Fall is just around the Corner

Time to plant your fall garden, time for this year's summer garden to produce more, and a few things to consider before you clean up the garden. “Master Gardener Mini Expo '' is August 27 at the Farmers Market on Peerless Road, you can ask your gardening questions here!

How Does Your Garden Grow?

There are no silver bells and cockleshells and pretty maids all in a row in my garden, but my vegetables are doing well even though I started late this year. The main issue at this time of year is the tomato fruit ripening slows down with heat above 85 degrees. To reduce the stress on the tomato plants, I remove the smaller imperfect fruit (especially if the plant has lots of green fruit).

Make sure you have a layer of mulch to help keep your soil cooler and moist. This helps with ripening and prevents fruit from cracking. This year I have bush beans as a living mulch around my tomato plants, but straw works fine. The fruit not receiving an even supply of moisture from the roots when forming is the cause of cracking. Mulch and water with care: water plants deeply once or twice a week (depending on rainfall) so the moisture soaks into the soil near the roots. Stick your finger into the soil every day to check that it is evenly moist a couple of inches below the surface.

Planting More Vegetables

Unbelievably, there are late plantings and fall plantings to consider at this time of year. My fellow Master Gardener Mike Webb has this advice on planting fall gardens.

Fall gardens can be a bit more difficult than spring gardens. Problems can include extreme heat, drought, and seed germination difficulty. Other problems can be insects, weeds, and diseases. Successful gardens require you to pay close attention and give considerable care from planting to harvest.

Select varieties carefully. Spring varieties are not always the best fall varieties. Spring varieties germinate in cool and moist conditions and mature as days grow drier, warmer, and longer. Fall varieties have the opposite conditions: long, dry days at first and then short, cool, days as they mature.

Proper timing for planting: Tomatoes, green beans, and other warm-season vegetables must mature before they are killed by frost. Kale, collards, and cool-season vegetables can withstand considerable frost and their harvest may continue several weeks after the first frost. You will need to determine the last possible planting date for fall vegetables for your area. For the local area, UT has calculated the date of the first frost to be around October 30th.

Warm season crops should begin to mature at least two weeks ahead of this date (October 16th), while vegetables able to withstand frost, can mature at least two weeks after this date (November 14th). Your seed packets estimate the days from planting to maturity. You need to add about 10 days to this estimate due to the cooler, shorter days in the fall. Subtract the total days required for other vegetables to grow from the date you want to begin maturing to find the latest planting date.

Assume the average first frost in your area is October 15. Summer squash will be killed by the frost, so subtract two weeks from October 15, which would be October 1. If the seed packet states maturity days are 50, add 10 days for a total of 60 days. Subtract 60 days from October, giving you August 1st as the last date to plant that variety of summer squash in your area. UT has additional information recommending planting dates and estimated harvesting dates for many vegetables that can be grown in the fall.

Additional item to consider is maintaining moisture during germination. Seeds need moisture to germinate. High fall temperatures and sparse rainfall can make difficult conditions for seed germination. Watering the soil before planting fall vegetables can be beneficial. Plant seeds ¼ inch deeper in the fall than you would in the spring.

Care for fall gardens properly: Insects, weeds, diseases, and drought problems are all more severe in the fall. Walk through and observe your fall garden. Remove weeds when they are small. Control insects and diseases before they become severe.

Helpful information: UT Extension‘s PB595, “You Can Control Garden Insects”, and PB1215,” Disease Control in The Home Vegetable Garden” are great resources for any gardener. Fall gardens need at least 1 to 1 1/2 inches of water weekly. Apply nitrogen to fall vegetables as you would to spring vegetables. More information on fertilizing vegetable gardens is available in the UT Extension PB901, “Growing vegetables in home gardens. Information taken from UT Extension SP291G Fall Vegetable Gardens

Talking about the Birds and the Bees

Being a hobby beekeeper, I enjoy watching the bees out in the garden and fields. It is important to provide a habitat to keep all types of birds and bees thriving.

Deadheading flowers is something I have almost stopped doing for two reasons. One reason is seed collection for next year. Most flowers need to die on the stem for the seeds to mature and then gathered for next year. Second is I leave seeds and berries for the birds for the winter.

Delay the cleanup of your perennials and ornamental grasses until spring. Many pollinating bees and helpful insects will nest in these plants. Wait until spring has consistent 50-degree days to clean up. When cutting back your garden in the spring, leave the stems 12 to 8 inches long for bees nesting. Both the birds and bees like a brush pile for nesting sites.

Leave bare spots in the garden area for bees that nest in the ground. Mulch prevents ground nesters from being able to form nests. Go no-till in the garden to preserve nesting sites and encourage more ground nesters to join the garden.

Bee Facts

Of the 20,000 bee species, 4,000 are native to the United States. Of the 4,000 species, about 60 percent are native to North America alone. Honeybees are not natives; they were introduced to what is now the United States in 1622 by colonialists. The honeybee is important to the food industry in North America, but native bees are important to the home gardener.

Native bees are more efficient pollinators than honeybees. It takes 250 female orchard bees to pollinate an acre of apple trees where it takes over 15,000 honeybees to complete the same task. Of the native bees in the United States about sixty percent of them nest in the ground and the rest in plant stems and other locations.

Most United States native bees are solitary, do not live in hives, and do not make collectible honey. Most bees are not aggressive, meaning they rarely sting. Most bees, including the honeybee, can only sting once where wasps can sting multiple times. Our native bees come in as many sizes, shapes, and colors. There is still much that we do not know about native bees. Many are smaller than a grain of rice and about 10% of bees have yet to be named or described, but all these bees have jobs as pollinators.