August 2005
Plant a fall garden

So you didn’t get your garden planted this spring because the ground was so wet, too dry, you didn’t get around to preparing a garden spot or you might not have had the land at your disposal to plant at all. Well, it’s still not too late to plant a fall garden. In most cases, choose early-maturing vegetables. Lettuce, radishes, spinach, turnips and peas can be started from seed. Lettuce and radishes can be seeded about every two weeks. Broccoli, cauliflower and collards can be transplanted toward the middle of August to mid-September. For hardy crops like cabbage, cauliflower and collards, count back from your average first frost date the number of days the vegetable takes to mature, and plant at that time. If you don’t know either of these dates, you can find out by calling your county Extension agent or your local Co-op. For half-hardy plants like beets and carrots, allow an additional week and for tender crops like beans and sweet corn, allow an extra two weeks. Hopefully, this will keep an early frost from killing your vegetables before they mature. Also, the garden pests will be out there in full force, so be extra diligent in watching for them. You can grow an abundant crop of fall tomatoes, but if the Co-op store doesn’t have them, where can you buy young tomato plants in the middle of the summer? The easiest way to solve that problem is to cut small suckers from spring-planted tomatoes and let them grow to full-size plants. You may have pinched out suckers at the first of the season, but some have grown back in the axil of the stems. They should be 4 to 6 inches long and have a growing point with several leaves. Sometime this month, cut the suckers from the plant, remove the lower leaves up to the bud and place them in a jar of water for an hour or two. Then plant them in pots for later transplanting or plant them directly into the garden. Keep them watered heavily for a few days until they’ve taken root. If you don’t want to do that, then simply lop off the top foot or so of a healthy plant and set it in water for a few days, then plant it directly into the garden. Just don’t forget about it. It will need to be watered and mulched well until roots form. If you don’t want to do any of these, you can buy some of those tasteless red rubber balls they call tomatoes at the grocery store.