Just When You Thought Gardening
BY NANCY MCCARTHY, CHEROKEE COUNTY MASTER GARDENER
Just because you put away your bathing suit and white shoes, there is no reason to stop growing great veggies for the year. One of the joys of living in northwest Georgia is the length of the growing seasons. Imagine harvesting brussels sprouts in December! Fall means fewer insects, less heat, and a whole new menu of choices that usually wither in the summer weather. Here are a few tips that are important whether you have a raised bed, a container or an in-ground garden.
Soil.
It is essential to remove dead and diseased remnants, to keep your garden healthy. Make sure no insects are using your garden as Motel 6 for the offseason. Your fall garden will benefit from additional compost to keep it loose. Most importantly, you will need to fertilize with a nitrogen-rich fertilizer, because your summer crops have absorbed all of the fertilizer. It’s especially important for the fall vegetables in the cabbage family. Be sure to read and follow the correct application. The UGA county extension services can answer fertilizer application or safety questions. Visit: https:// extension.uga.edu/county-offices/cherokee.html.
Sunlight.
It’s important to realize that the sun is lower in the sky at this time of year, so if your garden received eight hours of sun midsummer, it may now be only four hours. Make sure you have adjusted planting and harvest dates, and that there are no new overhanging branches. That’s why short-day crops do best, and the longer frost-tolerant crops need even more days to harvest.
Cabbage will benefit in flavor from surviving a frost.
Timing.
The big question is whether or not to seed. There are great options to direct seed for fall but others will work only if you use transplants, since many require long days until harvest. Consider the date of the first frost, which in our area is around Nov. 5, historically. Check on your seed packet for the number of days needed to harvest, and count backward to compute a good planting time for maximum harvests. Remember to add a minimum of seven days to allow for the decreased sunlight. After that, it’s up to Mother Nature, and we know how fickle she is.
Selection.
Broccoli needs to be transplanted. 44
TOWNELAKER | September 2021
Here are some great options to seed directly in your fall garden: lettuces, spinach, carrots and beets. There are so many colorful and varied lettuces available, it’s good to experiment. Remember that it will take twice the water to germinate a seed outdoors in September than it would in May, so plant many of them, plant them deeper, and be brave when thinning. Most perennial herbs like parsley, thyme and cilantro also can be started from seed, or transplanted, and will flourish in cooler weather. Other plants, like those in the cabbage family, will need to be transplanted. These include broccoli, brussel sprouts, collards, kale, etc.
