Who's braving the heat to get a fall garden in?

This is the first year that I'm getting out there in the blazing heat of the summer (105 today with 40% humidity) to get my fall garden started according to the recommended planting dates for my area.
I've got tomato starts on the windowsill which will go out on 8/15 and my broccoli and cauliflower are just sprouting and will go into windowsill peat pots. I will also direct seed some, which I've done in the past, but always later in the year. Most of my planting will not be until September, but I'm getting out there in the mornings and evenings right now to prep everything. Going to start pumpkins today. Hoping they will be ready for Thanksgiving. My local sources give 8/20 as the day to start fall melons, and that happens to be my birthday, so that's fun.
In the past I've regretted not getting things started sooner. The fact is, it doesn't get really comfortable to work out there until October and that's getting too late for a lot of things. So I'm out there now in the heat, tackling it one bit at a time. Now that I have my drip irrigation it makes me a lot more confident that I will be able to keep young plants alive through the next couple of months so that they are ready to produce when we get have our lovely period of 80s in Oct-Feb.
Anyone else getting out there in the heat to put in fall gardens?
Do you have a first frost date to contend with? I have some chance for a freeze from mid Dec to mid Feb, but sometimes (like last winter) it doesn't freeze at all.
What do you like to plant for the fall/winter?

Boy Elliephant you can grow year round, or is it too hot in the Summer? I don't envy you your heat! It is in the low 90s here and I go out mostly in the mornings or evenings! Ok I am a wimp! Wow you are planting a lot and to consider that your plants even have time to grow is amazing to me.

I am now confused with my first frost date. I thought it was September 27 but I put in my zip code on the Daves Garden site and it says October 15. I'll take the extra two weeks! About five days ago I planted five squares of peas. Last night I planted four squares of crisphead lettuce, four squares of romaine lettuce and then for good measure, without realizing it until after, I also planted three of those square with spinach (can we say duh), four squares with spinach all by itself, and four squares of mesclun. I just couldn't bring myself to go digging for the spinach seeds and make a mess of the whole thing. I figured I will deal with it when they start growing and thought how people on this forum will get a good chuckle out of my foible!

Tonight I will plant beans and my carrot seed pkg says they will take 65 days so in they go. We get a first freeze then a little bit of a reprieve so I think they will actually like it and sweeten up with the cold weather at the end. I am going to do a square of beets and a square of radishes and stagger the planting if I can remember.

Hi Tricia, do you have like 3 beds, or at least 2 huge beds? and when you say 'plant', do you mean from sprouts, or just seeds?
it's gonna be in the 80's for about 2 months here. (Anything over 73 just slays me. 28-degrees is about right )
guess what - I just found some boards in the shed, plus dozens of planting pots, and some other useful materials. I wonder could I get something going too?

Well I love the heat (but I also live in SD not TX, lol) I have just been replanting squares as I empty them I have been putting in a lot of beets in empty squares because I want to stock up on pickled beets for the winter. I am going to plant some peas tomorrow too, not sure how much I will get but figured it's worth a shot. I also have a tray of cauliflower and cabbage starts in my windowsill to replace empty squares!

Triciasgarden wrote:Boy Elliephant you can grow year round, or is it too hot in the Summer? I don't envy you your heat! It is in the low 90s here and I go out mostly in the mornings or evenings! Ok I am a wimp! Wow you are planting a lot and to consider that your plants even have time to grow is amazing to me.

Right now the only things producing are the eggplants, okra, hot peppers and Malabar Spinach. Well, I guess the sage and rosemary are doing fine as well. There's always something I can grow here. In a way that's kind of hard because there's no defined "season" but it also works well for SFGing because of the focus on one square at a time.

I'm leaving in most of my peppers for the first time this year and I look forward to more bell peppers as the weather cools down. This is the first year they haven't been totally overcome by aphids. They've surprised me by continuing to set fruit in the really hot weather this year, but the quality has definitely gone down.

Mostly what I'm doing right now is cleaning up, prepping the new beds I got from a friend who was moving, and adding tons of compost.

Tomatoes and swiss chard started indoors here in the dessert last week. Broccoli, cauliflower and others to be started shortly.

My "Sweet Baby" Watermelons are surviving but I don't know anything about how big they get. Most seam to stop growing a little larger than a softball. I have one now that is almost the size of an indoor ball.


I trimmed one of the Sweet 100 cherry tomato bushes and it is coming back now. Starting to have a few flowers. I did not see an aphid at all just a few worms and they were taken care of with ease.


My fall planting of shallots are coming up nicely. I was told that I could plant them this early but I only planted half and will wait for the rest. This will be a large percent of my fall planting because I use them in everything.


Cucumbers are doing better than ever. I am now producing more than I eat. I will catch up with that soon though. (I had to take a break to make me a cucumber salad, back now) Ha Ha!

Cantaloupe (6 vines) are about 1.5" tall and look healthy despite the heat.

Here are some pictures of my very first SFG which I have made into my very first Fall Garden:



Here is the left side and middle featuring 2 Armenian Cucumbers, Brussel Sprouts and Carrots (in the same square), Beets, Bunching onions, Elephant Garlic (hasn't sprouted yet), 2 Spaghetti squash, Carrots, Celery (by planting the cutting from the bottom of one bought from the store), Radishes and an empty square.



And on the right side I have Cauliflower and Bunching onions (in the same square), Broccoli and Beets (in the same square), Garlic, Green Beans, mixed color bell peppers, peas, jalapeno peppers, Golden wax beans which only one sprouted and was instantly eaten!



On each of the corners inside the cinder block I have marigolds and garlic and one purple Basil.

My broccoli and cauliflower starts in the windowsill are way too leggy (yeah, I know they need more light) so I tried an experiment a couple of nights ago and buried one up to its neck out in its square. Doing just fine after a couple of days of 100 degree weather, so I'm going to be putting the rest of them out there as soon as I get their squares prepped. Running a Cub Scout day camp this week is taking up all my time/energy!

i pulled my dead zuchinni to get ready to plant some peas! and i put up the trellis as in mel's book; that thing looks gorgeous =)
going to plant some lettuce and kohlrabi too. need help germinating. going to post now =)

Will be pulling up the pea vines soon and prep the area for more beets. As I dig out the potatoes I will use those squares to plant fall spinach. I would like more swiss chard but can't get any plants or seeds around here now. Hopefully some store will stock some fall seeds.

Evelyn

Why do all the planting charts I have seen for my area (Georgia) say to strart broccoli inside and transplant. I have been experimenting by planting 4 squares every Sunday and they germinate fine. They do not seem to be growing very fast. Maybe that is why we are supposed to use transplants. Maybe they will germinate but not grow while it is still hot. Any ideas from you southern gardeners or anyone else.

yolos wrote:Why do all the planting charts I have seen for my area (Georgia) say to strart broccoli inside and transplant. I have been experimenting by planting 4 squares every Sunday and they germinate fine. They do not seem to be growing very fast. Maybe that is why we are supposed to use transplants. Maybe they will germinate but not grow while it is still hot. Any ideas from you southern gardeners or anyone else.

That's exactly right, they are a cooler weather crop and extreme heat will slow growth. So if you grow them in your area indoors until they get bigger you put them out later in the season when they are well established.

if they are in the garden but stunted now, pot them up and bring them in.

Now that our potatoes are done I've put lettuce seeds in their place. Plus I transplanted 16 strawberry runners, so I'll see how they do. I waited to long to start broccoli but that is ok. This is our first year so I'll be on top of my game next season. Okra is going crazy as are peppers, cantelopes, pole beans & tomatoes.
Renee

I planted one 4x6 bed's empty squares with turnips and radishes a couple of days ago. Chard is looking raggedy so I am going to pull it and replant.
I have my 2x4 beds that I am going to plant peas and lettuce in again this week.

I've got two squares of soybeans in... although I thought they were freestanding plants, but seriously they really seem like they want to vine?
Anyway we picked our big watermelon today (29.2 lbs!):
I plan to pull the rest of the sweet potatoes tomorrow so I can free up the trellis for fall green beans. Will clear out the dead corn stalks and the sunflower while I'm at it. I'll probably thin the marigolds as well as they've done a hostile take over of more than their allotted space lol.

Wow! That is a BIG watermelon! Yummy!

Awesome watermelon!

I got 6 out of my 8 tomato starts in the ground by my target date of 8/15. Have also planted beans, cukes, and brussel sprouts. Figured out what was wrong with one bed that was always drying out. 2/3 of the line was hooked up wrong Amazing that I got anything out of that bed and better understand now why the melons didn't do so well.

Transplanted my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and cabbage last weekend.

Bill

I plan to prune the spring-planted broccoli and cabbages. Other than that, I'm giving up. Too hot and dry this year. Furthermore, my homemade compost grew crabgrass all season (I guess it never got hot enough to kill those seeds!) Very discouraging.

Still picking a few cucumbers. My shallots (Bunching onions) are doing great even though I planted them early. I harvested some along with what okra I had on the plants for some gumbo yesterday. Most of my pepper plants are totally yellow. They haven't recovered since the weather started staying in the 90's. Hot Peppers are a little better off but not setting many peppers.

Cataloupes are 3 to 4" tall now and looking great. I planted a few cucumber seeds that I saved on the land this week. If they grow it will be entirely on their own. No way to spend any time on them.

In a few weeks I will be clearing most of my spring plants to make room for the fall.

Slowly clearing out the remnants of the summer plants that didn't totally bake. I have to work during the day when there are fewer mosquitoes (apparently West Nile is making the rounds), which has been slowing me down. I already have some green beans, peas and cauliflower sprouts ready to transplant to the garden by next week, though! I can't wait for the fall to begin! Though, here in San Antonio we won't see temps getting reasonable before mid-November.

mrwes40 wrote:Transplanted my broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and cabbage last weekend.

Bill

I did the same three weeks ago but yesterday I ran into a problem. Pill bugs had chewed away 4 for my brocolli plants and are all over the garden so I put some DE on the garden and plants as they cure them last time.

Anyway have never grown plants in the fall and my spring plants did not do well as the season heated up very early this year.

My garden efforts have been a total bust so far this year. My spring planting of squash, tomatoes and green beans died out almost overnight, some kind of blight and SVB. I replanted but we have had an extremely wet summer, the air literally smells like decomposing vegetation. Nothing has done well. I have a lush stand of pole beans, but very few blossoms and few beans, must be too much nitrogen. I thought with the extreme heat that okra would do really well this year, but so far I've harvested less than a dozen pods. The long range forecast predicts the rains to continue thru September here so I may be done for the fall as well. Looking forward to January...

My pole beans are dying out, cucumbers are producing but the vine looks bad, eggplant is done, bush beans did well but I wish I had planted more of those. I planted late yellow squash and zucchini on July 6th, zucchini produced first 10 inch fruit and female yellow squash flowers are getting bee pollinated today. Tomatoes still coming. Tomorrow I am planting fall transplants of brocc, cabbage, brussels spr. and cauliflower. A half dozen bell peppers are ready to pick and sweet banana peppers going good. Ground cherries are is winding down. Swiss chard is very prolific actually too much you want some?