It’s Not Too Late: 7 Things to Plant in Late June (in Pots)

It’s the third week of June and you’re just now thinking about planting. Good. You’re not late.

There’s a particular guilt that turns up around now — the feeling that the season is a train you already missed. In containers, that’s mostly not true. Plenty of things actually want to start in warm soil, and a few fast crops will hand you something to eat before Labor Day. You don’t need a yard for any of this. You need a few pots, a bag of potting mix, and a sunny rail.

Here’s what I’d plant this week.

7 things you can still plant in late June

Bush beans. My first pick. You direct-sow the seeds right into a 5-gallon pot, they sprout in under a week in warm soil, and you’re picking beans in about eight weeks. No transplanting, no fuss. A bush variety stays compact and doesn’t need a trellis, which is exactly what you want on a railing.

Leaf lettuce. Not the heading kind — that bolts in summer heat — but loose-leaf cut-and-come-again types. Give it afternoon shade and you’ll snip leaves for weeks. A shallow windowbox is plenty. If your balcony bakes after noon, tuck it behind something taller.

Basil. Basil loves what kills your lettuce. It wants heat and sun, and late June is its season. One plant in a one-gallon pot on a sunny rail will out-produce anything you’d buy in those sad little grocery clamshells. Pinch the tops and it bushes out instead of going to flower.

Bush summer squash. One zucchini or yellow squash plant in a single 5-gallon grow bag is genuinely all you need — one plant will overwhelm you, which is the running joke about squash for a reason. They grow fast in warm soil. Just keep the water steady.

Radishes. The crop for the impatient. Twenty-five to thirty days from seed to plate, happy in a shallow container, and forgiving of a beginner. When I want to feel like a gardener again after killing something, I plant radishes.

Swiss chard. Tougher in heat than spinach, and it’ll keep going all summer and well into fall. The stems come in absurd colors that make a balcony look intentional. One pot of chard earns its space three times over.

Nasturtiums. Fast from seed, cheerful, and they’ll spill over the edge of a railing planter by August. The leaves and flowers are both edible — peppery, a little like watercress — though that’s a topic with its own rules, and I cover safe edible-flower growing properly in my book rather than in a planting list. For now: easy, pretty, and they ask almost nothing of you.

The two things that actually matter in July

I’ve killed plenty of container plants, and it’s almost never the planting that does it. It’s these two:

Containers dry out fast. A pot in July sun can go from damp to bone-dry in a single afternoon, and a wilted seedling rarely fully recovers. I water once a day, sometimes twice in a heat wave, and I’d rather you set a reminder than trust yourself to remember. A watering can with a long spout makes it a thirty-second job instead of a chore you skip. Fabric grow bags help here too — they breathe, so roots stay healthier than they do in a hot plastic pot.

Use potting mix, not garden soil. Garden soil compacts into a brick in a container and chokes the roots. A bagged organic potting mix stays light and drains right. This is the cheapest mistake to avoid and the one I see most often.

That’s the whole trick to late-June planting in pots: pick fast, forgiving crops, keep the water steady, and start the mix right. Otto, my terrier, will of course assume the bean pot is a salad bar built for him — but that’s a problem for July.

I lay out the whole small-space season — what to plant when, and in what size pot — in Small-Space Big Harvest. This is the late-June shortcut. The book is the year.