Being a Primer on What To Do and When To Do It
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| The best fertilizer is the farmer's shadow. |
AUGUST
Keep existing garden hydrated
Harvest tomatoes, beans, cucumbers,
okra, squashes, beans and other summer crop
Keep basil pinched to ensure production
and prevent the plants from setting seed and dying
Weed as required – keep yourself
hydrated and sunburn free.
Try to water only in the evening or
early morning
At the beginning of the month, begin to
contemplate the Winter garden and look online for seeds to purchase.
Remember that soon you'll be able to plant garlic, onions and
potatoes so don't overdo it on seeds!
Late in the month, you may start with
seeds of cool season crops out of full sun (indoors under lights
works too):
Broccoli
Cabbage
Brussels Sprouts
Kale
Collards
Cauliflower
Chard
Lettuce
Fava beans
Peas
Leeks
Onions (they are easier from purchased
'sets' or transplants)
Add 3” of mulch to your garden which
should cut down on weeding and watering in the coming months.
It will also allow the ground to hold water when (if) it rains.
All
things being equal, in August, you will be harvesting tomatoes,
peppers, eggplant, okra, corn, melons, squashes. Keep the squashes
picked or you will have a gigantic squash that is mostly inedible.
Pinch the tips of basil back to keep the plant from going to seed and
use the pinchings in salads or cooked dishes. Green peppers will
become red, purple or yellow if you leave them on the plant until
they mature. For my taste, I'll wait until they change color, but
many folks like green peppers as much as the mature ones. Beans
should be kept picked unless you are growing soup beans, which stay on
the plant until the plant has died and is crispy. The pods should
shatter easily when harvesting dry beans.
SEPTEMBER
Continue picking
summer fruit, learn how to dry, freeze, pickle, jam or can some of
the garden's bounty and share with family and neighbors. The summer
garden will produce through November in mild years, but is over by
the end of September or October in most. As you see plants coming to
the end of their productivity, pull the plants and begin to replace
them with winter plants or seeds of winter plants. In fact, it often
is not even necessary to pull the plant immediately – you can leave
the okra or pepper in place and simply begin to sow around it. If
you sow too close, you may find you will need to cut the summer plant
off, leaving the roots, if pulling them out begins to affect your
seedlings. If you leave the roots in the ground, they will rot and
become food for the microbiology of the soil and once rotted,
channels will remain for water to infiltrate the soil.
Days get shorter and hopefully cooler
Direct seed into the garden larger
seeds – peas, fava beans, lentils and garbanzo beans
Direct sow beets, turnips all month
long – you can continue to sow beets until late March – you can
continue to sow turnips until April – although most folks are
rather sick of turnips by that time.
Late in the month, sow seeds of
radishes, carrots and parsnips – you can continue to sow carrots
and parsnips until January. Sow your first spinach and you may
continue sowing short rows of it until mid-February if you wish.
Direct sow any lettuces or other 'salad
greens' now through March – and even beyond if you're willing to
take the chance! These larger leafy things really do not do well in
the heat – oftentimes, even if you get a harvest, they will not be
the sweet leaves you were hoping for but instead will be bitter and
not at all something you would want to eat.
Set out plants started in sheltered
locations.
Use shade as required on young
seedlings – nursery flats and a stick.
Continue to sow broccoli, cabbage,
cauliflower as in August. You CAN sow Brussels Sprouts, but your
harvest will be truncated by the end of cool weather and there is no
more reason to plant kale and collards as they will produce on into
summer.
OCTOBER
Now there are significant short days
and almost any winter crop is OK to seed or set out including:
Onions (buy transplants if you can)
Garlic and shallots (plant from bulbs)
Potatoes – white, red, blue, bakers
and mashers – all of them, cut into chunks with at least one eye
per chunk, allow to 'scab' over for a few days or dust with sulfur to
help prevent soil born bacteria from attacking the open surfaces.
You can still direct seed any of the
Legumes (fava beans, lentils, garbanzo beans), if you haven't yet
You continue with broccoli and other
cabbage family members.
Be warned, there are often Santa Ana
winds in October – they dry you and your plants out, keep an eye on
the water in your garden if that happens.
By now, most of
the summer harvest is in, perhaps you have a few of the Winter Squash
still finishing up or some areas of drying beans. In open locations,
start planting the winter crops. Try to keep the garden filled with
producing plants. If you started lettuce in the shade back in
August, you are able to harvest the outer leaves from some plants.
Have you ever heard of celeriac?
Related to celery, this root crop has the flavor, but lacks the
pizzazz of celery. It is useful in soups, but not for an appetizer
tray because there is no channel for cream cheese or peanut butter.
And it looks a little 'rooty.' Sow seed in a row directly even
though the seed is really small. The root balls get about six inches
in diameter if they are happy.
Now is when you can start using the
planting stick – this invention makes easy work of succession
sowing. Put your planting stick on edge and make a depression in the
soil. Sow your seeds in the depression. All other seeds, cover with
a small amount of garden soil and water well. Carrots are the
exception. Do not cover carrot seed with soil, use vermiculite to
cover them. All seeds should be moistened daily until they sprout –
this is especially true with carrots. Follow a program of sowing
carrots, beets and other root crops every week to get fresh roots all
through the season.
NOVEMBER
In November, things begin to slow down
significantly. You can continue to sow all cool weather crops with a
shorter life expectancy. While in September you could sow cabbages
that take three or four months (the big kraut or storage cabbages),
now it's time to begin to limit yourself to the smaller, non-storage,
cabbages which take up less space.
This is really your last chance to sow
any garlic or shallots – after this, they won't have enough time to
mature to fullness before the heat of summer. You can still sow
those veggies that don't take so long to mature. I'm still willing
to bet on carrots, but not parsnips which take much longer. Beets
and turnips are sowable now through April or so.
You may have some
harvesting to do, but the garden can be a little bare this time of
year. All the summer crops are gone and winter crops are just babies
– except turnips and radishes, which take from four weeks to 8 weeks
from seed to harvest. Broccoli. Broccoli does not need much
succession planting and is a star in the winter garden. Cut the main
head of the broccoli to eat, and begin to watch for the side shoots.
Keep them picked and you'll have a whole ton of broccoli to eat over
the coming weeks. This is not true with cabbage or cauliflower, which
only give one harvest.
DECEMBER
You almost have to have a good
flashlight to garden! Really, if you can find time do a little here
and there – if no rain, take up the slack with the hose. You can
still sow carrots (and that'll be the last ones for this year);
beets, turnips and radishes are all still on the sow list. If you
have broccoli plants to put in, this would be about the last month
I'd do that; cauliflowers aren't usually that tasty when they mature
in the heat. Start seeds of cabbages (the smaller ones) and begin to
think about where things will go in the garden for summer. Keep
small lettuce plants on hand and every time something comes out of
the garden, pop a lettuce in its place – lettuce is pretty, edible
and fast! You can't have enough lettuce!
Try to go to holiday parties and enjoy
a social life – the garden will still be there in January.
You can harvest
radishes, turnips, maybe some lettuces and other greens. Perhaps you
have a head or two of broccoli that will float your boat. Early
cabbages might be ready to harvest soon, but the bigger kraut
cabbages will take longer. The root crops (except radishes and
turnips) will not be ready. If you have been reading the seed
packets, you will note that my commentary disagrees with most of
them. Because we sow in Fall, unlike the rest of the US, our days
are getting shorter and cooler, meaning our crops take longer than the
packet says they will, which was written for Spring and longer/warmer
days.
JANUARY
Keep
planting in the ground: lettuce, short season carrots, beets,
potatoes, celeriac, radishes, spinach,
Start
in containers: lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, kale, chard, (these last
two can be started now, but their production will be
reduced by the coming warmer weather, both will last into the summer,
but the flavor of kale grown in the heat is not the sweetness you
expect, they are more bitter), peas, fava beans, lentils, garbanzo
beans
Seed
catalogs are in the mail! Most gardeners are now looking longingly
and drooling to figure out which tomatoes, peppers, beans and other
summer crops you will be planting. You will order too many seeds
despite promises to yourself to not do it this year. You'll do the
same thing next year...
You are eating
good by now. You've got broccoli, lettuce, peas, fava beans coming in
– maybe a few baby beets and turnips, you are about sick of
radishes which have been coming for months.
FEBRUARY
In
the garden, you can still direct sow lettuce (and other salad
greens), beets, radishes, spinach, and the first of the summer
plantings: purple beans.
Start
in your six packs early tomatoes, basil, cucumbers, summer squash –
I usually try to do this around Valentine's Day.
Otherwise:
If you haven't over-ordered your seeds for summer yet, get busy.
You're not playing by the rules.
MARCH
Continue
to purple beans, lettuce, radishes, beets, radishes, spinach, You
can begin to set out plants of basil, early tomatoes, later in the
month, if you have space, sow early sweet corn (the exhortation for
space comes from the fact that corn is a wind pollinated plant and
there must be plants in a block large enough to ensure pollination
between the plants – do not plant individual rows of corn, plant in
a block).
Continue
to sow seeds of tomatoes and basil if you need to do succession
plantings of these (each plant should produce for several weeks, if
not two months). Now it's time to sow peppers, eggplant, cucumbers,
melons, all squash.
APRIL
You
can now put out beans of all colors, lettuce and still some radishes,
beets, spinach if you love them. For summer, though, you can set out
plants of tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, you can start planting
all corn now, if you have the space.
Add
three more inches of mulch to your garden, whether it seems to need it
or not.
You
can still start more tomatoes, basil, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers,
melons and squash and okra, Note that cucumbers, melons and squashes
tend to get powdery mildew in our part of the country and a good
strategy is to plant a second follow on set of plants. When the
first planting gives up, the second planting takes over. You cannot
do this with melons or winter squashes which must remain on the plant
until they are fully ripened before picking.
MAY
Step back from your garden and take a
look. It's really getting powered up about new – soon your
neighbors will be getting tired of all the great vegetables you are
sharing with them!
You
can continue to set our plants of basil, eggplant, all melons and all
squash and cucumbers. Begin to plant your main crop of green and
yellow beans and all the dried beans, which will be left in the
garden to dry on the plant. If you have room, plant more corn too.
Continue
to sow as you did in April, but it's getting late – peppers,
eggplants and basil are still OK to start, but will not have a lot of
time to produce as they would had you gotten to them earlier.
JUNE
Plant
in the ground: all the above; you can still get a crop, but it might
not live to its full term – furthermore, setting them out in June
is hard on them – the heat can be problematic. If you do, you might
have to supply some shade on extremely warm days.
Earlier
tomatoes, cucumbers and beans are a part of your diet by now.
I'm sick of zucchini already, how about you? Peppers are getting
ripe, you can see the okra coming on – get it while it's small and
don't over cook it! That keeps it from being slimy.
Start
your pumpkin seeds in 4” pots to get them going, then take a nap,
with my permission.
JULY
Plant
in the ground only out of extreme necessity – you will have to
water almost daily until they are established. Do not plant without
mulching. Water as needed, early in the day or in the evening.
For
starting seeds this month, I recommend you continue napping.
Now
it's already time to begin to think about your cool season seeds. Get
out your catalogs and prepare to over-order those like we did at the
beginning of the year or get online. Try not to buy your seeds
locally -you get fresher seed online or by ordering directly from the
seed company by phone – your seeds are in perfect climate
conditions until they begin to pull your order.
If
you do tomatoes right, by now you have enough to open your own
Italian eatery.
