Fall vegetable gardening is right around the corner. It seems too hot to even think about gardening, but you should start now to ensure a successful crop this fall. It is recommended to begin planting tomatoes and peppers mid- August. Many seeds begin the first week of September. I usually plant my tomatoes in September, but the longer you wait to plant, the bigger you need to buy.
First, you need to pull up the last of the tomato plants from your spring garden. Any other veggies that are looking summer worn need to be pulled also. They will never recover for a fall crop anyway.
Next you need to weed the garden. You could try covering the garden for a few weeks with plastic to solarize which will kill most weeds, but this usually is done earlier in the summer for a couple of months of solarization. Hand hoeing or tilling can be done depending on the size of the garden.
Be sure to thoroughly water the ground a day or two ahead to soften it since we have had no rain for weeks. Once all the old plants and weeds are removed, it is time to work in compost. The more compost the better. And you know what that means if you have ever dug in our soil. Heavy clay soil is not conducive to rapid root development. The better the soil prep, the better the plants grow.
The more roots a plant develops, the easier it is for the plant to take up valuable nutrients and water.
Be sure to use a good quality compost. We carry Cotton Burr Compost, Natures Blend Compost. I have always said,” You need a $50.00 hole for a $5.00 plant.” Life does begin with the soil, so always spend a little extra time, effort and money when it comes to soil prep. Your plants will reward you.
-DeAnna
Simply put, crop rotation is a systematic method of deciding what to plant where in your garden from one season to the next, based on plant groups. Moving plants to a new location each season improves your garden in two ways. First, it helps keep your soil healthy and fertile. Planting the same thing in the same place season after season drains the nutrients from the soil that the plant needs in order to thrive and produce big harvests. Second, rotating plant families helps manage soil-borne diseases like verticillium wilt, and soil-dwelling insects like corn rootworms or root knot nematodes. These types of diseases and pests prefer certain kinds of plants, and the longer the plants stay in the same soil, the better the chance that these enemies will show up and cause trouble.
Blessings,
I purchased our first plants for our spring garden and got them planted finally on Sunday afternoon. I started working outside Saturday morning with the best intention to get the garden planted. But the trimming, weeding, and fixing broken things in other areas around the yard postponed my goal. I planted 2 tomatillos near the fence so I can train them up. I added 2 more tomatoes to our volunteer Cherry tomato, a Roma tomato and a Valley Girl. Roma is a paste type and Valley Girl is an early slicing type. I also planted an Ichiban Eggplant, a Poblano Pepper, & Magic Mountain Basil to attract bees. Everything got a handful of Espoma Bio-tone in the hole. It is the fertilizer with the Mycorrhizal Fungi that boost root development, very important going into spring and summer. I will be adding a hot jalapeno plant this week. The zucchini squash, sweet basil, and pinto beans I am starting from seed. Let the growing begin!
I have cleaned out the turnip/radish/lettuce bed and pulled the remaining green cabbage. I am leaving the kale, chard, carrots, celery, broccoli, and herbs until I deem we want to plant there. Part of the beauty of leaving end of season veggies is watching them mature to their flowering stage. Our cilantro is bolting and begins to flower tiny white stars. The volunteer lettuces are setting their flower stalks as well. The culinary sage is showing off with periwinkle blue flowers. All of these help provide food for butterflies and bees, both of which we desperately need to pollinate other food we plant during spring. 
In our garden, sticks and stones are always helpful! Here’s a rustic trellis I built for our volunteer tomato plant. I used some old cedar sticks collected from a hill country trip years ago. Our broccoli just keeps on giving…here’s one of our 8 plants full of florets ready to harvest!
In just a couple of weeks, we’ve harvested most of our Cauliflower and will begin pulling plants up soon. 
It’s been a couple weeks since we did an update on our garden. Holidays and weddings have kept us busy but we are still enjoying the fruits of our labor, as you can see! Our celery has gone nuts, broccoli and cauliflower getting bigger every day and we’re finally seeing a few radishes and tons of chard and kale. There are still no shoulders showing on our carrots. I found several of our carrot tops smashed down by some critter. Note to self…PUT THE WIRE OVER THE CARROT PATCH NEXT YEAR. The best part of growing food is eating it, sharing it, & using it in some culinary creation! One of my favorite recipes is from Cooking Light magazine. It is a recipe makeover of lemon squares…delicious!!! WARNING -you may want to make 2…they can mysteriously disappear! Bon Appétit!
I always start and end my days spending time in our fall winter garden…well almost. My holiday schedule last weekend was packed to the brim. I did not have time to take a look at the garden immediately after last weekend’s storm. I was horrified the next day when I saw most of our kale, cauliflower and broccoli laid over on their side. So I promptly grabbed my old bamboo stakes and began propping everybody back up. The ground is so soft from the beneficial rains but once it dries a little they will be fine and able to hold themselves sturdy again. Just in case will keep a few fingers crossed for good luck.
One the many reasons I love a fall winter garden is that when the north wind blows and the cold air finds the way to South Texas, I don’t have to worry about covering, moving, protecting! The cole crops we have planted like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, and most greens love the cold and more so, need the cold to produce their best harvest. The best thing is to water well before temps drop. I did pick a bunch of the peppers off our leftover pepper plant from spring. Now they do not like cold temperatures. I think this may be its last hooray. As I was weeding and tiding up the garden Saturday (before the cold front) I found a freebee…a volunteer tomato plant has sprouted and growing well along the fence. So maybe I will give it a little extra TLC…
November 19th
