tender Vegetables
In late June, when the Kansas temperatures reach above 80, watermelon, sweet potatoes, eggplant, cucumber, mustard, summer squash, and muskmelon thrive.
Kansas has a second, short growing season that begins in July for beets, snap peas, cabbage, carrots, broccoli, and potatoes. Plant kale, lettuce, radishes, spinach, and turnips by August and harvest all before the first frost. Any tender and very tender vegetables remaining in the garden in late September or early October will succumb to the first hard freeze.
