Not Too Late for Fall Garden by Byron Chitwood
It is not too late to plant some of the vegetables in your fall garden. Up until the last few days, the sun has been so hot that most vegetables that were planted at the earliest recommended planting date did not germinate properly if at all. I suffered right along with the rest of you and in some cases, I have replanted at least twice. The only ones that I planted that seemed to thrive were mustard greens. These seemed to do fairly well and I am looking forward to harvesting some of the outer leaves in the next few days. Collards did come up but have not done as well as the mustard greens. Most of the time, collards will come up thickly in a row for a few feet and then there will be blank spaces where none germinated. Just dig some from the areas where there are too many and immediately replant in the blank spots maintaining a spacing of ten to twelve inches between plants.
Some other vegetables that that can still be planted are lettuce, radishes, spinach, onions, collards, chard and beets. Lettuce is one of the hardest plants to grow in this climate and soil conditions. You plant lettuce seeds and pray for a rain. It hardly ever rains for the type we pray for which is a nice gentle rain for several days in a row but pours down and compacts the top of the soil forming a crust which is tough for the lettuce plants to pierce. Mix plenty of organic material in the soil before planting and that will certainly help some. I can remember as a kid, some people planted lettuce in pure sand and kept it well watered to insure proper germination. However in Oklahoma, they never bothered with planting a fall garden except for planting turnips. We Okies never ate the greens although we always heard they were good and “some people south of the Red River ate them”! We also never ate beet greens, collards or any other green other than cooked spinach. Our mothers had to convince us that spinach was good for us because “look how strong Popeye became when he ate a can of spinach”.
If you can find some onion sets, plant them anytime but don’t expect them to bulb. Just be content with the scallions that they produce. They just keep growing as scallions until they are as large as leeks. If you know somebody that has multiplying onions and has an oversupply, maybe they will give a few to you for replanting in your garden. These are great and grow all winter long. Just be sure and control them or you will have them all over the garden. When they bloom, cut the blooms off and toss them in the trash. At best, put them in the compost pile and keep them turned as deep under the surface as possible until they die.
The last thing that can be safely planted in the fall garden is radishes. This can be done until November 1. Maybe we won’t have an early freeze and you can enjoy some fall radishes.
The Hunt County Master Gardeners will be hosting the Art of Gardening series at the newly dedicated Outdoor Learning Center on Thursday, October 16. The subjects will be on composting garlic. Be sure and mark this date in your calendar. We hope to see you there.