Late Summer planting

Watch Reply
More
Mark unread Print Skip to new
shamrokpwr Augusta, GA(Zone 8a) Aug 15, 2004

Hey...

Were real "rubes" when it comes to plants. We have killed several tomato plants, a number of herbs, and would like to plant some veggies which might have a chance of coming up. We live in Martinez Ga., the average temp at this time of year is about 85-90 with high humidity. Our planting boxes ( 8x10 ) are in mostly direct sunlight, with some shade. We have filled them with topsoil, and put mulch on top, which I will turn over with my tiller this week.

Would anyone have any suggestions as to which veggies we might have some success with at this time of year? Thanx in advance for any advice

Post #1003423
Quote
bluespiral (Zone 7a) Aug 16, 2004

We've been gardening 30 years and have yet to "de-rube" - our successes seem to be accidental and our accidents seem inevitable. Soooo, my advice, well seasoned with beaucoup grains of salt, is to plant whatever cool-weather stuff has short "days-to-maturity", like Tokyo Cross turnips (30 days or so) and radishes (oriental, long white roots are nice in fall). You can have a lot of fun with leafy greens: The lettuce group, which includes radichio, endive and escarolle, comes in all shades of red and green and varying degrees of crunchiness and frilliness; the cabbage group can be especially cold hardy and includes frilly mizuna, bushy pac choi, black-red kale 'Redbor', mustards and roots mentioned before. Bunching onions and parsley are nice to include, and the best time to plant garlic is in the fall. If someone as far into the humid SE as you are were to sow dwarf snap peas and harvest before frost, you would really have something worthy of a blue ribbon, were agricultural fairs to be held for "frost beaters".

Now and then, over the years, we have grown these from late summer sowings (July) and harvested into December (beginning again in March) under tunnels of Reemay (woven polyethelene row covers) and plastic.

Stokes Seeds catalog has very precise information on how to germinate and cultivate each type of a large selection of seed, and the seed packets are generous. If you divide number of seeds per packet into cost of that packet, you may find that plants whose seed is viable for 5 years or longer (many members of cabbage group) are more economically purchased in larger packets from companies like J. L. Hudson, Seedsman or Stokes than from a company with cheaper seed packets with fewer seeds. Also, the catalogs from these two companies are extremely informative about germination, culture, seed viability, etc. Nichols offers very generous packets of different types of mesclun (mixtures of salad/stirfry greens) for relatively low prices.

Actually, I think you've flunked Rubery 101 by asking the question. Good luck and start now.

Post #1005036
Quote

Post a Reply to this Thread

Please or sign up to post.
Back to Forum Homepage

More General Discussion & Chat Threads

Go to all General Discussion & Chat threads
BACK TO TOP