August in your Texas Raised Bed Garden
Did you know you can plant, grow and harvest from your Texas raised bed kitchen garden 12 months a year? That’s right! Right now things are probably struggling from the heat. And maybe your neighbor with the prized tomatoes is planning to “rest” their garden for the fall and winter - but you don’t have to!
Did you know it’s actually healthier for a garden to grow all year long? Our winters are so mild here in central Texas, we are never required to “rest” the garden. Of course if you want to, you certainly should because gardens should give you joy! But if yours still is, you can let that joy train keep on chugging well into football season and beyond.
August is the beginning of real succession planting.
Succession planting is when you remove plants only as they die, struggle with pests or disease, stop producing, or near the end of their productive life. Instead of clearing out your entire garden, just remove the plants that need it. And plant something else in it’s place! In August, you may be planting both warm-season plants and cool-season plants. Warm-season plants planted now will grow and produce normally until the first frost. If we’re only expecting barely 32 or 31 for a couple of hours at night, you can cover the plants to make them last longer! This normally happens for the first time at the end of November in the Austin area. Any cool-season plants to add to your garden will last long past frost. Depending on the variety, many are still happy when air temperatures reach 10 degrees! Cool-season plants should be planted towards the end of August, and many of them should be started as seed. If you’d like to transplant cool-season plants such as broccoli or lettuce, you will want to wait until the days cool off just a tad more, so you may be waiting until September or October. But the good news is, you can continue to plant, grow and harvest from your fall garden well into the next year! Our cool season lasts about 6 months in central Texas!
Should you succession plant?
In your kitchen garden you now have all warm-season plants. (Or at least you should!) Changing to a "fall" garden is hardly like flipping a switch. Of course, you could tear everything out, cleaning out the entire garden and plant for fall, but it’s almost never necessary, and I bet you have a lot of happy plants (or at least plants that will be happy once it cools off! This is a time, however, when you can keep the plants that are making you happy and remove the rest. Many of the higher-maintenance plants end up so stressed in this heat it's almost like they ask for trouble. You may find pest and disease issues being more work to manage then they are worth. This is a time to weigh the production of a plant with the care and feeding you are giving it. And when it's time to say good-bye, be brave. It's okay! Just cut the base of the plant with clean sheers, add a few inches of compost to the top of the soil around about a one- or two-foot diameter where the plant was and voila! You are ready to plant more things!
But it’s 100 degrees! Is this really “fall”?
Fall gardening in Texas starts sometime in August. I normally like to wait until the heat “breaks” right around that third week. The nights are getting longer, the days shorter and the temps most days often reach no worse than a balmy 91 or so. Hee hee. At this point you can begin succession planting, as plants finish up and get removed, you gradually add more and more until right around October or November when you should have 90% or more cool-season plants!
August is the month for planning your fall garden.
That’s why this month is the best for planning all that out! What warm-season plants do you want to try between now and thanksgiving? What cool-season plants do you want to plan to grow all through the holidays into March next year?
What to plant in August:
TRANSPLANT:
Tomatoes, peppers, okra, eggplant, green beans, summer squash, warm-season annual herbs, perennial herbs and warm-season flowers.
DIRECT SOW SEEDS:
Toward the end of August, you can start sowing crops that are ONLY happy as seed (not transplanted) and will be very happy growing all fall and winter long: Carrot, turnip, beets, greens, pea, radish, beets and leaks. You can also plant broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, brussels sprouts, dill and cilantro as seed, but they are also fine to buy as small plants and transplant. Many cool-season crops do fine transplanted, but August is too early to do so.
Happy fall planning!