Yes the seasons do overlap but my summer vegetables get pretty tired during the summer heat. I don't try to carry over tomatoes unless they are cherries. I just replant in July. I do keep the peppers and eggplants but the squash are replanted. Cucumbers can be hit by cucumber beetles and I replant them too. It also helps not to plant the whole garden so I keep a few areas open. You can also plant lettuce and radishes and beans under the larger plants. This works really well in wide rows but might not do so well in square foot gardening. That's one of the reasons I still do row cropping. Now if you've planted potatoes and corn, they should have been harvested and open up room. Same with the onions. I think the real problem is that most people in Texas only plant a few different types of vegetables that are perennial in their native tropical setting. Since we rarely have a real spring and fall, we don't "feel" the proper time to plant veggies that like cooler weather. That's my 2 cents worth and I had the same problem but after missing fall veggies for a few years, I forced myself to cull and replant and have been satisfied ever since. Good luck

They're all coming along quite nicely and you have picked some real good ones. I've grown all that you have, except Goliath. Most, I'm sure as you know, have "late" DTM's. KB, Mexico, and GG were very late for me, 100+ days, so I hope your's come a bit earlier. The Brandywine's have been a challenge for me,and many other people, but are always in my garden each year. I grow BW Sudduth and BW Red (RL) and they produce well since I began shaking all my plants early in the AM during the hot months of Summer. It's made a huge difference over the last 3 years. Paul Robeson should be the first to ripen and CP and Carbon will follow. I would guess that you might see something in the mid to end of Sept. The bulk of them ripenng in Oct. and hopefully beyond. I've given seedlings to a gal that lives in Clairemont and works with my wife. She told me this morning that she hasn't had much luck growing tom's in the Fall, but DON"T let that discourage you with what you have going. I would suggest that you put your seedlings out as soon as possible, starting in a week or so. OUT of the wind and in the shade to start and slowly introduce them to the sun. There's plenty of info. here and elsewhere. I learned alot here: http://www.nctomatoman.topcities.com/nctomatomanWebPage.htm Drop me an email..it's available from "My Page" here at GW. Rob

I've always heard north to south, but at my old place they were east to west and we always had great gardens. We are finally going to start a garden at the new place this year after going 2 years without one, concentrating on other home jobs the first 2 summers. We are going to do a "lasagna" style in our huge back yard by putting down lots of newspaper and heavy duty cardboard from a furniture store, then covering it with black dirt, planting it, then mulching it heavily. At the old place, we had the soil nice and healthy and never tilled it. We just brushed the mulch away, planted it, replaced the mulch and then added new mulch. I hope to get the new garden established in the same way. The mulch wicked away excess moisture when we got too much rain and held in moisture when we had drought. I rarely had to water. It did occasionally attract garter snakes which didn't bother me too much as long as they left the area when they noticed me. We also had lots of toads and that didn't bother me unless I unwittingly touched one without seeing it first. They feel creepy but I like them.

That drought-resistant shrubs and trees in SoCal need undisturbed native soil to establish symbiotic relationships with soil fungi to truly go unwatered for 6 months of the year. Mycorrhizae don't typically need to be bought at a nursery, but all our yards sure need it to be in the soil for plants to do their best through summer/fall. Xeric plants need to get established, then they seem to do best when largely left alone, with not much more than some mulch, compost teas in the rainy season and light pruning to thrive. Masanobu Fukuoka foresaw this in One Straw Revolution (a book as radical in some ways as anything else the 70s had to offer) when he advocated abandoning modern ag methodologies, especially tilling, focusing instead on preserving soil food web ecologies in the topsoil. I doubted it for years, but modern soil science and my experiences sure have made me a believer in it