I succession plant throughout the summer, and many of those succession plants become my fall garden. There's not really a specific time where I start thinking of something as a fall planting, as opposed to something just being the next planting to fill a recently vacated space. I suppose, technically speaking, anything that I put into the ground after July 1st probably is a fall garden planting because the harvest will come in the fall. Right now, I have nine fresh, new tomato plants for the fall garden and they likely will go into the ground early next week. They are going to go into the northernmost raised beds in our garden because the spring planting is in the southernmost raised beds. I like to put fresh fall tomato plants as far as possible from the spring plants so that whatever diseases and pests are plaguing the spring planting are as far way as possible from the fall planting.

Peppers are a big part of the fall garden, although I don't plant any new plants for fall. The ones planted in spring usually don't begin to peak until mid- to late-summer anyway, and they produce heavily until the weather really starts getting cold. So, even though I won't be planting any new peppers for fall, the fall garden will be full of them. The peppers sort of take over gradually. In June we're always buried under a huge onslaught of tomatoes and I stay busy canning them. This early in the season, most of the jalapenos are being harvested as needed on salsa-making days. Gradually, and sometimes without me really thinking about it too much or noticing it too much, the canning of salsa and other tomato products tapers off just as the canning of pepper products picks up. While the canning of tomatoes screams "June!" in our garden, it is the canning of Jalapeno peppers that dominate July, and then the making of pepper jelly is probably the activity that reminds me August is in full swing. Many of the peppers that I like to use for fermented pepper sauce or to dehydrate for use in the non-gardening season aren't being harvested until August or September and their heaviest harvests won't come until fall.

Oh, I do plant ornamental peppers for fall. I used to start their seed in June and not put them in the ground until late July or early August. The problem with this was that they still were pretty small when the ornamental fall peppers started arriving in stores for a mid-summer planting, and that made me want to buy fall pepper plants even though I had small ones coming along at home. So, this year (and for the last 3 or 4 years) I sowed my fall ornamental pepper seeds around April or early May in paper cups and now have plants about as big as what will be arriving in stores soon. These ornamental peppers are in bloom and a few have small peppers on them already so they also are comparable to the fall peppers that will start appearing soon in garden centers.

Winter squash is one of the big things I plant in the fall garden. Often, I don't plant any winter squash at all until early July because they are such space hogs and until early July, much of my space is filled with the spring tomatoes. I have already begun yanking out tomato plants, leaving gaps in my rows of tomatoes, and I'm sowing seeds of winter squash into those holes at the time I take out the tomato plants. Gradually, several tomato plant-filled beds will transition over entirely to winter squash-filled beds over the next couple of weeks.

Melons are also a fall garden favorite. I always plant a few in spring, but most of my melons don't get planted until early July. The grow so fast and set fruit so fast that even an early July planting often is producing melons before the end of August. I've only got about a dozen spring-planted melon plants and I hope to double that soon. My plan is to put the additional icebox melon and Israeli melon planting where the cucumbers are growing now. Next week I plan to take out the cucumber planting and then I'll add a little fresh compost to that bed and sow the seeds of my icebox and Israeli melon seeds. I probably could take out the planting of cucumber pickles right now and not miss them all that much, but they're producing so well that I hate to remove them too soon.

I'll sow seeds of fall bush beans but not until latest July or earliest August because if you plant them too early then they start blooming while the air temperatures are still too hot for them and suffer from blossom drop, so there's no sense in getting in a hurry with them. We really don't need a lot of bush beans for fall, but I'll plant them anyway because the pole beans will peter out soon in the heat and I do like to have fresh legumes of some sort throughout the season even though there's already enough in the freezer this year to keep us in frozen beans until next summer.

Usually I plant a ton of southern peas for fall because they usually produce great yields in August, September and October, but I planted so many for spring that I may skip adding fresh plantings for fall and use that space for something else. I think I have six varieties of southern peas already planted and most of them have just begun producing. Of course, they'll finish up long before autumn, so I might sow seeds into one of the short beds at the far eastern end of the garden so I can have one succession crop of peas for fresh peas in fall. This isn't really critical because the summer plants will fill up the deep freeze or what little empty space is left in it by now, but it is always fun to have some fresh ones as long as the gardening season lasts.

The cool season plantings for fall won't begin for a while yet, but I've been collecting seeds of purple varieties of cool season plants so I can have a purple fall garden. If I remember correctly, I've got seeds of the following that produce purple harvests: broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, carrots, radishes, cabbage, purple bunching onions and several types of purple greens. Many of the purple greens actually have red in their name, but their actual color is more of a purple or a reddish purple. A lot of these go into the ground in August. Later in fall, I'll plant spinach and collard greens. One of my favorite ornamentals to raise for fall is ornamental cabbage and kale. I usually sow their seed around August 1st. I think that the ornamental cabbage and kale plants start arriving here in stores in mid- to late-August so I just try to have my plants already sprouting and growing then so I won't be tempted to buy them when they arrive in the stores. I can't plant them too early or harlequin bugs show up and devour them, so I don't put them in the ground until September.

Sometimes I plant sweet corn and potatoes for fall, but the harvest from the spring/summer crop is so large that I won't do that this year. Often, what happens is that I let summer plantings, especially tomato plantings, linger in the garden too late in the summer and that slows down succession planting until fall. I'm being more disciplined this year and already yanking out spring-planting tomatoes to make room for fall plants. I'll be clearing out three beds of tomato plants over the weekend, I hope, to make room for fall plantings and possibly a fourth bed as well. Or, at least one row of the two rows in the fourth bed. That still leaves me with three raised beds of tomatoes producing, so while it sounds like I'm taking out a lot of tomatoes, I'll have too many left. Those are the beds, though, where various plantings of winter squash will gradually take over as I randomly remove tomato plants and sow squash seeds.

Normally I might be succession sowing more summer squash now that would be producing for fall, and I still might, but the pests aren't hitting the spring plantings yet, so I've been dragging my feet on sowing more for fall. They aren't essential anyhow because I can harvest the small Seminole pumpkins just a couple of days after they are pollinated and begin to enlarge and then use them for summer squash.

Some years, if I am in an energetic mood, I sow seeds of an ornamental corn or broom corn or both for fall sometime in July or earliest August, along with ornamental gourds and sometimes grain type Amaranth because the flower heads/seed heads make great autumn decorations. If I do that for fall it likely will have to be in the back garden because the front garden stays pretty fall while the back garden tends to just catch the overflow, largely because the voles that plague it make it hard to grow anything back there in August when the woods and fields dry up and the voles flee to the sandy soil of the back garden.

One of the most important parts of planting the fall garden is the planting of garlic in September, October or November, though technically those won't be harvested until fall. I still think of them as fall garden plants because if I don't, I'll forget to plant them

That's a roundup of my fall gardening plans. I'm hoping drought doesn't return as we're already on almost our 4th week of no rain at our house, though our mesonet station has had rain a couple of times lately when the rain missed our part of the county. Drought is probably the number one reason that I will let plans for the fall garden slide, mostly because it is too hard to get fall plants established if no rain is falling in July and August. Looking at it from that point of view, I am a fool to be planting a fall garden when we've gone almost 4 weeks without rain, but I'm going to plant it anyway.

everything I can! We had a wet cold spring and I wasn't able to start hardly anything at the right time. As it worked out, most of my spring tomato plants and peppers were stalled in growth. I should have planted broccoli! Warm season plants that weren't stunted have rolled right into fall planning and these plants look great!

I am very much behind, tho. I'm learning it's always best to start it, plug it and see what happens with the wishy washy. I don't know if we'll get an early freeze or a late freeze, but if we get a late freeze, I'll have lotsa broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale and more.

i have corn growing, too, that'll be ready by end of August.

Mulch that heat off the roots!

I've come to the realization that my spring tomatoes will probably also be my fall tomatoes, as my two week delay in planting them is probably what's keeping them from setting fruit in the heat. Will plant out earlier next year, and meanwhile, focus on keeping these alive through fall. Zuch and eggplant is just now getting close to flowering. I have a couple new cukes potted up and ready to go. Seeds for lettuces, spinach, carrots, and bunching onions are ready to go. I have space for up to 6 new plants for fall, so trying to decide what to allocate where. At least 3 will probably be tomatoes. Those probably won't go in until July 15-ish, as that's when TMD opens with fall plants.

Bunching onions/scallions, carrots, and garlic - when can those be planted out, again?

I have these thriving plants in June and then suddenly in July they look like heck...blight, spidermites, drought, heat. Not that I won't be nursing some through to fall, but one bed I just want to taste them, then they're gone for something else. I planted my garlic on Oct 23rd last year. Carrots sometime around 8/15 for our part of the state. I just started seeds for Brussels sprouts and cauliflower. I will start broccoli, cabbage, collards soon. Bunching onions are giving me problems. I have some, growing poorly now. I am going to move them to a more permanent position and see if I can get a perennial stand of them. I started mine in spring. I think for scallions you can start them anytime, I usually throw some in with my lettuce. Maybe someone else can give us a definitive answer.

I wish I could post a picture. I know the process, but I think I need to tweak something in my laptop first. Sweet 100 has crunchy brown leaves that start at the tips of the branches and move inward towards the stem. Blight? I have Daconil, I think. I keep removing leaves, and am left with empty branches.

The baby cukes that don't get pollinated and dry up, should I be removing those?

Carrots can be planted mid-July to mid-August and bunching onions and scallions around the end of August or in early September. Garlic can be planted any time in fall, but I like to wait until September or October so the ground has cooled down some.

Amy, Yep, that's so typical of tomato plants in our heat. I don't care how gorgeous and healthy the plants are in May and the first part of June, it is like the hand of fate reaches down and slaps them and suddenly they look like crap every year. It's the reason I'm such an advocate for planting fall tomatoes even in a year when I'm not planting anything else new for fall. Fresh, new, healthy plants that haven't been stressed by the diseases and pests do so much better for fall than old, tired plants. I usually nurse a few through the summer but they never really look good again after June, and I get the impression that they are just barely hanging on.

Rebecca, There are so many things that the brown, crispy leaves could be, and without a photo we'd just be guessing. I'm going to link the foliage page from the TAMU Cucurbit Problem Solver. Maybe you'll see something on that page that looks like what you're seeing on your plants. To see further info, click on the photo you're interested in. If you don't find anything there, you might Google and go to Cornell's Vegetable MD Online website to see if you can find something there that resembles what you're seeing. On the TAMU problem solver leaf page, there's 4 different categories of problems so be sure to page all the way down as you search.

Cucurbit Problem Solver

Well, I took a chance and bought some plants for a fall harvest but I don't know if they are going to make it. The pepper plants look pitiful and the tomato plants are just...well...it's like trying to uncover something beautiful in a ball of yarn, lol. The only thing that's doing well is the basil that I bought. But, basil pretty well bounces back and is easy to grow from previous experiences. LOVE growing basil!!! I think I am going to give it up for this year because I need to amend my dirt in the raised beds. I have Mel's square foot gardening book so I need to pop that sucker open and get some mix going. I'll continue to baby the few plants I have but I don't think I'll go for a fall garden now at this point sadly. I really would like to plant some lettuce, broccoli, and cabbage though but not sure they'll do well in the current soil.

Dawn.....I would LOVE to visit your garden!! I miss seeing big beautiful gardens to which the owners love gardening as much as I do. And then I read about your canning too and I miss that as well. I thought about buying some cucumbers to can some sweet relish and pickles but I don't know where I could get some homegrown ones around OKC area. Then there's tomatoes.....I really want to can some homemade spaghetti sauce. ((sigh))

I have this voice I keep hearing saying, "build up the soil and it will come!"

For now, I'll be dreaming of gardening where the winds come sweeping down the planes, and the waving wheat can sure smell sweet when the wind comes right behind the rain..........

Melissa, I'm eager to get enough tomatoes to make some sauces! One day... I'm with you on giving up a bit and working on the beds. Every spring I start too many plants and don't have enough prepared beds. I have the space, but not enough amended soil. So, I decided to fill up the bio intense bed and I get what I get while I tend to the beds for next spring. It'll take me from now through part of winter, I'm sure. And another thing, spring gets busy .. every spring something with the houses MUST be done right away or some other major physical distraction comes around and takes me away from digging beds. So, I'm at it now. Maybe next year ...

bon

I'm with you on planting too many and not having enough prepared beds. But, I plant extras because I know some of them won't survive. I have been trying to learn more on how to make better soil without spending a fortune. As for next year, I just told my DH that I wanted to make a whole row of raised beds against one side of our backyard. I have some plans in my head of a few raised planters that are about 4' raised with a planting area underneath for cooler plants. I also would love a little greenhouse, nothing huge, but something about 6' x 6'. Enough to start seeds in.

As far as sauces, I really want to try to make my own tomato paste and freeze it. And.....my list continues to grow lol.

Melissa

Melissa, I have gotten 2 plastic covered green houses at Big Lots on clearance in August. At some point they throw all their garden stuff on clearance for half price. OR my first seed starting "green house" was a set of shelves with a plastic cover that, if you watch sales you can get for $20-25.

I believe I had a batch of tomato 2 seasoned past.. now that we're writing about it. I made some sauce. wasn't much and we ate it right away. I chopped, seasoned and cooked it. Put it in the frig, took it out the next day and cooked it again, put it in the frig. I think I did this about 4 days. Somehwere I read that's how traditional sauces were born in Italy. They cooked them over a long period of time cooling it down in the frig over night, I believe. I found it really does break down the ingredients and melds the flavors together (so, by gollies, it better be a good recipe to start). I really enjoyed it.

wouldn't it be just awesome to be able to make large batches and then can them later? Yeah, it'd need to be a really GOOD recipe. lolz

I like your raised bed idea. I had one a few years back and the native perennial weeds beneath it in the shade seemed to populate more than the surrounding areas exposed to the southern sun. I think your idea would work great!! I might steal it ... hehe

bon

BTW, I got my fall seed order from Kitazawa yesterday. Seeds to purple plants for a bed of purple veggies.