I garden in downtown Atlanta, my garden acts easily as a zone 8 garden and it is BLAZING HOT, no shade, facing south and east. Everything does just dandy for me! Prepare soil well so it retains water, mulch very well and water when needed. I actually don't water all that frequently and everything is fine. Cowpeas, yard long beans, bush beans, lima beans, okra, malabar spinach, butternut squash, luffa, sweet and hot peppers, eggplants, various melons and tomatoes all do fine. I grow Cherokee Purple, Brandywine, sungold, green zebra, Juliette, Taxi, Jubilee, Rutgers, Marlglobe, and many more different tomatoes but these are the ones I grow pretty much every year. Most of the heirlooms I vary simply to try new tastes every year. Tip: Grow sweet peppers in the shade of tomatoes. A local farmer taught me this and it works like a charm. I've increased my pepper harvests greatly and never get any burn. Insects and disease are more challenging than that heat.

Okay, I have been experimenting with this for years. I'm way south of you, but I live on a mountain side, so I have mostly cool weather all summer (about a week of temps approaching 90 in the day, a month of 80s in the day, nights always in the 50s and 60s, 40s in May and September). Normally, for warm season crops, I plant the shortest DtM (days to maturity) varieties--tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, corn (rare, I hate to fight the raccoons), etc. I no longer even try melons, and have no interest in cowpeas or okra. :-) But you are asking about cool season crops. Yup, that's the majority of my garden, as the long, cool autumn before a hard freeze makes the cool season crops a joy. First of all, lettuce, radishes and spinach planted in the spring are going to bolt around mid-summer, even in a cool summer. It's a day-length thing, not temperature, for the most part. A few lettuce varieties have been bred/selected to hold longer before bolting, but I haven't seen great holding in spinach. Plan to plant again after the summer solstice. However, things will not grow as fast as the summer is winding down as they do when it is winding up. I have struggled with counting back 60 days from first frost to plant my 60 dtm lettuce or spinach and it just never matures. While you are learning the best practices for your area, I suggest you plant maybe 4 feet of seeds every 2 weeks up until you reach that (for example) 60 days before first frost. Keep note of it (I don't have a garden notebook, bad gardener, but I write this stuff on my wall calendar and have a stash of old calendars on top of my fridge) and you'll have a better idea of the planting window next year. Swiss chard and perpetual spinach are good spinach substitutes for mid summer. Both of these are basically beets selected for stems (chard) and leaves (perpetual spinach). I'm not a big fan of the stems, so I grow beets for a version of perpetual spinach. I rarely harvest the roots, but we do eat the greens. They also hold well into the cool season. If you like beet roots, plant again after sumer solstice to have nice tender roots at harvest time in the fall. Mulch thickly and you should be able to harvest the roots up until your soil freezes (or you can harvest and hold in a root cellar or your fridge). Turnips are also good for greens and the roots hold well in the ground until hard freeze. Again, plant after summer solstice. Winter radishes also go in after solstice. These are the Daikon radishes, but also Spanish black, German beer radishes, etc. These tend to be harvested much larger than spring radishes, and the ones I have grown are quite mild in the fall. Covered with mulch, they keep well in the garden until the ground freezes, and can be kept in a root cellar or refrigerator. My solution for cabbage and carrots is just the opposite of my warm-season veggies. I grow the long-season varieties! We like big fat carrots, so that works well. I don't rush to put them in early, but they can go in before my summer planting weekend (usually Memorial Day weekend or the weekend before). I've never had success with the early cabbages, but we've had some memorable January King cabbages that were just fine cooked, shredded for cole slaw, or shredded for sauerkraut. And again, they hold well in the garden until hard freeze. Oh, and we are a family that goes against the norm, even my kids like Brussels Sprouts (harvested after a frost and roasted, not boiled), so we have also grown those for late harvest. I have a nine-pack of Falstalf to go in next weekend, in fact. Need I say kale gets the same treatment as these other cabbage-family crops? I've tried Napa cabbage a couple of times without success. I'll have to take my own advice this year and plant a few every couple of weeks after summer solstice. BTW, deer LOVE, LOVE, LOVE members of the cabbage family. Rabbits do, too. I am learning to love rabbit fence (which keeps old fat chickens out of the garden, too) and re-mesh cages. Good luck with your cool-season garden! Catherine Here is a link that might be useful: Baker Creek's Radishes, many winter

I'm gonna jump in here with a few comments! Am I right in assuming you're looking for things that you can basically "store" outside to save room in the fridge and in the house? If that assumption is right, you can store carrots, parsnips and beets outside right in the ground--without digging them up! Most of my beets and carrots and all of my parsnips are still out in the ground! I was planning to dig up some of them this past week with the nice weather, but haven't been feeling all that good, so I put it off for our next batch of warm weather! Before we got our first REALLY cold snap, I dumped a couple big bags of maple leaves on them! When I stored them outside a couple years ago I put a lot more leaves on them and then covered the whole thing with an old sheet to keep the leaves from blowing away--didn't bother doing that this time, and I'm expecting them to be just fine. You said you don't like beets, but have you ever tried the gold ones? And if you like pickled things, pickled beets are really good--and don't really taste a whole lot like "beets" anymore! Digit, where are you finding so many varieties of parsnips? Almost everywhere I look carries Harris Model, and most places seem to only have one, or maybe two other varieties. I was planning to try Hollow Crown one year, but never got around to getting the seed! Overall I've been very happy with Harris! Considering my really heavy clay, they seem to be able to easily bully their way down into it, and I've had a few up to 14" long! I think I have more trouble digging them up than they do growing! Do you have a particular variety that you like more than Harris? I think they're incredibly sweet and yummy! A couple comments about carrots! I tried Purple Dragon this year, and I guess I was expecting it to be--at least partly--purple inside, but discovered that the only thing that's purple is the skin! Have to say I was disappointed! There are lots of sites online expounding on the increased health benefits of the purple ones, but I always peel carrots, so, there goes the purple! If anybody knows of a purple variety that's purple all or most of the way thru, I'd love to know about it! The Purple Dragon I grew this year stayed VERY small, and since they aren't purple inside, I wasn't planning to grow them again! Interesting factoid: When I peeled them some of them were nice and orange inside, and some of them were a pale, kind of anemic looking yellow! Looked identical on the outside! One other thing while I'm thinking about it! If you grow carrots and decide to dig and keep them in the fridge, don't wash them! Just brush off any excess soil, be sure they're not overly wet, and stick them in a plastic bag! A couple years I still had a few left in the fridge when I was planting the following year, and they were still just fine having been stored that way. I'm not sure about this, but based on my experience it almost seems as if washing them washes off some sort of "natural" protection, and they don't seem to keep as long if washed first--IMO! (I don't wash any root crops if I'm storing them in the fridge.) I grow a Chantenay type--specifically Royal Chantenay, but there are several others. They get big around--easily up to a couple inches, but stay fairly short--usually up to about 4-5" for me--tho I really don't have ideal growing conditions considering both soil and light. The Chantenay kind are also supposed to be one of the easiest to grow in heavy soils. With my awful soil, based on having tried the Nantes type that digit recommends, I definitely get the biggest and best carrots from the Chantenay's! My brother in Illinois grows them (which is how I discovered them), and with his good Illinois black dirt, his get HUGE. More than 2" in diameter and at lest 4-5" long. BUT, no matter how huge they get, they are always sweet and tender all the way thru--no nasty core in the middle. He stores his in a bucket, in dry sand, in an unheated building over winter. See the link below for info about some of the different types! I tried a white one last year too--mostly for the novelty of it, but they also didn't get very big at all, and since most of the health benefits are in the deep colors, I decided it wasn't worth using my limited space to grow them again. About the quality, I think the home-grown ones are noticeably better for all the root crops. I use a lot of store bought carrots, and usually keep my home grown ones to eat raw or to use when I'm having company! They really are good--tho you sometimes run into really good store bought ones, but you never know what they'll taste like till you get them home! With parsnips, since so few people seem to know about them, I don't remember finding really fresh, good ones in a grocery store--ever! Before I started growing them I bought store bought ones a few times, and they weren't awful, but they were always just--old, having laid around in the store for so long. I've never bought produce department beets. it's either my own or canned--and home grown trumps canned by a mile! I'm not into all the "weird" kinds of greens you're asking about--that Digit tends to grow, so I can't help you with answers for any of that stuff! I don't like bitter AT ALL! Tried orach once when I got some seeds at a swap and even that was too bitter for me! I grew leeks one year when a pack of starts (Lancelot) jumped into my basket at Paulino's, and I really liked them, but with my dearth of sunlight, they really didn't do that well or get very big, most of them, so I haven't tried them again since then. I would like to grow a few again some year, maybe try to get them into a place with a little more sun. BUT, the year I did grow them, I also covered them with maple leaves and left them in the ground well into the winter. A couple other things that you can grow well into, if not all the way thru, winter are parsley and cutting celery. Depending on the winter, you can pick and use them all winter long. The cold doesn't phase them, and they are NOT covered at all! They will, being biennials, bolt as soon as it gets warm in spring, so you do need to start new ones each year. My other "winter crop" is tomatoes! They, of course, need to be stored inside, but I'm still picking them--up in an unheated bedroom. They started out again hung in the garage, but when it was gonna get well below freezing the first time I carried them in and laid them on a sheet in the bedroom--where they're (mostly the cherries now) still slowly ripening. Oh, and I haven't gotten around to this yet, but spinach, at least some varieties, can be planted in fall in time to germinate, and they'll be the first thing you can use in the spring. Charlene did this the first year she had a veggie garden when she planted them in fall hoping to get a crop then, but didn't and figured it had been a waste, and then she had an amazing crop in early spring--and we all had a wonderful spinach salad at the very first swap, which was at her house! I have been planning to start some in fall for three years now, and just never get it done. Regret it every spring since I haven't yet been able to successfully grow spinach when I start it in the spring. It always immediately bolts! That's all I can think of right now--and the second season of Downton Abbey just started, so I have to go! If I think of anything else I'll be back! Skybird P.S. When you want to do two posts in a row, just change the subject, or a word or couple letters in the subject, and it's no problem! GW doesn't seem to recognize it as a second post that way! P.P.S. Digit, what does kale taste like??? Is it like cabbage? I alway thought of it just as an ornamental when I sold it, and I know you can eat it but just never thought about growing it. Do you eat it fresh too, or just cooked? Tell me all about it! Here is a link that might be useful: Different types of carrots

Wow, that is going to be an amazing garden. I wish mine was as well laid out. I don't know how far north of me you are, but it might be that it is still a little cool for everything to take off growing. It sounds like your soil should be in good shape. Have you thought about giving them a little liquid miracle grow. My fall lettuce, Swiss Chard, and Spinach have just taken off in the last two weeks with the warmer temps. I did give everything a little Miracle grow last week. I am in the Lufkin/Nacogdoches area. I got my strawberries and blackberries this year from Simmons too. I can't wait for those first juicy berries. Mine all seem to be happy here in East Texas. Good Gardening!!!, Misha