August is Time to Start Seeds

I know it's still 100 degrees, but it's time to start seeds! If you start now, you'll get a good start on your fall garden and have time to plant two or three successions of crops for a winter-long harvest of cool season crops. I'm just going to give a basic run-down of what you can do now.

You can also refer to my year-round planting date chart for North Texas

Warm season crops round 2 (or 3): You can direct seed a second round of warm season crops such as bush beans, squash, zucchini, melons, corn, snap pole beans, pumpkin, and cucumbers. You can also still plant seeds or transplants of okra and peppers right now. You can harvest these crops till your first freeze.

Cole crops: Broccoli, cabbage, kale, chard, collard greens, kohlrabi, cauliflower, and more. You'll want to start these seeds mid-August indoors with your handy seed starting equipment. Seeds need supplemental light so make sure to use a good setup. Then you'll plant your first round into the garden in September. You can start a second round of seeds two weeks after the first to have another succession planting. Once your seedlings have rooted into the bottom of the seed starting cell or pellet, you'll pot them up into a 4" size pot to grow a larger root system, then after plants are rooted in, you transplant them into your garden.

Herbs: Start seeds indoors of cool season herbs like parsley, dill, and fennel. You might want to wait a bit, say until the end of the month to start cilantro, as even tiny seedlings will bolt too fast in any amount of heat. You can also plant transplants right now of many herbs like basil, oregano, sage, thyme, chives, etc. Plant bulbs of garlic starting in September. Seeds of onions (not slips, which should be planted in January) can be started indoors or in the garden in September/October.

Salad greens: You can start direct seeding salad greens into the garden in early September, depending on temperatures. If it's still in the 90s, wait until the middle of the month, then seed into the garden. Remember that lettuce seeds need light to germinate, so don't cover their seeds with soil when you plant them. Simply press them into the surface of the soil and keep moist until germination. You can also start them indoors if you want to get a head start, but they're so easy to direct seed that's usually what I do. Then you can continue seeding salad greens through late fall, and then again starting in February.

Seed starting equipment: I use the JumpStart system from Hydrofarm because the lighting is perfect for seeds, the lamp can be adjusted to different heights, and it's good for small spaces. We do sell it at NHG. You can use small trays with a seed starting soil mix, or the little compressed pellets from Jiffy. I use those a lot and they work great. Make sure you have a humidity dome (plastic cover) for your tray. If you're using pots or pellets, make sure you have a watertight seed tray to set them in so you can cover them with the dome. The picture at left is only one example of the many different options available. Sometimes you just have to experiment to find the option that works best for you. Also, a seed starting heat mat is necessary once you get into fall and winter, and you're starting seeds for spring planting.

Welcome to my little corner of the gardening blog universe. I originally started this blog as a way for my good gardening buddy, Carolyn, and I to keep up with our gardening goings on. She prodded, I complied. Gardening has a way of keeping people connected even over long distances. It's always fun comparing her Brooklyn garden and my Texas garden. After a little time went by, I found the blog had evolved into a great way for me to keep track of what I do in my garden and when...which as a professional horticulturist I rarely seem to have time to do properly! It helped keep me a little more organized as well as provided inspiration for my magazine writing. I hope you enjoy my garden antics and I'm honored to be of help.

August is usually when I go on a "gardening vacation"...it's just so darn hot here! (Although we have been getting some unexpected and very welcome rain the last few days.) Because I'm just not going to do a whole lot of work out there right now, I plant a few perennials that I know will look great in the heat and drought, even if for just the month of August. My favorite "August only" bloomer is the Philippine Lily (Lilium formosanum). It looks just like an Easter lily and has the most wonderful fragrance. The bright white blooms look fantastic in the evening and at night, so plant in areas where you might sit outside at those times. Once established they don't take a lot of water (in fact they'll rot on you with too much), can be planted in full sun and look great with other late summer bloomers like salvias and Mexican petunias. They'll bloom for about three weeks, which may not seem long but is totally worth it. Plants usually start blooming the very end of July and bloom through mid-August, in the DFW area.

PC: Leslie F. Halleck

Philippine lilies are a bit obscure, so it can sometimes be difficult to find the tubers. Once you have them, they can be multiplied by division of the tubers or the many seed the plants produce. The typical variety grows large, up to about 5 or 6 feet tall. The one I have in my garden is a rare dwarf variety that gets about 3 to 3 1/2 feet tall only. I procured this through my plant geek network and haven't actually seen the dwarf readily available for sale many places. But I'm going to collect a bunch of seed from it in a few weeks and we'll start propagating it.

Last week I was up in Columbus at the OFA conference (Ohio Short Course). The big floriculture convention. There is always much to do and learn as well as new plants and gadgets to discover. Here are a few of the fun things I found. Be aware that some of these new plant varieties may not be out on the market for a while. Some will be available starting this fall. There were tons of things to get photos of, but these are just a few highlights.

I also did a quick interview with Ellen Wells from Green Profit/Greenhouse Grower mags. On...you guessed it...CHICKENS. lol She Buzzed about it in their e-newsletter and promises a chicken keeping 101 in the next Green Profit issue, for those of you in the industry. http://www.ballpublishing.com/GreenProfit/ReadCurrentBuzz.aspx

Lots of new succulents on the market these days. Here was a cool little Aloe named 'Christmas Carol'. And a very cool miniature Cyperus.

An absolutely beautiful new Echinacea named 'Tiki Torch' and a super blue new Salvia farinacea hybrid named 'Sallyfun Bluetune'

With the millions of coleus out there, I'm not usually impressed with new ones, but 'Chocolate Splash' is really quite lovely. A very cool new Purslane called 'Maraca'.

A very distinctively different Mahonia...will make for a nice new small shade shrub option. Although its cultivar name, 'Soft Caress,' gives me the giggles. A big new Gomphrena called 'Fireworks' really caught my eye. The bright pink and yellow blooms aren't really my style when it comes to color, but it looks like it will be a beast in the summer garden.

A fancy new trailing Tiarella called 'FM Moonberry'. A fab green wall planted with succulents (sorry random dude in the photo!)

Just a quick chicken shot of the day...my crazy little Einstein. She's grown quite a bit since she first arrived but she's still just as loony. With the addition of new chickens to the flock, Einstein got a promotion. She went from the bottom of the pecking order to thinking she had a couple of newbies to boss around, even though as different breeds they are twice her size. It's hilarious. She stands on top of the food container now and flaps her wings at everyone...defender of the corn...

A Garden Bounty in July

Meant to post this last week before I trotted off to Columbus, but didn't get the chance. Just a couple of photos of one morning's veggie harvest. That's all I had room to pick that day...I'll be harvesting up a bunch of tomatoes over the next couple of days and pulling some of those tomato plants. I'll also post on how to trench plant summer tomatoes. And no, I haven't forgotten I still owe a fruit tree espallier pots as well! The potatoes are a mix of 'Yukon Gold', one of my faves and 'Kennebec'. I was up at the Ohio short course this past week...I'll post some shots of some cool new plant varieties - as long as you guys understand that some may not be available for a while!

Chicken Movie Premier

FYI, all you chicken lovers, North Haven Gardens will be hosting two free screenings of the Texas premiere of "Mad City Chickens". The first showing will be Saturday August 8th at 2:30 pm and the second Sunday August 9th at 1pm. We'll have free popcorn and AC! If you haven't heard of this movie, and you're interested in urban chicken keeping, you'll want to check it out. Watch the trailers...they'll make you giggle...or cluck... We can probably fit about 120 people seated comfortably in the room, perhaps maybe a bit more, so get there early. First come first served. If demand exceeds our two showing capacity, we'll schedule another one.

And I'll toot my own horn a bit...we'll be showing this movie in Dallas BEFORE Austin...HA. Please...don't Austin up my Dallas...lol.....

Frustrated by Tomatoes That Won't Set or Ripen?

I've been getting a lot of questions about this topic lately (right on schedule) so I figured I'd go ahead and devote an entire post to the subject. Now, this post could easily be 10 pages long but I'll do my best to keep it as short and digestible as possible!

In our hot climate in Texas, or similar hot climates, you need to plan on planting two crops of tomatoes: Your summer harvest and fall harvest crops. Depending on where you are in the state, your spring-planted tomatoes will go in the ground some time between the end of February (southern) and late-March (northern). Here in Dallas optimal planting time is right about March 15th, but I find earlier (the last week of February or early March) is better. Just keep some frost cloth on hand for protection.

Your spring planted tomatoes should start producing harvest-able fruit in late May through June and early July depending on the type and variety. Usually the cherry tomatoes will come on first, then Roma types then the big ones Then in late-June through mid-July you'll plant your second round of transplants for fall production. So if you want to do your own tomatoes by seed, you'll start your spring crop by seed indoors late-January through early February, and you can start your second crop by seed in May - usually temps will allow you to direct seed them into the garden in May. Make sense?

Tomato 'Celebrity' slices
PC: Leslie F. Halleck

Fruit development is impacted heavily by temperature, and rapid fluctuations in temperature. If temperatures get too cool, go from cool to very hot too quickly, or plants don't start flowering until it's above 85F degrees day/night average (because you planted them too late) then you'll have poor fruit set or no fruit set at all. Remember that it's night temperatures that are going to really shut you down come June. Poor fruit set can also be a result of poor watering and plants being too dry. To encourage better fruit set you can use Blossom Set, which is a natural plant hormone that helps fruit set even in less than desirable conditions. It's not a cure all, and when it's 103 and 95 at night don't waste your money. Use it earlier in the season to get fruit set as early as possible. You can also use Blossom Set to help improve earlier yield on cucumbers, melons, eggplants, strawberries, and peppers. (you can also shake your tomato plants everyday to improve pollination, especially if you don't have bees visiting your garden).

So say your plants have set fruit properly and now they are just sitting there green. Usually, a tomato fruit will spend 40-50 days in it's "immature green" stage. Then it will begin to ripen and it's called "mature green". The optimum temperature for tomato ripening is 68-77 F degrees (yeah, we don't see that in summer in Texas!). And the proper production of ethylene. The further temperatures stray from that optimum, be it cooler or warmer, the more the ripening process is disrupted. When this continues for extended periods of time it can totally shut down the ripening process. So Jim, yes, when it's above 100 F degrees for a while, your green tomatoes may just sit there green. Also, tomatoes don't produce lycopene and carotene (the pigments that make the final ripe color of the fruit) when temps get above 85 F degrees average. So it's a double whammy.

Often when you get a break from super high temps, the fruit set or ripening process will re-trigger and fruit will start to color up. Sometimes what I will do though if it looks they are just going to sit there green until they fall off the plant is to go ahead and harvest them (if they are mature size) bring them inside and set them in a bowl with a banana. The ethylene put off by the ripening banana will go ahead and trigger the fruit to ripen. Then I pull out those spring planted tomato plants and plant my fall crop. This is what I do with all my green fall tomatoes that are still on the plant but we're scheduled for a hard freeze in November. I pick bowls and bowls of green tomatoes and bring them inside. They'll spend the next couple of months ripening indoors and I get fresh tomatoes all winter!

Also remember that there are many different factors in addition that contribute to a successful tomato crop. Proper water management is crucial as well as disease and pest control.