Because if we wait for the late summer/autumn soil temperatures to get into the right range, then often the crops won't have time to mature before a freeze damages them or kills them.

This is why I plant late so often in fall (even though I know I should plant on time), and also why I start a lot of things in paper cups indoors or outdoors in the shade, and transplant them into the ground in July or August. My soil temps are too hot, for example, for beans to sprout well in July. Sometimes I can get around that by shading the ground under shade cloth, or by mulching the ground heavily, and pulling back the mulch just enough to plant a row of seed and then leaving the mulch pulled back until the seeds sprout AND by shading the whole area under shade cloth. Sometimes I just pre-sprout seeds indoors and then plant them in the ground. Once they've pre-sprouted, they tend to go ahead and grow even if the ground is hotter than they like.

It can take a lot of work to get a fall garden planted, but if you wait for the perfect conditions to arrive, you may be waiting forever.

Remember that gardening is not a cut-and-dried guaranteed-results type of activity. We are very much at the mercy of the weather, and have to adapt our gardening practices accordingly in order to get things done.

In the spring, we also do not wait as late as we should because we often go from "too cold to plant" to "too hot" in about 2 or 3 days.

Carrots and beets are a good example of how soil temps work against us in late winter and early spring. They don't like to germinate in cold soils, but we must plant them in cold soils in order to get them up and growing so they can mature before the heat arrives. Otherwise, if they have to mature in hot weather, their quality and taste suffers. So, if we wait until the soil is warm enough for them to germinate easily and quickly, we will have tough, woody beets and carrots that are not sweet.

Remember, too, that weather is highly variable. Even when the daytime highs are pretty bad, sometimes the soil temps cool off enough at night that something will germinate.

I know it is aggravating, but we have to work with whatever weather we get.

Dawn

My beans were slow to sprout, the purple hulls sprouted fast. The broccoli sprouted fast but most of it is gone now, thanks to the grasshoppers and hot dry weather.

Larry

Having the same problems. Reverted back to starting in pots an flats.

Hoppers got my broccoli, too.

bon

Hoppers are getting everything I plant, but the last two weeks it seems like their population has peaked and is dropping. The more rain and the more cool temps we have, the more their population falls. Here at our place, they are the worst in July, and then by mid-September of most years, I don't seem much damage from them any more. It is still August thought, and they are stripping my container tomatoes of leaves. I think it is too late to save one plant because in three days they took every leaf off of it, so I think I'll just yank that one out and scatter-sow lettuce seed in that container.

One thing that has worked fairly well this year was to line up tomato cages and plant southern peas at their base. Several inches away, I had morning glories on a fence that were sprawling and climbing on the cages about 4' above the ground where the southern peas were at the base. The morning glories higher up seemed to repel the grasshoppers from the southern peas growing in a bush form down beneath them, and the hoppers do not seem to eat morning glories, so......I may interplant my vining southern peas on the fence next year with morning glories and see how that works out. It would have to be a small enough percentage of morning glories that they couldn't crowd out the southern peas.

Dawn

Morning glories. That's good to know!

I thought it was too late for southern peas?

I am going to start some in flats and hope that beautiful row cover Dawn sent me does some frost protection. I have a frost blanket, so I am going to put that to use as well. I planted brussels sprout transplants I got from the farmer's market yesterday and my peppers I started, I want to get some leaf lettuce started. I figure if it flops at least I had fun planting. :)

My southern peas were planted in July, and I am not sure when Larry planted his.

We are still about 2.5-3 months out from our average first freeze, so southern peas that were planted in July or August should have a really good chance of producing. I don't know if any planted now will produce, but if you have the space, it certainly is worth the risk. After all, even if they don't get to produce for you, you can rototill them into your soil for soil improvement after frost hits, or pull them and put them on your compost pile.

I planted 4 kinds of southern peas--Six Week Purplehull, Pinkeye Purplehull BVR, Colossus and Knuckle. I expect all of them will produce, and (barring natural disaster) I should be harvesting from them by mid-September. I usually plant 6-week pinkeye purplehull in the fall even if I don't plant anything else because it is the variety that matures quickly enough that you're pretty much guaranteed a harvest.

We are still hot, hot, hot here, with temperatures forecasted to be in the upper 90s by mid-week. I ran into a friend at the grocery story about an hour ago, and he said he'd heard we may hit the 100s again this week or next. So, that's great for the southern peas, but not so wonderful for cool-season stuff.

Ezi, Here's how to succeed with lettuce.

OPTION ONE: Carefully prepare your seed bed, adding in some compost and composted cow or chicken manure, mixing it in well and raking it smooth. If you like using pelleted slow-release fertilizers, work something like Osmocote 10-10-10 Flower and Veggie fertilizer into the soil following label directions. Then using the back side of your garden rake or a trowel, smooth out the soil to make a nice level bed for the seeds. If you have big clods in the soil, the seeds can wash under those clods and get trapped there, never sprouting, so avoid planting in an area with lots of dirt clods. Once the seedbed is prepared, plant the lettuce seeds 1/4 to 1/2" deep in furrows, covering the seed with fine soil or compost. Lightly water. I use the 'mist' setting on my watering wand. Keep the seedbed moist so the seeds can sprout, but not wet or they could rot. Sow using the spacing recommended on the seed packet. In a few days you should have seedlings sprouting, and you can thin as needed as they grow, adding the small thinned seedlings to salads.

OPTION TWO: After you've sown your lettuce seed in the carefully prepared bed as described in Option One, take the leftover seed and scatter sow some of it right on the ground in another area. For example, in my garden I might scatter sow it on the southern edge of a raised bed of tomato plants, or I might scatter sow it in the raised bed with southern pea plants where it can sprout and become a living mulch underneath and around them. With the scatter-sown seed, if you have time, use a small hand-held rake to rake the seed lightly into the soil and water. Then, forget about it.

Of the two beds, guess which one is likely to give you the better stand of lettuce? If you guessed Option One, you haven't been gardening long enough in Oklahoma. Option Two wins ever time. I don't know why. : )

Dawn

I'll take what's behind option number two!

The first thing I noticed when I looked outside this morning was the purple blooms on the cowpeas. I could see two extremely large pods, so I guess mine are going to start now that the blast furnace has been extinguished. I have had several chickens get into my garden lately and they think the row of black-eyed peas is a salad bar. We had to move the temporary fence because the pea vines would try to climb it, instead of their trellis, and the chickens would keep the leaves eaten off.

Carol, That's great. It sounds like you'll have peas soon. I have a row of lima bean plants that has held on through no rain, no irrigation and constantly being eaten down almost to the ground by the grasshoppers. They have survived all that, but I don't know if they can rebound. They are just sitting there looking about half-tired of being alive. I hope this rain perks them up and they produce. The grasshoppers have just devoured bean and pea plants non-stop since July and whatever they didn't eat, the blister beetles did.

I usually see grasshopper problems quickly diminish after heavy rainfall and cooler temps, so maybe this week's rain has sent the grasshoppers a signal or given them a disease or something.

One thing I have noticed is that all the newer bean and pea plants that have been growing only a few weeks and are young, strong and healthy aren't being bothered by pests at all, but the older, stressed plants are pest magnets. I know that "they" always say that pests attack stressed plants, but just think it is interesting to see it in real life. Based on all the stresses our plants have had to deal with in this hot, dry year, it is a wonder any plants have survived at all.

I love my chickens, but they just aren't allowed anywhere near the garden. I used to let them in to free-range and eat bugs in the garden, but they are just too destructive. I do let them into it in the off-season so they can dig and scratch and find bugs and weed seeds to eat. The guineas were less destructive in the garden but you know how that ended. I still miss my guineas.

Our soil temps have cooled a little the last few days as have the air temps. I know the air is going to warm up but I hope the soil temps stay cooler so I ca do some more fall planting.

Dawn

Dawn, Yes chickens are very destructive to a garden and mine weren't supposed to be in there. They don't fly over the fence, but they will take any opportunity to get out if there is an opening. I let them run the garden in winter after everything is gone, but I have a large area where the cucumbers and beans were that I didn't plan to re-plant until Spring, so we just put up a temporary 'construction guard' type fence. The big storm we had took the fence down and they got out the first time and a couple of other times they have just found a way to get under. We finally had to move it because the pea vines seem to reach for anything available to climb on and they would climb the construction fence and the chickens would eat all of the leaves. There was one pepper plant inside the fence where we had it at first, and they ate every leaf that they could reach so it is bare for about 3 feet then has leaves at the top. Since we moved the fence, it is starting to get new lower leaves.

I have seen several people post that they use chickens to help with insect control and I always laugh, because you just know that they have never owned a chicken. LOL

Well, I use mine for pest control outside the fenced garden. They love to prowl the fenceline for bugs, and I would love it more if I could trust them inside the garden. They don't bother my flowers and herbs the way they do the veggies, so I think that maybe they would behave in areas where there's just normal landscaping that doesn't include veggies. They don't bother my four o'clocks, verbena bonariensis, or Malva sylvestris 'Zebrina'. If I let them in the garden, they are most destructive just by digging and scratching in the mulch and will uproot seedlings and sometimes nibble at bean plants and such.

When we first moved here, I let them in the garden in the late winter/early spring in years when I wasn't planting much cool season stuff because we kept having hot winters and not much cool weather. Once I started planting more cool season stuff, I couldn't even let them in there at that time any more.

I have heard of people who build a fenced "moat" around their garden, and the chickens can free-range in that moat and catch insects who are crossing the moat to get to the garden. I think that could work well. I didn't set up my garden that way because the guineas naturally patrolled the garden fenceline. Sometimes the guineas would fly over the fence to get into the garden, but they didn't eat tomatoes or anything. If the guineas had a choice between grasshoppers and any other thing of any kind, they always chose the grasshoppers.

Peas are a nuisance to contain, and I think southern peas are just as bad. They'll reach across a path just to reach a tomato cage and climb it. My tomatoes look so great early in the season, all neat and orderly. Eventually, they are fending off advancing vines from cukes, cantaloupes, half-runner beans, southern peas and winter squash. It is as if the vines are determined to achieve world domination. Right now, whatever is left of my blue tomatoes is buried under vines from Grandpa Ott's morning glory and Semiole winter squash. I managed to keep those things at bay for months, but when I quit watering, I quit trying to keep Seminole contained since it needed to crawl and sprawl and put down roots from its long vines so it could suck up more water. So, essentially, I sacrificed the blue tomatoes (which had a cool appearance but only average flavor) which were still producing in July and August for the sake of Seminole, which hopefully still will be producing in November. If I let chickens into the garden now (which I won't because of the fall beans and peas), I'd never see them again because they'd get lost in the Seminole jungle.

There is a book out about gardening with chickens and I am thinking it is not about actually turning chickens loose in a veggie garden, because that defies logic, as you and I well know.

I have decided that Seminole has no intention of growing in my garden. I thought I had finally managed to get one to come up, but it just turned out to be another Zuchetta. The Zuchetta is a huge monster and is running everywhere. Saturday I was picking peppers and they are planted a little too close and as I reached over to pick a bell pepper I hit a two foot long squash where the vine had crawled up a pepper plant. Those bell peppers are only staked with thin green bamboo stakes from the big box store, so I am surprised that the plant could hold the weight of the vine and the squash, but it did.

I have never planted peppers this close before, but it worked out OK for this year, because the fruit had lots of leaf cover and it was easier to cover them for a little protection. Of course, without rain they did have to be watered.

Dawn, I think the chicken moat is a great idea to keep out some animals and insects but the expense for one fence is bad enough without having to add a second one. If I could start all over with a clean lot, things would not be where they are now, but your property is kind of like your life and you just play the hand you were dealt.

I only have a few hens and I don't know if I will replace them when they are gone. I wanted to have them for awhile, and want to keep a place ready if I decide to have them again at a later time, but I have learned that I only need a few. I have several friends who are happy to have the eggs, and even with only 8 hens I have more than I can use. I have watched the price of chicken feed almost double in the few years I have had chickens. Al loves eggs, but I probably don't eat one a month, but I do need them for cooking.