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

Kiwinut, That is somewhat of a relief for me! Looking at my LATEST local 10 day forecast minimum temperatures: Thur 33(33)*F, Fri 33(32)*F, Sat 32(28)*F, Sun 34(33)*F. The figures in (**), are the forcasted minimums a day (or 2) ago. So do an UPDATE on the non exact science of weather prediction! My figs were in the garage with a min/max thermometer registering 20*F+, slightly above the 'safest' 20*F min temp touted for figs. Now a few days after (letting my dogs out), I see VERY green buds but NO leaves (yet). Having so many, putting them in the garage requires many more huffs and puffs! So I do not that. I was thinking of a cheap 'painters' thin plastic cover DOME, for a night (or 2). Now I like your idea of waking up (once or twice) in the middle of night and spray some (warm/hot water) better. Will have the garden hose conected to a (twice turn hot/once cold) outlet beforehand). However, since I have NO new tender leafs it seems that I have to do NOTHING?! From my recent GH heater mishap experience (see 'Disaster' FF thread), 32*F (0*C) does some damage to 'tender' fig tips/leaves (min/max thermometer had registered ~31*F). Funny that ~1/3 of my figs were affected, lost only 1 twig, not all figs are equal or maybe it was a very localized temp thing?! Also, I let some of my 'other' sub/tropical GREEN plants from my GH for hardening outside to make space for my NEW fig cuttings, guess I will have to pull them IN my garage on the coming Fri/Sat nights... George (NJ)

Yes, you can use a greenhouse or hoop/tunnel cover to boost the growth of cool weather veggies. However, you're going to have to figure out a way to vent it - preferably automatically - and monitor the temperatures closely because sometimes it will get TOO hot in there. In a tightly-sealed enclosure, temperatures could climb to 100+ degrees on a mild, sunny day. Last frost dates (a.k.a. beginning of the warm weather growing season) range from early to late March for the cities you listed. The last frost dates are earlier farther east and closer to the coast. (I attached a link to a frost date map.) I want to reiterate what Zackey said about summer being a difficult time to grow many vegetables that you probably think of as summer vegetables. Most summer vegetables in the rest of the country are spring vegetables here - you don't want to delay planting them to wait for your cool-weather veggies to finish. They need to go in as soon as possible after the last frost. However, peppers (especially hot peppers), eggplants, okra, cowpeas, yard long beans, and sweet potatoes like the heat and will produce well in summer. If you can plan your garden accordingly, you can keep some of the cool weather crops going on a little later if you plan to follow them with these crops. Collards are one of the few cool-weather crops that can survive all summer, but flavor is best in the cool months. Daikon radishes seem to have some heat-tolerance, too. I am going to test some this year. But most cool-weather crops will bolt or die in April or May. I'd love to hear how your greenhouse works out. I have been thinking I need to build some low tunnels or something for my winter veggies. If nothing else, they would provide protection when we have damaging hard freezes like the ones earlier this month. Here is a link that might be useful: Florida last frost date map

CAthy, I'm happy as long as the tank heater is keeping up, I HATE chopping ice from the tank. Actually, chopping it isn't the bad part, it's dipping the ice chunks out with a hay fork, I always get wet, and it's cold. Ugh. Hate that..... Wind chill factors of 20 to 30 below zero ought to tell me, I've made a wooden cover for the stock tank with a hole just big enough for the animals to put their heads through, I'm hoping it helps, at least enough to keep the tank unfrozen. We set a bale this afternoon, a big round bale will last 3-4 days, so hopefully it'll last until Wednesday morning, when it breaks a little and will be back up to a high of 17, and no below zero temps. I can do everything else manually, but the tractor doesn't always want to start when it's that cold and I need the tractor to move those big bales. As for school, they will probably not have school Monday or Tuesday, we have so many rural students that ride busses and it's just not safe to have small children out in that weather. When it hits zero they are not allowed to go outside for recess and when it's colder, they eventually give up and close school. Annie