Gardening: Making Changes in June?

I'm not sure if planting things this late will work out or not but our summer's seem to be lasting longer so let's hope this works. Monday, I hoed up all of my spinach and reworked the squash family plants. All of my spinach had come up right before we started having those 85 degree days then it turned yellow and just looked downright awful. It's a cool weather crop and I missed out on it this year. In my other garden, the crows had found the squash, zucchini, cucumber, and especially the cantaloupe seeds. About half of these plants came up, mostly cucumbers. It will still be plenty to provide our family with fresh vegetables but not enough to store up for the winter. Instead of letting that ground go unused, I moved all the good plants into 2 rows and planted pole beans and pumpkins in the 2 bare rows.


Row 1: Cucumbers, Yellow Squash
Row 2: Zucchini, Pole Beans
Row 3: Cantaloupe, corn
Row 4: Pole Beans, Pumpkins

At first, we weren't too thrilled with the thought of picking beans. Beans are a lot more work than anything else in the garden. Yes, you plant them and tend to them like everything else but then there is the back breaking task of picking them. Then you have to work them up and can them. I finally decided that it will be worth it. So what if we'll have to work a little harder? Our ancestors probably didn't give it a second thought. 

In our attempt to be self reliant, canned beans would help get us through the winter. I don't believe it's possible to go from buying every item you use from the store to being totally self-reliant in a single year so we will still be making weekly trips to the store for milk at the very least. Having some vegetables stored up for the winter is one step closer to our goal.