I get that, but what if it is a hearty plant which can tolerate slight frost? You have to consider the growth rate of plants in the fall. Frost isn't the only issue as many plants can tolerate them for awhile. The day length is shorter so less sun for the plants and the average temp is cooler so plants will grow more slowly. What I do is I look at the days to maturity on the seed packet. If there is a range then I use the longest number of days. I add 2 weeks to that and subtract from the date I want to harvest them. This isn't a precise thing, and some years things may not work out as well as you hoped, but that is gardening. In general though, if you sow the seeds while summer is still around and the ground warm things germinate quickly and grow quickly and then they slow down as the temps cool. Ideally you want the plants near harvest at this point. Once the cool weather arrives many will 'keep' in the ground for a very long time because they aren't growing much and they don't have the urge to bolt. If you have the room, stagger the fall planting so you plant 1/3 each week for 3 weeks (or more) and keep notes so you can see how each did (and remember it for next year, I forget so much over the winter if I don't write things down).

I've done 7-8 dates several years. A few times the last plantings were double cropped back in the same place as an early planting. It takes a lot of fertility to make corn happy on that second crop. Yours is a nice green indicating a good level of nitrogen. That's not many plants for pollination purposes but hopefully you will get a few good ears.

Dave, I assume from your post, the tree is planted in the ground. Either way, you should check the roots of your tree for rootknot nematodes. If you pull the soil back to expose some of the roots, the gals the nematodes create will look like a brown pearls on the roots. I am convinced that most ficus carica will root faster than nematodes can keep up with... especially when the weather is cool enough that the nematodes are largely inactive, but it is warm enough for root growth. Being in zone 10, however, the ground may not cool enough for RKN activity to slow down. Or, as is the case sometimes, the infestation in the ground is broad enough to be everywhere the roots grow. In these cases, the number of roots blocked with gals may be high enough to kill the tree. It is possible the weather was sufficiently different to effect your crop. Last year was a very wet summer in Houston. The figs which were already beginning to grow before the rain hit, split. Most of the trees defoliated due to rust and did not recover enough to produce fruit afterwards. All in all it was an extremely poor year for fig production. Pruning the crown of your tree to let more light and air through will help deal with moist weather. In zone 10 it is probably too late to do any major pruning. You should consider only pruning what is absolutely necessary now. Then plan for a more significant pruning after this season. ~james

Hi Molly, Unless you're just interested in "new" potatoes, the odds are against you. Our climate creates the perfect environment for late blight, a disease which spreads like wildfire with the fall rains and cooling temps. Potatoes (and tomatoes!) are highly susceptable to late blight - I've seen a whole crop of healthy plants disappear in 2-3 days! So most potato growers want to have their crop dug and cured by the time the fall rains start. However, if you're only interested in getting a batch of fall new potatoes (the small ones the size of ping-pong balls) you could plant now and dig everything just before the fall rains. But don't try to use grocery potatoes, since they spray them with chemicals to inhibit sprouting - if you don't have a batch of strongly sprouted old potatoes laying around, you're out of luck. BTW, potatoes are one of nature's most disease susceptable vegetables, and it's a real good idea to get your seed potatoes from a certified source. I gamble and save some of my own seed potatoes for a year or two, but then I go back to my local feed store for a new batch of certified seed and start over. Good luck, John