August wraps up summer and prepares for the fall. The farmers must roll up their sleeves and prepare for a long chore list while the heat bears down. Truly, it is only now that we have begun to heat up. A cool and wet spring led significantly into our summer, which could possibly mean we wear shorts to Thanksgiving. Who know! Let’s take a summer recap and write down that fall to-do list before the cold fronts roll in.
August, however, is the perfect example of the work of transitioning the garden from summer to fall. In some cases, our preparations will also benefit the winter garden IF we are successful. Much of the bounty is already here in the freezers and cabinets, or passed along to any visiting friend. And though it is hard to imagine a cool down ahead with a current heat index of 126F, she’ll come.
Here’s what we are chipping away at this month:
12 Tasks for the End of the Year:
- Remove spring tomatoes and remaining spring crops (cucumbers, early zinnias)
There is always the option to leave your surviving spring plants for the fall because they will have a resurgence of production once the temperatures begin to cool. We noticed some flowers, and even a few cucumbers on our spring plants as we removed them. However, our spring production of paste tomatoes was so low that we are putting more trust into fresh seedlings for an abundant fall sauce harvest. If flowers, like zinnias, have reseeded, this would also be the time to move them where you’d like them to be and remove the mothers.
- Transplant fall tomatoes (early)
4th of July is my trigger to get some things rolling for the fall: namely fall tomatoes and pumpkins. The first half of the month is when I transplant the fall tomatoes into their beds. I wait until they are fairly large, wanting to up pot to a larger size, and heavily water to keep soil temperature down some. Pumpkins started in July are ready for all the pumpkin heavy holidays of October and November!
- Process peppers, tomatillos, jalapenos and watermelon
If your garden has been happy about the summer heat, you should be dealing with an abundance of peppers by now! Unlike tomatoes, I don’t have as many ways to consume peppers so I have had to be creative: roasting and freezing to use for pasta and hummus. We have diced and salsa’d and freshly eaten as much as we can. Tomatillos were abundant and inspired the home cook with new salsas and sauces.
- Monitor pumpkins
July pumpkins have vined out and have started producing male flowers. With a wet spring, we have had heavy bug pressure. I’ve been a bit lazy with proactively treating them, and am not expecting the abundance we had last year. Typically, I will spray BT on the stems near the dirt every other day to prevent vine borers. I attempt a daily search for squash beetle eggs. This year, the cucumber beetles are crushing anything with a yellow flower. I plan to have yellow sticky traps available next year. 2025 Shannon? Refer back to the summer recap, please.
Pests to monitor/research for pumpkins:
- Vine borers
- Squash beetles
- Cucumber beetles
- Powdery mildew
- Start overwintered flowers (feverfew, strawflower, stock, snapdragons)
Cool weather flowers have been a topic for research in 2024. We tested some cool weather flowers by starting seed super early and transplanting out even sooner than we ought to have. And still, these flowers require some heat to bloom, not producing well until April or May. How do these farmers have flowers for mother’s day?! Overwintering. So instead of testing new plants or varieties this year, we are trying a new way of planting. We start these flowers by seed 10 weeks before the first frost. Then, we transplant 6 weeks before the frost and plan to cover them through the winter/spring with our hoop tunnels. (Alas, we will try this and still try new plants… Suckers for a difficult go!)
- Start leeks and onions for October transplant
Successfully, we have always started our onion and leek starts in February and harvested in May. As I space out room for the plants that must be planted in spring, I really have room for about 200 onions. However, if I start some in October, I will be harvesting them in March-April! Again, another planting test, but I have seen it done locally!
- Up-pot fall crops (brussels, broccoli, beets, broccolini, cabbage)
As we learn to plant only what we like to eat, I’m recognizing that I don’t have to grow an enormous amount of fall crops. I am the solo broccoli fan around here. But we will grow some! Supplementing these crops will be direct sewn carrots, spinach, kale, cilantro, parsley and bok choy.
- Transplant asparagus starts
I started asparagus from seed! So our three year adventure begins. This will also officially seal in our last raised bed with perennials. If there was one win for our summer recap, this would be it!
- Separate strawberry mothers from babies
Our 45 strawberry plants have become 200+ over the year and very healthy. But I just learned that separating the mothers from new babies will help everything be well spaced and continue to produce at volume. It will be so fun to share after receiving the generous gift of plants to begin with!
- Cut back blackberries and raspberry primocanes
This is a straightforward tasks, as these spikey sisters make evident which branches are used up and which are preparing for the new year. Don your toughest gloves and trim away!
- Order next year’s seeds and fall cover crop
2023 was our first year to use cover crop to fill unoccupied rows from fall to spring. Last year we used, crimson clover and found it a bit invasive. After a good weed-whacking, it popped back up and survived the summer. This year, we tried a mix of pea and hairy vetch.
Our 2025 seed list is posted here – new and true plants for the Zone 8a garden. We talk about our seed starting process in this post!
Summer Recap
This year was our fourth year gardening on this property, and the first where the groundhog did not see his shadow. We grew in the rhythms of ice, polytunnels, record high summers and high yields. This year was quite different. A warm spring, with lots and lots of rain, really let the pests run rampant. We bucketed water out of the walks ways in both April and June. The abundance of water resulted in low yields for tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. One pumpkin made it to harvest. Yikes! Let’s run back that summer recap:
There were some wins: our highest yield in blackberries, our first strawberry and raspberry harvest, and a newly established asparagus plot!
We made space to try new things:
- New crops: peanuts (no), chinese cabbage (yes), tomatillos (yes)
- New spaces: a sunflower field (no luck) that we initially tilled and planted with sunflowers. The sunflowers were stunted, and the space weedy. So, we have tarped it through summer, cover cropped in the fall and will top with compost soon. Take two!
And in this 5th year there is a headlining goal: to take more notes! If you want to peek at last fall’s entry, check it out HERE. Keep reading to learn how we set and manage our next year’s goals!
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