Diane, I'm still fighting the damage from the water-logged spring. I have been thinking about starting a new garden on the highest spot on my lawn, which will be out front next to the highway. It will sure look strange but that is the only spot that I can get drainage. If I do that I may start off with black-eye peas or something I can use to build my sorry soil. Larry

Diane,

Oh, you just had to go and say the words "Fall Gardening", didn't you. I was hoping to have a week or two "off" from thinking hard about gardening.....you know, a golden week or two in between finally feeling the spring garden is planted, has survived 20" of rain in three or four weeks, and is going to survive.....and starting to plan/worry about what to do for fall, especially if no more rain falls between now and September.

I've been discussing fall gardening with another member of this forum via e-mail and I just am not ready to think about the specifics like which variety, which planting dates, etc. Can we not "take off" the rest of May and start this discussion June 1st? LOL

Well, OK, here's my thoughts.

If I am going to have fall tomatoes that are raised from seed, and not from cuttings from the spring tomatoes, then I need to start the seeds the first week in June. Since I usually use the fall for long-keeping types, sauce tomatoes, Livingston varieties and heat-setting types, I normally raise different ones for fall, so I need to make my list and check my seeds and make sure I have them all, etc., etc., etc. AND, to complicate things, the tomato section of my William Woys Weaver book has me wanting to try some "new" old varieties RIGHT NOW (she said, stomping her foot like a petulant child). So, that complicates things a bit. There's nothing like "gotta have it now" heirloom tomato fever to mess up my carefully-honed (insert laughter here) fall garden plan.

Actually, my fall garden plan involves looking at my spring garden, seeing what will be harvested "when", thereby leaving me empty space to fill. So, I need to sit down with a pad of paper, make a list, and try to figure out when I'll have openings to fill for the fall garden. Of course, sometimes the squash bugs and other hideous creatures help me out by wiping out a crop and leaving me with a bare, open space to fill immediately.

Since everything went into the water-logged soil so late, I feel like the harvest will run a bit late, so I need to be careful not to start fall veggies too early.....or I won't have a space available to plant them. On the other hand, with fall veggies you cannot start too late, or a freeze will get them before they mature. Ha! Didn't I once say that a fall garden was easier than a spring one? What was I thinking?

And, remember Owie, if you want to plant Irish potatoes for fall, it is hard to find seed potatoes then, and your own potatoes from your spring crop will not have been dormant long enough to sprout.....so plan ahead and get some grocery store potatoes in June so they can be sprouting by July or so. I think I am going to grow heirloom fingerlings in the fall since I didn't grow them this spring.

I am thinking about doing some new things for fall that I don't normally do....like maybe planting some overwintering lettuce and overwintering broccoli varieties from Territorial seed.

A lot depends on the weather. I know we've had "Flood" so far, but who knows what happens from this point onward. I kind of have to have two fall plans.....one for "flood" and one for "drought" because that's the only two kinds of weather we have here.

So, give me a couple of days to make my lists and look at my garden beds, estimate dates when space will become available, figure out what I am going to put there, and I'll tell you what I come up with. Honestly, though, no matter what I plan, the weather will throw me some curveballs (sometimes a lot of them) and I know I'll have to improvise as I go along.

For all of you who don't obsessively begin thinking about the fall garden in May, I've linked the OSU Fall Garden Planning Guide to get you started. It is not as inclusive as I'd like, but it does give you a starting point.

And, for anyone who thinks Diane is bringing up this topic "too early", no--her timing is just right. The earliest "official" planting date for fall garden plants is July 1st, and there's been times I've planted my "July 1st planting" on June 15th.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU Fall Garden Planting Guide with Dates

Since I pretty much got drowned out for spring planting, I'm interested in fall stuff already. Can asparagus be planted in the fall?

I know next to nothing about that evil veggie called asparagus but I'm sure someone here does. Hubby has been asking me to plant some for a couple of years now but I've so far been able to ignore him. LOL

Preliminary thoughts on my fall garden:

I'll be starting a few tomatoes in a week or two, including some Longkeepers that managed to find their way into my seed stash this past year. Like Dawn, I think I'll also try to focus on paste types since I'm not growing any right now.

I'll likely do another planting of zucchini and other summer squash as we can never have too many and love dehydrating gobs for winter.

Cabbages -- I'd really love to try growing cabbages for the first time ever (I think?). I'll take any and all advice for fall cabbage growing you guys can throw at me. I don't even have any seeds so need to get some ordered if I can figure which kind.

Turnips -- gonna try those. Got seed for purple top and "rutabaga turnip". Not sure if that's a real variety or just regular rutabagas. Also going to do another big patch of lettuce & spinach once it cools down.

Still thinking on the rest...

(Dawn, you have my special permission to not discuss this further until June 1st. ;-) )

Diane

Turnips - For roots plant in the spring, for greens plant in the fall is the rule of thumb we go by... that said mine are almost ready to dig and feast on:-)

Diane,

Since the OSU fall planting dates aren't as extensive as I'd like, I often adapt the North Central Texas fall planting dates since I'm just over the river from that part of the state. Since you're just a few counties NE of me, you probably could use the same dates, or maybe adjust them so you'd plant earlier or later depending on the date of your first hard freeze in the fall. I've linked that list below. Normally, the dates I use are somewhere in between OSU's and the ones for north central Texas, but I'll slide them later or earlier depending on what our weather is up to.

For cabbage, if you start the seed outdoors in flats (or in your greenhouse if you have a good shadecloth and ventiliation system so they won't roast) about the first week in August, then you'll have nice, healthy, decently-sized transplants by the first week of September and can plant in early to mid-September as soon as the daily highs fall into the right range. I like for my fall transplants to be a little larger/older than my spring transplants because the fall cabbage transplants have to deal with some really warm weather and, often, drought conditions as well.

One advantage to growing fall cabbage is the heads tend to be larger than heads of the same variety that are grown in the spring. Why? Because spring cabbage is maturing in increasingly hot weather, which is does not like, but fall cabbage gets to mature in increasingly cool and mild weather. The disadvantage is that fall cabbage matures more slowly because of the decreasing day length. So, when you select a variety of cabbage, look at the days to maturity and, for fall cabbage, up the number by about 25%.

When you plant your cabbage, set each plant as deep as you can, up to the bottom of the first set of leaves. Water it well and mulch it. If fall cabbage is stressed right after it is planted, it will stall and just sit for ages, so get it off to a good start and keep it going.

I've never had trouble with cabbage loopers in the fall or with any other pest but you might have trouble with harlequin bugs on your cabbage if they are a pest you have there at your place.

By the way, I can't even believe it is time to start seeds for fall tomatoes! Where did spring go? Oh, that's right, we missed most of spring because we were inside waiting for the flooding to stop. LOL

On a lovely, mild day like today it seems impossible to believe that our beautiful, lush garden plants will play out, finish up, roast, cook and give out by July or August, but they will......and, then, we'll be glad we have our fall garden all planned out, seeds started, transplants ready to go into the ground, etc.

I don't really mind talking about the fall garden before June 1st.....I was just givin' ya a little grief, since your DH and six kids (ooops, did I count right or is it seven now???) don't give you enough grief as it is.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Fall Planting Dates for North Central Texas

Dawn,
How do you start grocery store potatoes? Do you just pop of the root and germinate them or cut a piece off. I have no idea. I have never thought about potatoes until now. Can you do brown and red potatoes from the grocery store?

Kristy,

I buy 'em, stick 'em in a dark corner in the floor of the pantry, forget about them for a month or two, and then when I think about them, I check to see if they are sprouting. Usually they sprout in 4 to 8 weeks, depending on how long they were in storage before the grocery store sold them and also depending on whether they are organic or not. (Conventionally grown potatoes are normally sprayed with anti-sprouting chemicals before they are shipped to the grocery stores, although they eventually will sprout after the anti-sprouting stuff has worn off. Organic potatoes aren't sprayed with the anti-sprouting chemical, so they sprout more quickly.)

I hesitate to recommend using grocery store potatoes to a new veggie gardener--and here's why. Potatoes are very prone to certain diseases and those diseases are carried by the potatoes themselves. So, when you buy "certified seed potatoes" they have been treated with fungicides to prevent those diseases. You can plant them with the assurance that serious disease issues are unlikely. However, when you use grocery store potatoes, those have not been given a preventative disease treatment, so you may have serious disease issues with them.

So, for newer gardeners, it is always better to use certified seed potatoes, IF THEY ARE AVAILABLE. More experienced gardeners know well the symptoms of potato disease and are more likely to spot the beginning stages of such diseases very early on, and therefore, to be able to "save" their potato crop with quick treatment. Thus, I am more comfortable recommending grocery story potatoes to a very (very, very, very, very) experienced gardener like Owie. Having said that, we all live in the real world....and, in the real world, just try and find certified seed potatoes for sale in the summer for a fall crop! So, if you want a fall crop, you'll probably have to use plain old grocery store potatoes.

You can buy any potatoes you want from the grocery story, brown, red or any other color, sprout them and plant them. (To plant them, cut them into pieces with each piece having 2 to 3 eyes, dig a trench 8" deep at the appropriate time for a fall planting, and then plant them. Watch emerging foliage carefully and be prepared to treat with a fungicide at the first sign of disease.) Yukon Gold is one of my favorites and another is Red LaSoda.

I always buy my fall "seed potatoes" from the grocery store, and usually from an organic grocery store like Central Market or Whole Foods Market or from a big box store like Sam's or CostCo. I've never had disease issues from using grocery store potatoes either, but I do watch carefully for them because they are common. In the spring, when "certified seed potatoes" are available at nurseries, big box stores, and seed and feed stores, I always purchase and use them.

Hope that answered your question. And, for what it is worth, I think fall potatoes are much less disease-prone than spring potatoes (due to warmer and drier weather at the time they are planted), so using grocery store potatoes as seed potatoes probably isn't as risky in the fall as it is in the spring.

Dawn

Owiebrain....thanks for reminding me about planting cabbage seed for fall. Like many others, my ground was too wet to even think about it! But now you have me dreaming of Savoy cabbage :)

I can't find Savoy in any of the markets in my neck of the woods, but I think it's much sweeter and more of a delicacy that some of the standard varieties. The ONLY way I'm going to get it is to grow it. I love the red cabbages too,....so beautiful and colorful growing in the garden and loaded with more antioxidants and phytonutrients.

Shekanahh

Shekannah

What is generally the guidelines for ordering seeds for fall planting? I mean, for such things as cabbage, lettuce, carrots and others can they be ordered any time of year and get relatively fast shipping? I mainly ask because i don't want to be looking through the selections online only to see everything says "sOLD OUT FOR 2009". Know what I mean?. Example: Baker Creek's garlic is all sold out, is that typical of most seed banks? I guess I'm just looking for a good cut-off date for ordering fall stuff. Any suggestions?
Also, I wanted to know about peas (sweet) and brussels sprouts. I've had very spotty luck with both in spring gardens, usually having better luck with peas. Are they generally better contenders in the fall? Seems like it would be that way for the sprouts, seeing as how a frost makes 'em taste better. Any advice? Varieties? Heirlooms?
My two cents worth of advice: I've had veggie gardens on and off for years and always recommend buying your plants from local producers or online seed sources. The big box stores don't really have your garden's best interest in mind every year. I usually buy my stuff from the OSU farmer's market or an independent nursery.
P.S. Salsify is a fall or winter veggie isn't it? I recommend trying it, it's the best vegetable you've never had!
good night
chef

Shekannah,

I have to order on-line to get the varieties I want and generally don't even bother looking in the stores here for any veggie seed. All the retail outlets here have the "same old same old" stuff, mostly hybrids, and I prefer the heirloom varieties that were bred (or selected or saved) for their superior flavor as opposed to hybrids bred primarily for disease resistance, shelf life and appearance

Chef,

I usually order my fall seeds at the same time I order my spring seeds--usually in Dec. or Jan., depending on when specific companies have their seed stocks on hand and ready to ship. Of course, I usually forget something or add a new variety or two when I start making my planting list in June, and I try to order those last minute add-ons no later than the end of June. The longer you wait to order, the greater the chance a variety will be sold out.

Baker Creek's business has grown by leaps and bounds the last 4 or 5 years and they tend to sell out of quite a few varieties---much more so than they used to, so I always order what I want from them very, very, very early. Usually I watch for the website to update in winter and order from it even before I receive the printed copy of their catalog.

Other firms that have a good selection of heirloom varieties include Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Seed Savers Exchange, Sandhill Preservation Center (a small operation and you have to follow their ordering instructions precisely) and Victory Seed (linked below).I also like Territorial Seed which has a great selection of veggies suited for fall gardens, and Willhite Seed, based in Poolville, Texas, which offers varieties suited to our climate.

Brussels sprouts do much better in the fall here than in the spring. I don't even attempt to grow a spring crop of them. I like both Catskill (also known as Long Island Improved) and Long Island. They taste pretty similar, but Catskill produces a couple of weeks earlier.

For peas, if you are going to plant several varieties, plant the wrinkle-seeded ones for your earlier harvest. They are higher in sugar so you get sweeter peas, but they don't hold up to very cold weather well. Then, for your later peas, plant a smooth-seeded variety or two because they can handle colder weather and still will mature a great crop as the nights get increasingly colder. There are lots of great heirloom pea varieties available. I like Wando, Sutton's and Tall Telephone. Check out the selection of peas from Victory Seed. They have one of the larger selections of heirloom types. (Sutton's is available from Seed Savers Exchange, which also has golden peas and blue peas).

Salsify is under-rated and most people have never heard of it, but I like it. You have to plant it fairly early since most varieties take 4 to 5 months to mature, but it can take a lot of cold. It grows really, really long deep roots, so it is hard to grow in clay soil but does great in sandy loam or even in very sandy soil. Other fall crops that are less well-known include kale, Swiss chard, tatsoi, endive, escarole, parsnips, and rutabagas. I like to grow unusual vegetables. : )

And, for anyone reading this who intends to plant garlic this fall, I'd suggest you order yours now for fall shipping. Otherwise, all the "good" varieties will be sold out.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Victory Seed

Thanks Dawn, always appreciated!

Pattyokie, fall is the best time to plant asparagus since it will have the winter to get the roots established while the tops are dormant. Anytime in Oct works well. Remember to mulch to prevent frost heave, and delay harvesting unti the second spring after planting and that year only harvest spears bigger than a pencil and for no longer than a week or two. After the plant is well established you can harvest for a month to 6 weeks. Here in z 6b I always stop picking June 1st in a wet year, earlier in a dry as I don't water my plants.

Got a question I asked in the Tomatoes thread... I started tomato seeds this spring and didn't feed them fertilizer, so they stayed really tiny. (This wasn't intentional - just a dumb beginner mistake.) I've planted them anyway. If they survive (as many of them seem to be doing so far), should I expect them to make fruit in the fall? Have I effectively planted my fall tomatoes really early? Or will they die over the summer?

As an aside about potatoes from grocery store taters - I tried that one year and even though all the taters had sprouts from them when I planted them, they made their emergence and leafy growth over a period of two months. A couple came up right away, but some took a couple months to get leaves. When I planted seed potatoes the next year, they all broke out of the ground within a week or so of each other.

So I wouldn't plant sprouted grocery store potatoes unless you just happen to have the space and were otherwise going to toss them out.

Grocery store taters is all I had to plant this year,because I was in the process of moving back into my home first wk of Feb, and doing a make over painting rooms, adding new goodies, and the time got away from me.

I had a bunch of very small Yukon Gold's that I planted in one large bin. They are now huge and starting to set blooms at this time, here in mid-Green Country. But the other ones, reds, (whatever they were) are not doing quite as well. Maybe the difference was that I planted the Yukon Golds whole....however, they weren't sprouted, so who knows? I have a deux mixture sprouting in my pantry now ala Okie Dawn :)Hopefully they'll do their thing come planting time.

Gamebird,

The tomatoes should be fine. If the nighttime and daytime temperatures cooperate with you, you should get fruitset, even from plants that were tiny when planted, in June. If the fruits set in June, they should mature in July or early August.

If you can keep the plants healthy.....and it is easier some years than others....they'll bloom and set tons of fruit in the fall. Keeping the plants healthy and growing well through the heat of the summer is part technique (heavy mulching, enough water and fertilizer, but not too much, addressing insect issues early on before they get out of hand, etc.) and part luck (if early blight hits hard in a wet year, it can be hard to control, for example). Sometimes you can do everything right, but still can't get the plants through the summer because the heat is so brutal some years and the insects are brutal in other years. (For what it is worth, one reason you avoid overfertilization is that both disease and insects hit overfertilized plants much harder than those that are fertilized "just right" or even underfed.) That's why I start new tomatoes for fall....it is just a way of hedging one's bets, so to speak.

Actively growing tomatoes in nice weather like we're having now can easily put on 1" of new growth per day, and often more. So, it may be surprising to see how quickly your plants attain a decent size even if they were small when set out.

There are different options for fall tomatoes and I use them all:

1. You can start plants from seed in earliest June to transplant in early to mid-July. I like to do this because it allows me to grow more varieties per year. So, if I grow 50 to 60 varieties in the spring garden, I might add 30 to 35 more for fall.

2. You can take cuttings from healthy plants in the last week to ten days of June, root them in soil or water (whichever you prefer), harden them off if they were rooted indoors (I like to root outdoors in dappled shade and move them out into fuller sun as the roots develop), and plant them in the ground in early to mid-July.

3. You can finish your harvest from the spring-planted tomatoes no later than about the third week in July (even if it means harvesting some green tomatoes), cut back the plants hard and depend on new growth from those plants to start producing fruit when the temperatures fall back into the proper range, which generally happens in early to mid-September, but can happen in a cool (relatively speaking) August. To get the cut-back tomatoes back into a good growth cycle, I usally feed them once a week with either liquid seaweed of Alaska fish fertilizer for about the first month after they were cut back. Or, you can top dress them with a good tomato fertilizer that will wash into the root zone each time the plants are watered.

4. You generally can purchase tomato transplants from a nursery or store in July for fall tomatoes, although many stores have a very, very, very limited selection of plants at that time, and often all they have is the "heat setting" types bred to set fruit in higher temps. There are quite a few heat setters, and one of the best was Merced, which is no longer sold, although a few wholesalers bought up a large seed stock when told this variety was going out of production. Celebrity sets well in the heat most years, and some of the newer heat-setting types include Heat Wave II (which obviously replace Heat Wave), Solar Set, Solar Fire, Sun Leaper, and Sun Master. There also are a few traditional tomatoes that have been bred for hotter climates, and these include Tropic, Creole, Arkansas Traveler and Porter or Porter Improved. Sioux is an heirloom that sets well all summer long, and Super Sioux is an improved Sioux that also sets well in heat.

Every cherry, currant, grape or pear-shaped bite-sized variety I've ever grow sets fruit all summer long, but the larger varieties are all heat-challenged to a certain degree. The problem with most heat-setting types is that you can definitely tell that they were bred for the heat, and they were not (at all) bred for flavor.

5. You often can "baby" your spring-planted tomato plants and get them through the summer just fine. One way to help them survive the July and early August heat is to give them a lot of shade. You can do this by errecting shade cloth or lattice work above them. Some people build hoophouse style frames of PVC pipe and drape the top of them with shade cloth or aluminet, or even with old bed sheets or cheesecloth. Anything that helps shade the plants during the hottest part of the summer helps them deal with the other summer stresses better.

Keeping water off the foliage to the extent that you can helps them get through the summer. That's why irrigation low to the ground (soaker hoses, drip lines, PVC pipes with holes drilled in them, or the Texas Pot Method) is preferrable to overhead watering using a sprinkler. Foliage that gets wet is very prone to Early Blight in our climate, and there really is no cure for early blight although good cultural practices can help reduce its impact.

You also have to have "luck". Many insects vector diseases that will kill your plants before you know what hit them. Two of the "newer" and, therefore, less recognizable diseases, that are hitting tomatoes hard in some parts of the country are Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus and Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus. Both are spread by insects. Spider mites can be devastating to tomato plants as well, although they are not an insurmountable problem if you catch them early.

Finally, "perfect" green and healthy tomato plants in late July to early August seem to attract severe thunderstorms with hail and high wind, so no matter what you do, sometimes Mother Nature wins.

The reason your grocery store potatoes sprouted erratically is probably because of the anti-sprouting agent that the wholesaler sprayed on them before shipping them to the retailers. It doesn't necessarily coat each potato the same and wears off unevenly. You generally have to use grocery store tomatoes for fall because certified seed potatoes are not available in mid- to late-summer. I'd always choose to use certified seed potatoes if they were available.

Shekannah, My potatoes starting blooming early last week--and you know what that means.....our potatoes are about to start setting tubers. My poor potatoes, which were planted just slightly later than the recommended potato planting time, froze back to the ground 3 times. I finally replanted to replace some that didn't come back after the last freeze. Some of the potatoes survived, but then I lost others when the 12" of rain fell in one day and the ground stayed terribly wet forever. (Parts of the garden are STILL terribly wet, but we had 18" of rain in 5 weeks, so there's a price you pay for that.) So, it has been a hard year for potatoes and I am just proud of all the ones that survived the weather long enough to grow, bloom and set tubers. I'm looking forward to (hopefully) better conditions for the fall potatoes.

Dawn

Thank you Dawn, for your answer. Lots of details! I like that. I've never gardened through an Oklahoma summer. In Minnesota everything kept going strong right through the summer, but it almost never got over 100 and didn't stay over 90 for any length of time. I never noticed my tomatoes or peppers failing to set fruit (though the peppers were often sulky for weeks or a month and I never could figure out why... didn't seem to be the heat, but they'd rally in the fall and *might* get a fruit ripened before the frost... more often I was picking green ones there at the end).

Tip: One can make potatoes start sprouting by placing them in a plastic grocery bag (slightly open) with an apple in with them. The apple emits ethylene, which causes potatoes to sprout.

I still have some tomatoes which need to get in the ground! Life has been TOO HECTIC! But as I get them planted I notice that those little stunted things really take off.

I was going to plant Rio Grande (tomato) this year. Got the seed and CAN'T figure where I put it!!!

I always plant my soy around the beginning of July. It's a good cover crop too.

Got about half our sweet potatoes and beans out. I REALLY need to get some time to do the rest.

George

Game bird,

You are welcome. I know it is very hard to adjust to gardening in a new climate, and Oklahoma's climate is more extreme and more changeable than most. People who don't live here think we have one very long growing season from Jan. or Feb. for the most cold hardy plants through the first freeze, which normally occurs in Oct. or Nov. in various parts of the state, but can be as early as Sept. or as late as Dec. What we really have, though, is several shorter mini-seasons within that long season, and learning what/how to plant for each mini-season is the true key to success in veggie growing here.

When we moved here from Ft. Worth in 1999, I thought our weather here would be virtually the same....I mean, c'mon, it was only 80 miles farther north, right? Man, oh man, I know better now. I was just so wrong. While we do have later freezes here, they are MUCH later and much more erratic than I thought they'd be. That's a disadvantage. And, the cold nights hang on deep into May some years (like this year), which I didn't expect, but that's an advantage for cool season crops like broccoli and cauliflower, and it even helps tomatoes flower and set fruit later, so that's good too.

On the converse side, it also gets hotter here in the summer and the droughts tend to be much deeper and more prolonged, and I didn't expect any of that. Every time we drove through Oklahoma during my life, it always "seemed" so green here. The "green" that fooled me most likely was the pesty cedar trees that have become invasive here. In reality, my part of Oklahoma has as much "brown" as "green", especially in the drier years.

So, even moving a short distance can result in a huge gardening "culture shock" and it stands to reason that the greater the distance you move, in terms of USDA zones, the greater the "culture shock".

Three events I've never gotten over since moving here:

1. The couple of years when we've had August heat waves with several days in the 107-113 degree range. In Fort Worth, 105 was about the worst we ever saw, and I would have told you it wasn't possible to get "much" hotter than that. The week or two of 107+ temps we've had here a couple of times has changed my mind about that!

2. Cold temperatures below ten degrees. Even though Ft. Worth had a occasional extra-cold winter where one 2-3 day cold spell might drop us into the low teens or the upper single digits, they were very rare--maybe once every 20 years. Here, though, we commonly go down to 8 or 10 degrees about every other year or so, and we've gotten as cold as 1 degree. I never, ever, in my entire life thought it would get that cold here.

3. Very low humidities. Because of our involvement with the fire dept. I watch the humidity extremely carefully since our worst winter/spring fire days include very high winds, high temperatures (for that time of year), and very low humidities. How low do you think the humidity can go here? In the drought of 2005-2006, we had some winter days where the humidity was below 10% and went as low as 2%. One day, it was a -4% but I don't know if that is even possible, so I assumed the mesonet station was malfunctioning that day.

The weather here is full of surprises, and most of them are not good ones!

George,

Love the apple tip. Most of the time I try to keep apples away from other produce just so the ethylene won't have that effect (LOL!) but the apples are good at inducing sprouting.

I planted some tomatoes very late too because the ground just would not dry out, and they took off amazingly quickly too. I was really worried they'd stayed in their styrofoam cups far too long and thought about just tossing them on the compost pile. Now I am glad I didn't. Mine, like yours, immediately responded well to finally making it into the ground.

My sweet potatoes just went into the ground and I feel like I'm so late, but really it isn't that late for them.

Even as I have struggled to get everything into the wet ground, and weeded and mulched, the harvest of cool season crops has begun. All the rain has given us the largest heads of broccoli that I've ever grown, and the freezer is about to fill up with a year's supply of broccoli from the spring planting.

There is never enough time to do everything this time of year. As much as I hated losing all the fruit tree crops to late freezes this year, it probably is a good thing I did. I cannot imagine having to deal with a heavy fruit harvest at the same time that the garden is growing and producing like mad. Actually, there have been a couple of years here when the veggies and fruits all have ripened at once, and it was horribly stressful. I like it more when the harvest is a bit more spread out.

Dawn