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Fall garden

From Summer to Fall in the Garden

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Fall weather in my garden on the Mississippi Gulf Coast starts about a month later than it did in my old garden Northwest of Atlanta. The first frost here should be closer to December 1 than to November 1, which means that my garden has not been completely changed over to all-fall crops. What is left of my summer crops — the ones that haven’t drowned in this year’s overly abundant rain — is still producing, but not spectacularly.

Pile of red okra pods and red roselle pods on a blue-bordered tray.

Mostly, right now, my harvests are red — red okra and red roselle. These are both in the mallow/hibiscus family of plants, and they both can produce decent harvests in drought and in flood. There have been several occasions this year when the two roselle plants were standing in a few inches of water, for several days in a row, and they kept on growing.

I’ve harvested enough roselle pods to put two cups of chopped up red seed-pod-coverings (aka: calyxes, the part of the pod we eat) into the freezer for use later in a mock-cranberry sauce. More of the red calyxes are drying in a shallow basket, to use in tea this winter.

Transition from summer to fall

Summertime’s pepper plants, eggplants, a couple of tomato plants, and the wild expanse of sweet potato vines are still taking up space in the garden, but most of the space has been refreshed and replanted with cool-season crops.

One of the first spaces that could be replanted was the area that had been in black-eyed peas. We ended up with a full quart of those summer peas from the 3×6 foot space where they had been growing.

  • This year’s black-eyed pea harvest
  • This year’s odd crop was bitter melon
  • Sprawling sweet potato vines
  • The roselle is at one end of the clothesline.

Cool-season crops that I have planted so far include several kinds of chicories (radicchio, escarole, sugar-loaf chicory, and a “wild garden chicory”), lettuce, kale, arugula, collards, beets, many kinds of radishes, carrots, and cilantro.

  • Castelfranco radicchio
  • Winterbor kale
  • One garden bed of greens

I started many of the greens in a wooden flat that my Joe made out of old fence boards. Little rows of each kind of seed were marked with a cut-in-half wide craft stick (aka: popsicle stick). The soil is actually a layer of potting mix under a layer of seed-starting mix.

  • Box of seedlings at about 3 weeks
  • Same box of seedlings after planting some in the garden

I have some other crops to plant after removing/harvesting the last of the okra, sweet potatoes, and other summer crops. There is a new lettuce to transplant into the garden, and we will want more arugula.

The one 3×3 foot patch of arugula already coming up will not be enough. I plan to plant another 3×3 patch of arugula when there is room. Seeds for the patches of arugula get strewn right into the garden, not started in a flat. Also, I will be planting more carrots and, of course, more radishes. Those also get planted straight into the garden as seeds, but not so wildly strewn as the arugula.

Some minor troubles with cool-season crops

Although the fall-and-winter garden is the easiest and most trouble-free, some problems can arise. To start, there are weeds. They are just different weeds than were growing in the summer garden. More annoying, though, are the pests.

  • Slugs and Snails – We have had a tremendous amount of rain this year, more than 90 inches so far, which makes the slug and snail problem totally understandable. I sprinkled out the usual recommended (surprisingly small!) amount of Sluggo, an organic-approved slug and snail bait that is pet-safe and wildlife-safe, which ended the problem.
  • Caterpillars – These have attacked my beets. Last year, caterpillars destroyed my Swiss Chard, which is just a different variety of the exact same species of plant as beets. I was more alert to potential trouble this year, and I have been using my organic-approved caterpillar spray, Thuricide, between rains. Maybe this year I will get some beets and the beet greens that taste a lot like Swiss Chard. The kale has also had a few caterpillars, but not such an enthusiastic abundance as on the beets.
  • Small mammals – I am guessing that the animal munching on the lettuces is a rabbit, but it could be some other small animal. An animal ate last year’s lettuce, too. I will be covering the lettuce patch later today with some row-cover fabric similar to this one at Amazon.com (mine is so old that I do not remember the brand). The cover does make it harder for animals to reach the plants. Some good news is that the lettuce-eater is not munching on any of the other greens, so I do not need to cover the whole garden.

Something for the pollinators

Small flower-fly approaching a cluster of purple-blue ageratum flowers from the left.

I collected a couple of seed-heads from a wild Ageratum last fall, from a plant on the side of the road. I planted a few of the seeds in spring, to make sure that the yard would have some flowers this fall. Right now, the mass of purple-blue flowers is being visited by several kinds of butterflies, including Monarchs, some flower-flies like the one approaching the flower cluster above, from the left, some honey bees, small native bees, and a couple kinds of larger native bumblebees. It is pretty glorious. I am feeling lucky that this plan worked out so well.

I hope that things are working out well in your gardens, too!

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Planting Crops for Fall and Winter Harvest

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Over the past few weeks, I have been planting crops that can stand up to cold weather to harvest in fall and winter. So far, I’ve planted carrots (four kinds), beets, winter radishes, escarole, heading chicories, radicchio, kale, and cabbage.

Beet seedlings in the garden

Still to be planted: more escarole and other chicories, lettuces, more winter radishes and beets, a few turnips, cilantro, and many kinds of salad radishes. Arugula will go into containers to grow, so it won’t need space in my in-ground garden.

We start the fall crops in summer?

I know, it seems weird to plant our “cool season” crops in hot weather. However, planting in August and early September gives the crops their best chance to reach harvest-stage before December.

Fall Garden Planning book explains how to choose crops, create a schedule, and prepare the garden for fall planting.
This book explains what, how, and when to plant for the fall garden.

If your fall planting gets a late start (like now, or next week), that is not a disaster. It just means that some of your crops might not be ready for harvest until late winter or early spring. Also, some crops, like the more tender lettuces, might not survive into January.

Gardeners can adjust a bit for a late start by choosing varieties that mature more quickly than others. Most of my carrot varieties this year mature in about 70-75 days (“days to harvest” listed on the seed packets). I planted them all a couple of weeks ago.

Some varieties mature in less time. ‘Little finger’ carrots, for example, mature in about 55 days. If planted now, they could be harvested in about two months.

Rows of carrot seedlings in partly shaded garden
Carrot seedlings — each variety in its own row, to help me know which is which.

Protecting the seedlings

I am looking forward to cooking with the new escaroles and other chicories in this year’s garden. However, many hazards await our cool-season crops in late summer. One is the risk of drying out in the hot sun. My seedlings get water, from a watering can, almost every morning while they are small.

When they are larger, and I am confident that their roots reach deep enough that they are protected from the worst heat and from the quick-drying surface of the garden, the seedings will get less frequent watering.

Snails, slugs, and roly-polies

Even though the weather is dry, and the forecast is for more dry, snails and roly-polies are still present in my garden. Both of those pests are known seedling-eaters. To protect the emerging seedlings, I sprinkled a little iron phosphate bait (Sluggo – organic-approved – this one includes spinosad) on the seeded areas.

Accidental removal

Seedlings emerging in the garden within white paper circles
Escarole and other chicory family crops

The chicory family crops (escarole, heading chicories, radicchio) are planted within rings formed by the tops of paper cups.

I cut off the lower half of each cup, then pressed the top part into into the soil, about an inch down. The seeds are planted inside the cylinders, to remind me where they are. This keeps me from “weeding” them out of the garden by accident.

Moths, butterflies, and their hungry caterpillar babies

My cabbage family plants — the kale (not yet emerged) and two tiny cabbages — are under netting. I put the netting over the area immediately after planting, to protect these crops from cabbage moths and cabbage butterflies.

The bird netting over my support-structure has large enough holes (5/8 inch) that some insects, like ladybugs, can get through. The holes are small enough, though, that the cabbage moths and butterflies cannot get to my plants, which keeps them from laying eggs on them. No eggs, no caterpillars.

Fall planting continues

Assorted summer crops are still producing good food, which means they continue to take space in the garden. Planting for fall crops, for me at least, is a hodge-podge affair as a result.

Swiss chard planted in a curved line around the June-planted ‘Winterkeeper’ tomato.

The first patch of chicory family plants is in the space that held Southern peas earlier this summer. The carrots and some beets are in the spot that held zucchini. Winter radishes are in the spot vacated by an heirloom tomato. Kale and cabbages are in the space previously held by pole beans.

The space taken by the Swiss chard and the late-planted ‘winterkeeper’ tomato will not be available for planting until after the first freeze, unless horrible things happen to them (always possible) before then.

By the time a hard freeze arrives, though, some of my cool-season crops will already be coming into the kitchen.

How are your fall garden plantings coming along?

New Book! Fall Garden Planning

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New for 2018! Great for new gardeners who are looking
for a shortcut to successful fall gardening and for more
experienced gardeners looking to hone their craft.

Anyone still reading at this site, and not yet over at smallgardennews.com, my new site, may not be aware that my little book finally got published. I am so happy to have finished!

The page for the Kindle version on Amazon.com includes a “look inside” feature that I still haven’t figured out how to activate for the soft-cover version, but this – generally speaking –  is what’s inside:

  • Crops that grow best in fall
  • Two ways to make a planting calendar for your own garden 
  • How to get the garden prepared for your fall crops (amendments, fertilizer)
  • Management options for three common pests (caterpillars, aphids, root-knot nematodes)
  • Details about 24 fall-garden crops, including recommended varieties for Southeastern gardens 

There is more, of course, even though it is just a little book (65 pages) but those are the main sections.

I developed the book with gardeners in the Southeastern U.S. in mind – from the Carolinas to East Texas, in planting zones 7, 8, and 9. I wrote it because, when I worked at my county’s Cooperative Extension office, a fairly common set of questions each year was about when to plant and what to plant for a fall vegetable garden.

This book is my expanded answer to those questions, based on my experiences as a long-time organic gardener who looks for research-based answers to questions.

If you choose the Kindle version, you might want a larger copy of the blank planting schedule that is in the book. I have added a FREE pdf version that you can download as an 8.5×11-inch copy to the Books page at Small Garden News.

It is near the bottom of the page.

Bush Beans – A Quick Crop

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I planted a little patch (about 2 x 3 feet) of heirloom Aunt Joanie Beans in the first week of August, and today I harvested the first beans from that patch. That puts the days-to-maturity (or days-to-harvest) at about 50 days for this variety of beans. There are not many vegetable crops that can be brought to the kitchen so quickly!

First harvest of Joanie Beans from an early August planting.

This first day’s harvest is not enormous, I know, but after I washed and snapped the beans you can see in the picture, they measured a little more than a cup and a half. That is enough for two people to enjoy at suppertime.

If there were more of us here to split the harvest with, I would tuck these into the fridge and keep adding more each day until there were enough saved up.

The little plants have many more beans and flowers on them, at various stages of development, so more beans are definitely on the way! By tomorrow, an amount of beans similar to what I brought in today should be ready to pick.

The first frost for my yard does not usually arrive until the beginning of November, so we will be able to harvest beans from this patch for several weeks.

What are you harvesting this week?

Starting Again in August

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New little patch of Joanie Beans, for a late crop. PHOTO/Amygwh

My little patch of the heirloom Joanie Beans, planted a couple of weeks ago, has come up. If all goes well, the plants should start providing beans for our meals before the end of September.

It is very strange to have spent so long away from the garden and to not have summer crops coming in from the yard. We are visiting the local farmers market for many of our veggies instead, and that is a very good substitute, but I do like to grow some our our own food.

In the good-news category, my friend Cheryl has been helping a local farmer, Lynn, at her weekend market booth, for several years, and she gets to take home a box of leftover veggies after the market closes on Sunday.

This past Sunday, my friend shared some of those veggies with us, so my dehydrator is full of chopped peppers and sliced tomatoes. Thank you Friend Cheryl and Farmer Lynn!

Caterpillar of a Monarch Butterfly on swamp milkweed. PHOTO/Amygwh

To make sure that at least some of my veggies this fall come from the yard, I already have started a batch of seeds in a tray. I will be starting more this weekend, since seedlings are often eaten by pests, burned up in the hot sun, or pounded to smithereens in summer storms, which makes growing some extra a good idea, but I am happy to have made the start.

In the first tray, there are a few each of kale, winter radishes, mini bok choy, beets, and collards, and a short row of green bunching onions. The next tray will have more of the above, plus lettuces. I won’t start the spinach until in September, because it is so finicky about hot weather.

More good news – my milkweed is doing exactly what I hoped it would do: host some monarch butterfly caterpillars. Of course, there are also a bunch of weird orange aphids and milkweed bugs, but the caterpillars were the goal, and they are there.

Ready to Plant a Fall Garden?

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It may be hard to believe but, within the next couple of weeks, seeds for your fall crops can start going into the garden.

If you are like me, you may actually want to start some seeds in a flat or in pots, to transplant into the garden later, but those need to be started soon. My earliest-to-plant seeds (between now and August 20) are beets and winter radishes. Before the end of August, though, I like to have seeds for other crops started, too: carrots, kale, collards, and Swiss chard are in that group. Lettuces and spinach, the least heat-tolerant of the cool-season veggies (in my garden, at least) get planted in September. Regular salad radish seeds can go in then, too, mixed in among the lettuces and spinach.

Of those crops listed above, the only ones that are hard to move out of a flat or pot and into the garden as seedlings are carrots. Those do best for me if I put the seeds straight into the garden. Transplanting them as seedlings, started in a flat, results in such oddly bent and twisted carrots that they are hard clean and cut up without too much waste. Of course, you may be more skillful at transplanting the carrot babies than me, but I expect that many people will have an experience like mine.

If you had planned to start your own broccoli and cabbages from seed, in flats or pots, getting them started now is almost too late. If you have chosen short time-to-maturity varieties, though, starting TODAY may be fine. Otherwise, for a small garden, buying little plants of those crops at a garden center might be a good plan. If you are looking for cauliflower transplants, but don’t see them at the garden centers in August, just be patient. They are more finicky about heat than cabbages and broccoli and are not usually in stores until sometime in September.

Since I missed out on summer crops this year — my own fault for going on a crazy adventure! – I also have just put in a little patch of bush beans. I didn’t buy any seeds this year, which has seemed very strange, but I have plenty of heirloom Joanie-beans saved from previous years’ plants for both this year and the next.

Yesterday while running errands with my younger son (visiting from Statesboro), I stopped by TruPrep, which carries Baker Creek seeds, and I saw that it still has a decent selection in stock.  Not all stores/garden centers still have seeds available. If you need seeds for cool-season crops, it might be a good idea to call ahead before driving across town to shop.

Hope that all is going well in your gardens!

The Summer Garden Looks Toward Fall

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We are just about at the mid-summer crossover point, when many of the summer vegetables are either at or just beyond their peak of productivity.  Pepper plants are loaded with ripening fruit, tomatoes are almost flying into the kitchen, zucchini plants have been felled by the borers after piling up lots of squashes, winter squashes are big and beginning to turn from green to tan. You get the idea.

We’ve made pickles with some of our cucumbers, and we have hot peppers fermenting in jars on the counter for a Tabasco-style sauce. In addition, the dehydrator has been busily turning slices of tomatoes into chips that we can re-hydrate in winter for use in cooking. The dry tomato-chips are a great snack, too.

Meanwhile, the okra pods have only just begun to come into the kitchen. Those plants are typically slow-starters, but they will produce until frost.

Over the past weekend, I pulled out lettuces that had been left in the garden to produce seeds. I will be leading a seed-saving workshop next week (Thursday, at the Extension office), and I wanted to have lettuces for participants to see and pull seeds from. After clearing that garden space, I dumped on some more compost, mixed in an organic fertilizer that I hadn’t tried before, and planted seeds for a late patch of bush beans.

The pole beans we are eating from the garden now are Blue Marbut (find them in the pole/snap category on the linked page) and I LOVE these, but a friend (thank you, Kim!) gave me a little packet of Dragon’s Tongue bush beans to try, so those are what I planted. Hopefully, they will germinate and grow in this hotter-than-usual July. The seeds were in one of the beautiful packets from Hudson Valley Seed Library, so I can enjoy the artwork while I wait for my plants to appear.

The next space that opens up in the garden will be sown with buckwheat as a place-holder (some people would say “cover crop”) before re-clearing the space for a fall crop. Even though the weather will still be quite toasty, I am sure, mid-August is the time to get some of our cool-season crops seeded into the ground.

Planning for More Good Food

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Twenty pound “Luscious Golden” melon from our front yard.

My not updating the blog for 3 weeks doesn’t mean the garden isn’t still a productive and wonderful place. It is, actually, providing surprising quantities of good food, considering that it also has been a little neglected.

We are running short-staffed at work, during our busiest time of year, and work-stuff has spilled over into my non-work time. However, the bosses have interviews lined up to fill at least one vacant space, so we are hopeful that the whole “short-staffed” thing will be short-lived!

In the meantime, I am thinking more and more about the fall garden. Last weekend, I amended some areas with compost, planted seeds for chicory, beets, parsley, green onions, and one last patch of bush beans, and I started seeds (late!) in a flat for broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, more beets (in case the outside seeds don’t make it — they can be finicky), and bok choy.

Joe used the grub hoe to knock down some of the buckwheat, to start getting that space ready for carrots, and I pulled up and chopped the corn stalks to add them to the compost.

This year’s corn was a parching corn, Supai Red, from the Southwestern US, and it was not super-happy with our rain and humidity. Some ears turned moldy before they had a chance to dry on the stalks, so the harvest was not huge, but the corn I brought in is going to make some great hominy.

Indoors, we have more tomatillos than we thought possible piled up on the counter, waiting to be made into salsa verde; the dehydrator is busy turning slices of tomato and okra into “chips”; and peppers are fermenting into hot sauce. There is some work involved in preserving the harvest, but the flavors of summer will be very welcome in the cooler months ahead.

Vegetable Abundance

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Yesterday’s harvest from the front yard.

This is a time of abundance in the garden, which means we are busy in the kitchen. I put up tomatillo salsa in jars over the weekend, and I blanched more green beans for the freezer. Joe has kept the dehydrator full and humming with tomatoes and okra, and he’s smoked some of the hot peppers, then dried them and ground them to powder to store the full, amazing flavor in tightly sealed jars.

Even though the garden still is fairly bursting with good food, it is time to begin the transition to cool season crops, which will provide fresh vegetables in winter.

Around here, the cucumber and summer squash plants should be in bad enough shape to provide some of the space for that transition. Not only have assorted beetles, bugs, and mildews damaged many of the leaves, but the cucumber pickleworm also has shown up in some area gardens, making much of the fruit unappealing. So far, most of my cucumbers are unaffected, but I’ve seen some very “holey” cukes from other gardens.

In my garden, I’ve planted more basil so we will have enough to make pesto to freeze; I’ve pulled up the pickling cukes (they’ve done less well than the slicers, which are mostly still good), and much of the zucchini. I’ve planted one last stand of zinnias for the pollinators, and I expect to plant one more patch of bush beans. I have cleaned up a flat that will be used for starting cool season crops, and I expect to turn under the buckwheat, to make space for the carrots, soon.

Exciting times!

Mid-Summer Garden

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July 6 tomatoes, Rutgers  PHOTO/Amy W.

Since the beginning of the month, we have enjoyed meals that included zucchini, beans, potatoes, tomatillos, shallots, onions, garlic, tomatoes, salad peppers, and cucumbers from the summer garden.

We have pickled peppers – both Jalapeno and Poblano – and made several batches of fermented cucumber-pickles. Beans have been blanched for the freezer, and we have been giving away our extra zucchini.

We also have begun thinking about where to plant the cool season vegetables that will provide fresh food in the coming fall and winter. It seems so soon. The tomato harvest has barely begun! If there isn’t a plan, though, it usually turns out that no room is available when it is time to plant the seeds for carrots, beets, lettuces, collard greens, and other cool-season crops.

I know where the carrots will go, because I have a buckwheat cover crop growing in a bed as a place-holder. Behind those are cowpeas that will stay until closer to frost.

A little something for the pollinators. July 6.  PHOTO/Amy W.

Other cool season crops will be planted where the zucchini and cucumbers are now; those typically don’t survive far into August, and their spaces open up in time for planting some fall crops.

The heirloom tomatoes won’t last into September, either. Already the Cherokee Purple has a wilting branch, which means the rainy spring gave the soil-borne fusarium fungal-wilt a big boost this year. Luckily, Rutgers tomatoes resist the wilt, and those plants still look healthy.

The weeds, of course, look pretty healthy, too, and they are growing so well, even in the recent dry weather, that it is hard for this gardener to keep up with them. Meanwhile, this is the second year in a row that the birds began eating the blueberries before they even really ripened. If I want blueberries in my freezer, I am going to have to buy them (!). That just seems so wrong….