Looking towards fall

It's hardly mid-August, but I'm thinking about fall vegetables. Will I have time to plant fall greens after a bit of a hiccup away from my garden? What about transplanting broccoli or brussels sprouts?

What should I recommend to folks next week in a Fall Vegetable Gardening class?

I'm looking forward to fresh lettuce and spinach, maybe some peas, and Asian greens like mizuna, pac choi, and mustards.

And, of course, I'm hoping that I'll still be harvesting some warm-season vegetables, too.

Vegetable gardening successes and failures

Every year is different. Some vegetables (and varieties) do well some years, and others are challenged.

I've had lots of tomatoes this year, thanks to abundant spring rains, but largely of a few varieties. Thank goodness for sturdy hybrids that happily produce faced with the usual tomato diseases.

My second round of plantings (from tip cuttings) are doing well, too, along with heirloom tomato plants growing in pots (in nice disease-free soil, of course). The second round of squash is flourishing, too, although between squash vine borers and woodchuck herbivory, the early plantings are just about gone.

I've left the winter squash and tromboncino squash growing in the satellite garden (maybe they'll outgrow the woodchucks?). The tomatoes look good, maybe the eggplants will produce some non-bitter fruits (some of them have been truly nasty), and maybe the yard-long beans will shake off the aphids, which have been a major garden pest this year.

Fall vegetable gardening and seeds

I have a lot of seeds already. Really. This is just one very small bit of my overall collection.


I determinedly tried to give away as many as I could in programs and events last spring, but of course, this just allowed me freedom to order more.

I actually was dog-earing pages in my Territorial Seeds 'winter' catalog yesterday. Hmmm. And my friend CEN gave me a bunch when she moved to a (much) colder climate, so really, I don't need many more for this fall season.

But the allure of another perfect winter lettuce variety, tender collard cultivar, a delicious young spinach, and maybe even a tasty beet or two is certainly alluring, especially when woodchucks are eating the squash in the satellite garden, and they're suffering from powdery mildew, in any case.

And what about the kitchen garden next to the Discovery Center (the visitor center for the botanical garden where I work) and the participants in fall vegetable gardening programs, and the folks with donated Earth Boxes through our Upstate Locavores network program. All will need fall vegetable seeds. Or so I'm thinking. It's a good thing that seeds are a wonderfully inexpensive indulgence.