Periodically, rather than recording a podcast from my studio, I like to get out into my garden and record an audio journal on-site, so I can talk in real time about what I’m seeing, the wins and challenges of the season, what’s worked, what hasn’t and what I plan to change. In this edition, I touch on many things you may have noticed in your own garden this year, and I share how I make the transition from the summer growing season to fall.
I’m on sabbatical for the month of August, an annual tradition I started to recharge, rejuvenate and renew. It gives me some time to think and clear my head, and the pace is more manageable for me. I have a little more time to breathe and get creative with a few things. This audio garden journal is one way to be more creative and change up the pace of the weekly podcast.
I’m popping in with an audio garden journal from here on the GardenFarm.™
Joining me is Larrie, one of my cats. She is my constant companion in the garden and greenhouse. When she sees me headed for the garden, she sprints ahead of me and hops up onto the closest bed, walking along the top of the 6-by-6-inch timbers as her personal pathway and hopping from bed to bed to keep up with me. It’s fun to have that company and to know that she really enjoys being out here too, just hanging out. And then once I settle into a spot and do some weeding or whatever it is I’m working on, she’ll lay there close by, facing me and just chilling and watching me work. It’s fun for both of us.
This morning in the garden, it’s humid, but not hot. It’s about 7:30, and I love being out here this early. I’m watching the goldfinch take seeds off the spent flowers of the Echinacea, and they’re having a feast right now. And I hear the cardinals and other birds. One of my favorite parts about being outside early in the morning, whether I’m on my porch or in the garden, is just being quiet and listening to all the bird activity.
As I check my rain gauge, I know whatever the reading is, it won’t be enough. It’s been very, very dry this month. The gauge shows about half an inch of rain — which I’ll take.
Larrie is my constant companion in the garden.
Tomato Growing North of Atlanta
Here in zone 8a, north of Atlanta, Georgia, by about 30 miles, it’s generally hot and humid. In the summertime, even though my crops do really well, the garden struggles with diseases, especially the tomato plants.
This year, I grew 24 tomato plants. Usually, it’s more than that, but I have been trying to cut back because tomato plants are needy as far as maintenance goes. Despite your best efforts, they will catch diseases from the soil and the wind.
If I plant them sometime around mid-April, right after our first frost-free date, my first tomatoes of the growing season are the big heirlooms that mature at the end of June. Then they go strong for about a month, but I maintain them by cutting out diseased foliage throughout that time to keep them looking good and to prevent the disease from spreading. By August 1, I am ready to pull out most of them because they don’t look so good.
We’ve had over 30 days of nonstop tomatoes, which is amazing, but by August I am ready to move on and set the stage for the fall garden. I love the fall growing season for a number of reasons — less humidity, less disease and insect pest pressure, and overall more pleasant.
Of the 24 tomato plants I started with this year, I have pulled out 20. One of the four that remain is a cherry tomato variety called Cherry Ember.
The Cherry Ember is in its stride — it’s loaded with tomatoes and only has minor disease issues. Though I always like to experiment with new varieties, it’s not my favorite tomato. It’s OK, but the skin’s a little tough. However, it gets to stay in the garden this late in the season because it’s working hard and looking good.
Cherry ember tomatoes are still going strong in my garden after most of my tomato plants have been removed.
Growing Squash
Generally, I don’t like growing squash, but this year I am growing winter squash, the vining type. I have two trellises I installed to get some vertical interest, and it looks very good. The downside is that insect pests that prey on squash are all over the place. As an organic gardener, I minimize or avoid spraying, preferring manual controls and physical barriers. But with vining plants, that’s hard to do.
I am growing squash on two trellises. They add a lot of vertical interest to the garden.
I have spent many hours out here early in the morning picking off squash bug eggs, squash beetles, leaf-footed bugs and pickle worms and removing foliage affected by powdery mildew. It’s a lot of work to keep it looking good and pest and disease free, and I don’t have that much time.
Hatched eggs and nymphs of squash pests.
So here we are, middle of August, and they’re not looking great — but they’re loaded with fruit. Unfortunately, half of them are pickle-wormed. So on the to-do list is to harvest the fruit and take down the plants.
Pickleworms bore into the fruit of squash plants.
The Joys of a Water Source
I have a water source in the garden, which is frequented by birds and other wildlife — and by Larrie. I know cats are a risk to wildlife, but I have watched Larrie for a long time and I know she’s not a hunter. She could be too old, too fat or too lazy to hunt, likely all three, and that’s a good thing for a cat in the garden with birds.
Just outside the garden I have a birdbath, and the bees just go nuts over it. They are there every day lining the perimeter of the edge and drinking from it. When I refresh the water, they come en masse and start hovering all around. They just can’t wait to get some fresh water. It always makes me feel good to see that, and then I worry about what happens when they don’t have access to water like that. I think too many of us assume that wildlife is getting what it needs somewhere. But as I mentioned earlier, it hasn’t rained much this month. Typical water sources probably are dry. And I think it’s really important for us to make sure there’s always an opportunity for whatever comes by to get some water.
Bees visiting my bird bath.
More Flowers
I’m looking at a hummingbird on one of my zinnias. I love having flowers out here. I’ve always grown flowers, but not so much in my vegetable garden. Thankfully, a couple of years ago I started incorporating dedicated beds into my vegetable garden to make sure the perimeter was full of flowers all the time.
Tobi, my farm manager, and I started planting native perennial flowers as well as ornamentals, such as zinnias and dahlias. It’s made a big difference in the activity of this garden. I can’t believe I waited so long to do it, but I am so glad that I did. There’s no going back now because the difference is night and day. Having flowers in the vegetable garden makes this garden come alive like it never has before. And every day when you walk out and flowers are in bloom, you’ve got beneficial insects on all the different flowerheads, and the birds are here.
Growing flowers in my vegetable garden has made a world of difference.
There is less pest pressure too, as the boosted presence of beneficial insects keeps pest populations in check.
Though the garden was really nice as a full-on vegetable garden, it’s now more beautiful and more productive.
We save the seeds at the end of the season and sow them into trays or direct sow them the next season. Some are even self-seeding.
In the fall, marigolds really come to life in a beautiful way, complementing the colors and structure of the fall vegetable garden foliage of Swiss chard, beets, giant red mustard, curly leaf kale, etc. These vegetables provide the fall garden with a look you can’t get any other time of the year.
Pollinators go wild for flowering basil plants, and marigolds really shine in the fall.
Growing Peppers and Eggplant
I see my pepper bed is going crazy with fruit. The pepper bed kind of looks like a Christmas tree, with green, orange and red peppers and other various colors as the fruit ripens.
Pepper plants take a while to get established, but once it’s nice and warm they grow up and start putting on fruit. Ironically, the closer you get to the fall frost, they peak. Then the frost kills them back, and it’s a shame because they’re usually loaded with peppers when the plant dies.
I know that pepper plants can be dug up to be overwintered indoors, but I have never full-heartedly done that. It’s not much trouble to start new peppers from seeds the following year.
Peppers peak just before frost, which is unfortunate because there is still fruit on the plants when they die.
Eggplant is another crop that keeps going until frost kills it back. I confess I grow eggplants more for the look of the foliage and fruit than the taste. Tobi makes an annual eggplant parmesan using fruit from my garden and brings it over for a nice feast.
Also planted here is lemon basil, which I grow for the fragrance. You can’t help but notice it as you walk near it, and it is amazing. And then when it goes to flower, the pollinators are all over these — and it’s a show. It’s a lot of fun to see all the insect activity just on this one plant.
Last year we started growing the flowering plant borage, which is a bee magnet. It’s the best plant here in the garden for attracting pollinators, especially bees, though it is also an aggressive self-sower. It can get everywhere if you’re not careful. We’re going to back off on that next year and look for alternatives because it can take over some big spaces. That’s when you have to start getting ruthless about your decisions on what you plant and what you choose to leave out. Even though it may be very floriferous and a great magnet for your insects, you have to also decide, how does that impact the rest of the garden and your life in the garden from a maintenance standpoint? That’s a personal decision that you evolve into over the time that you experience how it does in your garden.
Eggplant adds a lot of visual interest in the garden with its purple flowers and gorgeous fruit.
The Nursery
Some of my favorite edibles from the garden are the ones that grow only in the cool season. I’m starting several varieties of kale, spinach, bok choy, cabbage, broccoli, beets, Swiss chard, kohlrabi and lettuce now, among other fall crops. These are seedlings that I can’t find in nurseries. Nurseries tend to prepare for the Christmas season in fall rather than dedicating retail space to cool-season seedlings.
In my nursery area, near my greenhouse, I check on the seedlings I started between a week ago and three weeks ago. These are cool-season plants for my fall garden. I want them to have time to mature before the first frost arrives, so I give them a head start in the nursery before planting them out in the garden.
Cool-season crops are generally frost tolerant, so the frost killing them is not a big concern. However, the plants should be close to maturity if not fully mature by the time the frost comes so you can maximize the benefits of growing these crops.
My nursery garden is outdoors but under 50% shade cloth to protect sensitive seedlings from intense rays.
I’m looking at about a thousand seedlings that I’ve started within the past three weeks. They have another couple of weeks to grow in cell trays before they are planted outside.
The nursery area is under a 50% shade cloth, which means the cloth blocks 50% of sunlight. Not only does it reduce the hardness of the sun’s rays, but it also reduces the temperature by about seven degrees.
Some of my seedlings were started in Winstrip trays from Neversink Farm. I like these trays because they work like soil blocking without having to make soil blocks. Winstrip trays have slots down the side of the cells that expose the soil to air. The air around the soil promotes fast root growth and quick top growth.
When using Winstrips, I’ve noticed two-day germination whether growing indoors on germination mats or in the greenhouse. I also enjoy this product because it is not single-use plastic. Winstrips are built to last.
Winstrip trays work just like soil blockers. When the roots get to the edge of a block or cell and are exposed to air, they stop growing in that direction. They “air prune” rather than becoming rootbound.
Cool-season crops tolerate heat when they are getting started, but you don’t want August levels of heat when these plants are reaching maturity. It’s the cold and frost that turn the carbohydrates in cool-season plants into sugar and makes them tasty.
My nursery area is currently 10 feet by 20 feet, but I intend to expand the canopy so I can fit even more seedlings.
Climbing Roses
I have picked a spot to plant New Dawn roses. I have built an arbor for these pink climbing roses, and I think it’s going to look spectacular. The arbor adds a lot of vertical interest and some structure to an area that only had a blank wall and was just looking very bare.
My new arbor for growing climbing roses.
Compost Bins
I’m passing my nine compost bins, each one 4 feet by 4 feet. I use a lot of compost, and it is my secret ingredient to having great soil.
Everything in my garden gets top-dressed with compost twice a year. Just ahead of the summer crops going in and just ahead of the fall crops going in after a cleanup from the summer crops, I have blank slates in each bed. I come in with an inch or two of my homemade compost, or if I need to buy more, I’ve got a great source for that regionally here in the Southeast, named Soil3.
Between my homemade compost and the purchased compost, it’s my primary nutrient source.
These topdressings of compost are my twice-a-year deposits of nutrients and good bacteria and fungi into the soil to replenish from all the withdrawals taking place throughout the growing season, from the plants taking up the nutrients. Because of these deposits, it’s amazing how little additional supplemental fertilization I need to do. Compost is that good. I don’t even dig it in or till it in. The compost works its way down into the soil, through the soil food web, as earthworms and different organisms in the soil come up and pull that compost down and mix it in with the rest.
This has been an extra hot and extra dry year. In fact, it’s been the hottest year I can remember in 13 years of living here. These plants have been through a lot of stress, but I haven’t had to water all that much. Soil that’s been generously amended with compost and other organic matter holds moisture well, and I also use organic mulch in my gardens, which also helps to hold the moisture. Compost and mulch is the one-two punch that serves gardens well.
I make loads of compost at home. I have nine bins in total, each one 4 feet by 4 feet.
I hope you enjoyed my audio garden journal. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
Do you have something to share from your garden journal? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 019: GardenFarm Audio Journal – First Day of Fall, 2017
joegardener Online Gardening Academy™: Popular courses on gardening fundamentals; managing pests, diseases & weeds; seed starting and more.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Organic Vegetable Gardening: My new premium online course. The course is designed to be a comprehensive guide to starting, growing, nurturing and harvesting your favorite vegetables, no matter what you love to eat, no matter where you live, no matter your level of gardening experience.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Seed Starting: Everything you need to know to start your own plants from seed — indoors and out.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Beginning Gardener Fundamentals: Essential principles to know to create a thriving garden.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Growing Epic Tomatoes: Learn how to grow epic tomatoes with Joe Lamp’l and Craig LeHoullier.
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Master Pests, Diseases & Weeds: Learn the proactive steps to take to manage pests, diseases and weeds for a more successful garden with a lot less frustration. Just $47 for lifetime access!
joegardener Online Gardening Academy Perfect Soil Recipe Master Class: Learn how to create the perfect soil environment for thriving plants.
Earthbound Expeditions: Discover South Africa with Joe Lamp’l
Milorganite® – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Heirloom Roses – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner – Enter code JOE20 at checkout for 20% off all roses until 12/31/24.
Pure Protect Deer Repellent by Heirloom Roses – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Dramm – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Farmers Defense – Our podcast episode sponsor and Brand Partner of joegardener.com
Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Corona Tools, Milorganite, Soil3, Greenhouse Megastore, Territorial Seed Company, Earth’s Ally, Proven Winners ColorChoice, Farmer’s Defense, Heirloom Roses and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
