August Planting

August is here and the heat is far from gone here in DFW.  Fortunately there are still lots of plants that can be either started or worked on for a nice fall garden.

I've already mentioned okra recently but we shouldn't forget carrots and squash at this time of year.  Carrots especially have a short growing time and you can expect a carrot harvest in a few months.  Winter squash is good to plant now too for a nice harvest.

If you already have tomato plants and they are nice and healthy then you can bend over some of those stems and cover with dirt to encourage more growth for a fall harvest.  I know some of my tomato plants are nearly four feet tall right now but aren't producing very will in the heat.  I've gotten a few tomatoes so far this year but a good fall harvest would make my gardening this year great. If you notice there are fine hairs on the stem of tomato plants.  These will pull in moisture from the air and if there is enough moisture either in the air of if they are buried then they will start to form roots.  They also detect disturbances and help release natural pest control. That's why when you mess with tomato plants too much you can smell the plant releasing these chemicals.

Remember to drink plenty of water while in the garden and use sensible sun protection methods.  You want to keep your plants and yourself from getting too hot or scorched.

Fall Tomatoes

Even after being run over with a trailer and sat on by neighborhood cats, my tomato plants are still trying to produce tomatoes for me.  The first couple had some bugs but there are several that are doing really well.
The weather seems to want to cooperate with me too.  No freezing temperatures in the near forecast and plenty of sun. All I have to do is keep them watered and happy and we'll have some good pasta sauce in our future.  Likewise the basil plants are continuing to grow and look healthy.  We'll probably harvest them soon and make more pesto and save some for making sauce.
The beet plant is still getting bigger but no flower stalks yet, a few more weeks of waiting and we'll see what happens.

Plenty of Rain

It rained for many hours between last night around 8:00 and didn't let up until after noon today. This has filled my rain barrels to capacity except for one which wasn't on the loop properly. I've fixed this problem since and they're evened out now at about 70% capacity.

The remaining tomato plants are shown here. The left one is a new tomato plant that somehow decided that now was a good time to grow while the right shows two already growing tomato plants that are putting out new leaves and with time should give some good fall tomatoes.

The onion patch has a single onion left wanting to put out greens but the green onion up front have grown all through the summer. I keep cutting off parts to use for dinner. There's a smaller one in the round planter that seems to need more light. Kind of a runt.

Fall Crops - Lettuce

Lettuce is a very versatile plant. It can be planted in the spring or fall.

I have seeds from the last fall's harvest, 75 or so. They will hopefully be a good cross between the types I had in the back. One of them tasted better but the bugs thought so too. I hope to get at least one not so bad tasting plant that the bugs don't care for. If I can get that then I'll really have something to save seeds from. Both of them were leafy and taste good when young, a few nibbles of some of the smaller leaves is always a treat. This year I'm going to put a couple on the side after I clear out the remnants of the sunflowers. They didn't do as well this year but I still got quite a few seeds to put up.

In my heas the seeds may produce something along the lines of the following mind you this is an altered photo of normal lettuce.

For those of you who don't know how to take care of lettuce here is a quick guide to growing it.

It takes full sun and likes long days. It doesn't take heat well though and will bolt when the ground temperature gets into the 80's. It can take a light freeze overnight.

A well ammended soil will do fine and no further fertilizing is needed.

Water it when it gets dry. If it gets too wet, bugs will start to congregate.

It can be planted in early to mid fall and early to mid spring.

They also make good office plants if you have a corner office with windows to the South and East so the plant can get enough light. The temperature is usually good as well as the lack of bugs.