This is just a reminder post for those of us in Texas who aren't up to a completely
perennial garden yet. I know most of us don't even want to think about our gardens until the temps stop flirting with triple digits. If you are new to this area, it's often much easier to garden in the fall than in the spring here in most of Texas. By the time the plant gets big
enough to be producing a crop the weather has begun to cool off, so the plants can devote more
energy to production and it's more pleasant for you to be out there harvesting. On top of that, for whatever odd reason, there is supposed to be less insect pressure in the fall.
You'll want to check in your specific region to see if the following information applies to you.
Right now I can be planting summer and winter squashes, melons, peppers and tomato seeds for a second crop. There's also the whole assortment of plants like Okra, malabar spinach, and sweet potatoes that only give you one planting a year, but this is in their window of time.
If you have indeterminate tomatoes you could
root cuttings from your spring plants.
By next month you can be starting some of the fall/winter crops like broccoli and cabbage under shade so they can be well established before the short daylight hours of winter. You could get a jump on this by preparing the area where you intend to grow them by setting up the shade structure and starting to hydrate that soil so the soil life can start growing before you throw the seeds into a bare plot of dirt.
This year, I'm going to try chiting the potatoes from my last experiment and replanting them into a
garden bed for a fall crop, supposedly this is the time for that. I'm also going to plant some seeds from the sweetest cantaloupe we've picked this summer and see they'll produced late season fruit that is as sweet.
I'd be interested in seeing what garden tasks other people have found fit into this window of difficult conditions. I know I've barely touched on the possibilities here.
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