fall gardening

Planning Your Georgia Fall Vegetable Garden

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Although the thermometer is rising above ninety on a daily basis and our Georgia humidity is, well, the typical Georgia humidity, it is time to do some serious thinking about your fall garden.

Did you make notes on your summer garden? Making notes about which varieties performed well for you, what pests plagued you, and your overall satisfaction from your warm-season garden will be useful as you plan for 2020. Also, make note of plant arrangement so you can practice crop rotation next year.

Think Green. Fall is the time for lettuce, spinach, collards, mustard greens and kale. Your seed catalogs will show you that there are so many varieties of lettuce that you couldn’t possibly grow them all. Do try a few new ones. They could make a real difference in the taste of your salads. I really enjoy the lettuce variety Drunken Woman!

Bush beans can be a part of your early fall garden. A planting of bush beans towards the end of summer may produce a nice crop for you if we don’t get an early frost. Take note of the days until harvest count and look for something in the lower numbers. Look for varieties that are resistant to rusts and keep a close eye on them for pests like Mexican bean beetles.

Don’t forget root crops. Short day onions and garlic are a MUST for any cool-season garden. Plant these root crops as sets and let them go until the spring. It is easy to grow all the garlic you will need for the year by careful planning. Make sure to mulch the crop.

Finally, if you don’t plan to grow a cool-season crop consider growing a cover crop. Cover crops can hold down weeds while enriching your soil. At the very least please be courteous to your fellow community gardeners and clean out your plot, removing plant debris that could harbor pests and weeds that could produce seeds that you will deal with later.

Cooler weather is on the way! Happy Gardening!

October Gardening Chores For Your Georgia Garden

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The weather is perfect to be out in the garden and there are chores to be done! UGA’s Vegetable Garden Calendar give us a to-do list:

Choose the mild weather during this period to plant or transplant the following: beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, onions, radishes, spinach and turnips. Plant your second planting of fall crops such as collards, turnips, cabbage, mustard and kale.

Lettuce seedlings at the Trustees Garden in Savannah

Refurbish mulch to control weeds, and start adding leaves and other materials for the compost pile. Store your manure under cover to prevent leaching of nutrients.

Water deeply and thoroughly to prevent drought stress. Pay special attention to new transplants.

Harvest mature green peppers and tomatoes before frost gets them — it may not come until November, but be ready.

Harvest herbs and dry them in a cool, dry place.

Herbs belong in the community and school garden!

Happy Fall Gardening!

Planning Your Georgia Fall Garden

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Although we are in the middle of a hot summer it is time to think about your fall garden.   We have put together a list of “tried and true” cultivars of cool-season vegetables.  These recommendations come from UGA’s Vegetable Planting Chart.  The transplants or seeds should be easy to find at your local feed-and-seed store or easy to order from seed catalogs.

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Garden Chores for September – October in Georgia

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The change of seasons doesn’t mean that gardening chores stop.  It just means they change a bit.

What Should We Do in the Garden?

According to the Georgia Vegetable Garden Calendar for this time of the year we need to:

Garden chores in september and octoberChoose the mild weather during this period to plant or transplant:  beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, onions, radishes, spinach and turnips.  Plant your second planting of fall crops such as collards, turnips, cabbage, mustard, and kale.

Refurbish mulch to control weeds, and start adding leaves and other materials to the compost pile.  Store your manure under cover to prevent leaching of nutrients.

Water deeply and thoroughly to prevent drought stress. Pay special attention to new transplants.

Harvest mature green peppers and tomatoes before frost gets them.

Harvest herbs and dry them in a cool, dry place.

And, most importantly, enjoy the cooler weather and enjoy your garden.

Happy Gardening!

Determining Planting Dates

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Sometimes determining planting dates can be tricky.  We know that our fall vegetable garden should be in and growing when it is still hot, and dry, outside.  We also know that many cool season plants don’t grow well in the heat.  What to do?

Weather Station Map
Weather Station Map

The first step is to find out when the average first frost date is for your area.  Luckily in Georgia we have the Georgia Automated Environmental Monitoring Network (AEMN) which has weather stations all over the state.  These weather stations collect weather data year after year, including first frost dates.  This information can help us determine when to plant. Let’s say you live in Dallas, Georgia and you want to plant broccoli, specifically the cultivar Green Goliath.

If you visit the AEMN website, www.georgiaweather.net, and type in your zip code, 30132, you will be directed to the Dallas Georgia weather station.  Following the link for first frost date you will find years of data for your use.  Let’s just use the last six years of collected data:

2012    Nov 9

2011    Oct 30

2010    Nov 6

2009    Oct 19

2008    Nov 10

2007    Nov 7

Using this information we can determine when we want to make sure the broccoli has matured and hopefully been eaten and enjoyed.   These dates have a span of 22 days.  The earliest is October 19th and the latest is November 10th.  The October 19th date looks like it may be an outlier.  (A statistician could do better justice to this analysis I am sure!)  So, you may decide that Halloween, October 31st looks like a good date to work with.

According to The Southern Seed Exchange catalog, the information for Green Goliath says 55 days to maturity (DTM).  In this case the DTM is from the transplant stage.  So, if you are starting your seeds to create your own transplants you will need to add about 20 days to that number, 75 days.

Look at October 31st and count back in the calendar 75 days.  This leads us to August 17th as the date to plant your seeds. Experienced, and maybe obsessive, gardeners mark in their calendars key dates such as “100 days until average first frost date” and “75 days until average first frost date.”

If you live in Dallas Georgia today, September 17th, is 44 days until your estimated average first frost date.  If you are feeling lucky with the weather, you might find some Green Goliath transplants at your local plant store.

Happy Gardening!