Join the Harris County Master Gardeners Live on Facebook and YouTube every month for The Green Thumb Series. July’s topic is Fall’s Best Vegetable Garden.
[Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] hello and welcome to another exciting installment of the Green Thumb lecture series uh M my name is John schaer and I am with the Harris County Public Library and today we have a very special treat for uh all of you out there all of our gardening Enthusiast uh we have we’re thrilled to be joined by a distinguished member of the Harris County Master Gardeners Association who will share their expertise with us uh our lecture series takes place online on the third Tuesday of every month at 11:00 a.m. which of course is right now and today’s topic is Fall’s best vegetable garden uh timely discussion as we transition hopefully sooner rather than later into the cooler months and start look forward uh to harvesting fresh homegrown produce but before we dive into our presentation today I’d like to go over a couple of quick housekeeping items uh number one uh questions questions are absolutely welcome uh we love engaging with our audience so please feel free to type your questions into the chat on Facebook or YouTube um we have a Master Gardeners monitoring the chat and the comment section they’ll be answering questions throughout the presentation uh so you’ll definitely get your answer on before the end of the Talk and of course we’re also going to take a couple of breaks in the middle at the end uh to speak with our presenter and number two mark your calendars our next show will be on August 20th and we’re going to be featuring the topic growing bulbs in Texas uh so you don’t want to miss that but now without further Ado Let’s uh turn our attention to today’s topic uh Fall’s best vegetable garden it’s my pleasure to introduce our presenter Teresa C Teresa uh graduated from the master Garder program in 2005 and has since gained Advanced Training in various Horticultural areas uh she’s an active volunteer offering her expertise through presentations and workshops at community centers libraries sororities churches Garden clubs and other events Teresa’s wealth of knowledge and expertise make her a fantastic resource uh for anyone looking to improve their gardening skills that’s everybody out there today uh thank you so much for being here Teresa how are you doing doing very good John you’re very generous with your introduction thank you well you we’re very excited to have you and I’ll tell you what after uh you know uh this last week of hurricane Barrel it’s so good that we have power it’s air conditioned uh it’s it’s so nice to be using our electronic devices to see you and uh to get this presentation absolutely all right well tell you what uh enough enough of that stuff let’s get into it I know we got a lot to cover we will be pausing for questions so once again please uh type those questions in and we will get to them and we’ll pause for them but also they’ll be getting answered along the way and without further Ado I’m going to go ahead and uh start okay thank you so much John I’ll go ahead and take it away I thank you so much John for getting this all organized and thank you Master Gardeners for answering all the questions it’s really appreciated so uh let’s go ahead and get going we do uh these Green Thumb talks that John is talking about we do a different topic every month we do it once with HCC and once with the Harris County library system and they’re all free talks we just love free so I also like to start and end with this slide um hopefully maybe someone can put these links into the chat area for people to just cut and paste uh you can go to these uh websites and get any kind of horiculture information you know some people think of horiculture as just vegetables or just ornamentals but uh Turf is included in horiculture insects trees there’s just all kinds of free information in these links so please go dive around there so getting started with your vegetable gardening you want want to pick the right spot so you want to pick a spot that’s getting about eight hours of sunlight now some people say six to eight hours of sunlight that’s probably fine in our area I like to say eight hours of good sunlight you want to make sure that you your soil has good internal and external drainage so the external drainage you can kind of guess if you’re hopefully y’all can see my little mouse here uh external drainage if you’re gardening in containers you want to make sure that you have drain holes either in the very bottom of the container or the side bottom our plant roots do not like to sit in water they do not want to stay too wet so we want to make sure that we have good drainage now that’s the exterior drainage the interior interior uh excuse me internal uh is the soil itself the media itself maybe you have a combination of things that you’re mixing you want to make sure that whatever soil you have or media you have allows for drainage in Harris County we have clay soil hopefully we have listeners from outside of Harris County but in Harris County we have clay soil and that just doesn’t allow for good drainage so you wouldn’t want to scoop uh soil from your yard and put it into your raised beds or your containers because it doesn’t allow for drainage um now a an easy recipe to say uh people ask what kind of soil or combination of soils should I use an easy recipe is two parts Rose soil to one part compost so maybe two bags of Rose soil to one bag of compost or you know some some way combining that ratio so that’s a easy recipe to say I like to play with other soils I’ll go to a nursery and I’ll see a soil that I haven’t used before and think oh that sounds that sounds pretty nourishing so I might try a little bit of that as well but that two parts Rose soil to one part compost will get you started you also want to make sure that you’re free of sunlight competition so think about what is around the area that you’re thinking about building your raised beds or your putting your big um container gardening uh maybe you or a nearby neighbor has just planted a small tree that’s going to get big so consider that as well especially on the south side of the growing area and the West Side the South and West is where you’re going to get your best sunlight so make sure that you’re not going to have any uh Sun blockage in the near or far future perhaps so you also want to make sure that it’s easy to get water to your growing area now drip irrigation is it’s the best way to go but not everybody can set that up either you don’t have the skills for it or you you know you for some reason you just can’t set that up but soer hoses are good hose in sprinklers are good you know that’s just a a sprinkler that you attach to the end of your hose and let it go so just make sure that it’s easy to get water to your garden bed because I know that if I have to move a hose around all kinds of patio furniture the dog housee uh other garden beds I’m just going to kind of give up on getting that water out there because I you know as I get older I get a little bit lazier so you also want to make sure that you have good air circulation something that we don’t have in our something that we have in our yard that we don’t see are microclimates and um the way to tell if you have these or where you have these is stand or sit in different areas of your yard and you might notice that if you’re in one area of the yard the air just kind of seems stagnant there’s no movement on your skin there’s no air movement whereas if you’re in an other areas of your yard you feel the slightest breeze on your skin doesn’t have to be a real Breeze it can just be air flow on your skin just a little just a little bit to notice and that’s where you want to be putting your garden if you have your garden plants your vegetables in an area with no air circulation the plants are more uh prone to plant diseases and insect infestation so also keep in mind you want to be able to see that garden bed those Garden containers the more you see it the more you’re going to think about it which brings you out into your garden even if it’s just for a few minutes to you know just check to make sure the soil is the right moisture or you know look under leaves haphazardly to see if you have some naughty insects that are going in your garden so catch those before it becomes a problem so there’s all kinds of garden designs that you might choose uh doesn’t have to have structure uh it can just be mounds of soil the the main thing is to have uh enough soil depth so I like to recommend 8 to 10 Ines of soil depth and my reasoning is I love carrots and I’m thinking what’s the biggest carrot I can grow so is that soil going to accommodate that carrot and its roots and also in the spring I want to grow my tomatoes and tomatoes are heavy feeders and they need a good root structure so is is there going to be enough soil to put out all those roots into that soil so you want to make sure your garden bed is only as wide as what you can reach into without having to lean on that garden bed or step into that garden bed um as you step in or lean onto your garden bed you compress or compact that soil and I’m going to talk a little bit more about that in just a sec so try try to only have where you can reach in either from both sides or if it’s up against a structure where you can reach in from one side so you can be um very creative with the you know kind of container that you grow in um make sure that you have good soil so if you’ve never had your soil tested before I highly recommend it I’m hoping one of my wonderful Master Gardeners can put the link to the soil test in the chat area so that people can just copy and paste you may have already gotten ahead of me and done that that’s fine you can put anything you want in that chat area whenever you want so um the so test when it comes back and it comes back and they say two weeks but I’ve never had one take that long before so they’ll tell you um you just let them know that you’re doing vegetable gardening perhaps and um they’ll let you know what kind of uh nutrients you might want to add to that garden bed to have even more success so we’re aiming for a pH that is slightly acidic on that pH scale it goes from 1 to 14 so one is very acidic 14 is very alkaline seven is neutral so 6.0 to 6.5 is what you’re aiming for and that’s just slightly acidic you want to be adding organic matter so compost compost is organic matter so I mentioned that starting recipe of two parts Rose soil to one part compost but as the seasons go on you know hopefully you’ll be able to keep gardening every season and I consider there’s two seasons there’s basically your spring vegetable gardening season and your fall vegetable gardening season there are some things that you can grow year round but that’s that’s how we kind of speak that it’s spring season and fall season so um you want to try to add more U organic matter or compost each season or at least once a year now we say that you you’re aiming for 50% pore space that’s a combination of air water and microorgan isms earlier I mentioned about not leaning on your garden or stepping on that Garden because you compress or compact that soil and that’s what you’re doing is you’re kind of squeezing out that air and we don’t really think about air being in our garden but we need a little bit of air in there we need those roots to be able to stretch out and reach to more nutrients in different areas so if it’s compressed or comp acted those little Roots just can’t reach out anymore so that’s that’s something you’re aiming for now the uh water you want that soil to be moist not dry moist not wet that’s what you’re aiming for now with microorganisms you put that compost and those fertilizers in it you keep a good garden bed microorganisms are going to come to your garden bed and they will work all that stuff that you put into your garden bed bed and they’ll break it down into a form that your plants can use keeping in mind there’s also earthworms my favorite friends in the garden earthworms they work their way through your garden and they eat the stuff and then they excrete the stuff they call it frass that’s earthworm poop it’s called frass and the uh the plants just love that that that they excrete so if you take good care of your garden the micro organisms the earthworms and all help take care of your garden for you so there’s um I I put three fertilizers here I’m not trying to advertise for any fertilizer although I do use all three of these I’m just trying to show you that we’re aiming for a high nitrogen fertilizer for our vegetable gardening so notice on each of these containers there’s three numbers the first number on each container is higher than the other two numbers so there’s nitrogen phosphorus pottassium potassium is sometimes called poach that’s fine so we’re aiming for that nitrogen number to be excuse me to be somehow higher than the other two numbers now we want High nitrogen but we don’t want it too strong so we don’t want to use a lot of it just go by the instructions on the container and if anything I back off like with this liquid fertilizer at the top left so um I can’t remember the instructions but say it says two tablespoons of their fertilizer to a gallon of water that’s the strongest I’m going to use it I might back off I might do a tablespoon and a half or maybe just one tablespoon to a gallon of water so if anything you’re using High nitrogen fertilizer but just not too strong a fertilizer keep those plants happy and healthy so um compost uh comp compost when you can compost is such a good material it’s nutritious for your garden beds now there is a difference between compost and mulch compost is organic material that has already broken down and usually we’re working this into the soil whereas mulch is a hopefully organic material that has not yet broken down and we put it around our plants so we put the plants in the ground and then we put the Mt around it now mulch does a a lot of wonderful things for us it helps hold in moisture so that’s what we think of the most it also helps regulate the temperature of the soil which helps regulate the temperature of the roots in that soil so um in the summer when it’s hot it can regulate that temperature a little cooler 3 four five degrees and the reverse in the winter time it can help regulate that temperature a little bit warmer uh 3 four five degrees mulch can help control weeds insects and one of my favorite things is it gradually breaks down and becomes compost then you work that into the soil and the next season after you plant your plants you reapply fresh mulch so consider growing up you know we only have limited space usually in our city Lots so if you trellis up then you’ll get a little bit more space and it makes some of the h some of the fruit they call it the fruit even though it’s a vegetable um some of the fruit does better being off the ground so I’m going to take a break here and see if there’s any questions that we can uh approach oh yeah we got some questions for you so everybody’s very active in the uh the comments section uh so let me go Valerie on Facebook uh wants to know about using Rose soil for vegetables so yeah yes um Rose soil is very good um I do that’s one of the recipes I recommend two parts Rose soil to one part compost Rose soil has a lot of uh things in it it’s got a little bit of sand in there that’s why the bag is so heavy and that helps to kind of aate things it’s got uh nutrients in it and it’s got the right texture in it too so yes Rose soil and compost I highly recommend good question Valerie great to know thank you Valerie also Ross uh wants to know what is the recommended method of organically raising the pH in your raised bed so good question Ross um so you can use some Pete uh Pete is um it’s it’s got a lower you know you want it to be a a little bit more acidic so the lower the number the more acidic it is so you can use some Pete in there um uh some people get a little bit carried away using too much Pete and it’s holding too much water so you don’t want to do that but that is one approach now I’ve heard of people putting a little bit of sulfur in there because that’s acidic also but the same thing you don’t want to use too much so gradually build up that acidity in there what about what about liming I know liming is uh yeah I I don’t use a whole bunch of lime myself um perhaps one of the other Master Gardeners can uh address lime in their in the chat okay yeah we’ll have we’ll have them uh go through there so yeah absolutely they’re on the’re they’re very active right now so I have no doubt they will point that out and then one question I want to know so on the soil how um let’s say you do a soil test and you’ve uh uh you get the back the results and it’s not great but you know how to fix it and you’re able to you know through you know some chemicals maybe getting some uh some of the methods you’re talking about how deep do you want to go I mean can you is it a gradual like it has to be like really good soil for the top couple inches and then you know maybe gradually getting less and less worse I mean like is there a is there a dep an ideal depth of the soil good very good question so I do recommend a soil depth of 8 to 10 inches but as far as the nutritious part if you can get that top four to six inches a little bit more nutritious then you you’re got a head start there yeah great really good question working some compost into that four to six Ines and that will get you going in the right direction yeah awesome we’ll tell you what everybody keep the questions coming we are having our Master Gardeners work on those in the comment section we’ll also talk to Teresa again at the end of her presentation but I’m gonna let you get back to it I know you’ve got some some good stuff coming up here in just a couple of slides I believe okay great so uh yeah for the cool season gardening we’re usually planting between September through February and we had this wonderful planting chart so again I’m going to call on my fellow Master Gardeners and hopefully you can put the link you Pro yeah there it is I see it there so this I I just follow it like my little bible even though I’ve gotten to Garden for a long time many years I still refer to it and say you know can I start the middle of this month the end of this month and you also want to watch the weather because sometimes we’re just not having a nor normal year it might be um warm a little bit longer or maybe we get a cool come in a little bit earlier so perhaps you can get a jump on cool season gardening but this is the this is the chart to go by so I highly recommend it across the top you have January through December and down the left side we have as many vegetables as we can fit in there in alphabetical order for you so let’s go ahead and start talking about some vegetables here let’s start with the crucifer family and I do love cabbage so uh let’s start with that now we all wish we could grow cabbage this big but I have been told by more than one source from Alaska in my talks that they had cabbage this big in Alaska so I’m very jealous but we do grow cabbage very easily here um we’re usually planting in about October perhaps the middle or late September again watching the weather and watching that chart and we can be harvesting sometime between January and April depending on the variety that you have now something I find very interesting about cabbage is it is not just cold tolerant but it has a defensive mechanism that it sends sugars into its leaves as a as that defensive mechanism to the cold now with cabbage it has a tendency to hold those sugars that’s why cabbage you know you when you prepare your cabbage you taste a little bit of sweetness to it and it’s not like eating an ice cream cone or a lollipop but it’s still it’s a little bit of a sweet touch to it now um there are other fall vegetables like kale and such that have that sweet but like kale it’ll send those sugars up but then it declines right after the frost so want to harvest things like kale right after the frost to get those sugars up in it cabbage has a tendency to hold those sugars so I like to put um a variety of cabbage here I like to make things look different at the dinner table so hope hopefully you can see my mouse this bottom left that is my hand in there and I’m trying to show you how small this cabbage head is now that is early Golden Acre where you can usually harvest in just a little bit over over two months whereas many of the other cabbage heads it’s 8 80 days over a 100 days perhaps 105 days so those are the bigger ones also something to keep in mind if there’s only one two three of you in the house that you’re cooking for or the home that you’re cooking for you might not need a big head of cabbage so you might have a big head of cabbage you cut it in half you use half of it you put the other half in the refrigerator and hope to get to it before it starts declining so if you can buy or grow smaller heads of cabbage then you don’t have to worry about using up the rest of the cabbage in the refrigerator consider getting this purple type some people call it red at the top left you know just to change things up at the dinner table and the the bottom right it has all this texture to it this variet excuse me variety is seavoy but there are a few other um variety different plant companies come out with different names for their various vegetables but seavo is the one that I usually try or recommend so uh I’m not a nutritionist but I do think about my health and my friends and my family’s health so I do research and figure out what kinds of nutrients are in the different vegetables that I eat now there’s all kinds of micronutrients that I don’t even pay attention to because there’s so many of them and then hopefully all of your vegetables are offering you roughage so it helps you digest your food but I I concentrate on the U vitamins and minerals that there’s a notable amount and I try to keep records of that and compare and that way I can balance my own diet by growing various kinds of vegetables now that was brasol laasia this is brassa and this is the Chinese cabbage yum I love love International Foods and I really love Chinese food so um you know I look at these and I just want to break for lunch and have some Chinese food so um all kinds that do very well in our area this is one of the Chinese cabbage heads that’s cut in half and oh just yum absolutely gorgeous so broccoli is an interesting vegetable in that yes it takes up a a lot of space in your garden bed and um it takes a bit of time to grow it as well but when you’re harvesting the head of cabbage just note where the smaller stems meet and become a bigger stem and that’s where you want to cut it off leave the rest of the plant behind in the soil and it’ll keep forming these side shoots at the bottom right for you now those side shoots you’re never going to get I don’t know of any variety that’ll give you a second head of cat of broccoli but they’ll give you these side shoots and they’re absolutely tasty just as well now when you harvest them leave that plant behind and you’ll probably get more s shoots so keep doing that until the plant no longer provides for you and then you can pull that plant up and cut it up put it hopefully put it in your compost pile and uh have a little bit more space in your garden for something different so also very good for you another Brasa olacia now cauliflower cauliflower usually takes up a lot of space for quite a long period of time it’s usually over a 100 days maybe 120 in some cases when you think how dense a cauliflower head is you can imagine that it takes a while to produce that now when you have a white cauliflower head you want to protect it this one right here is a purple one there’s purple yellow chartreuse and then the you know white that we all think of when you have the white you want to do something called blanching so you can see all these leaves around the head that white cauliflower you want to help stay white not getting burned by the Sun and and the cold but especially the Sun so what you want to do is take the innermost leaves and pinch it off now this is a wonderful photographer he and wife uh contribute to Texas Gardener magazine that I read from cover to cover every every time it comes out so you want to pinch this off now they’re using a cloth pin here um I’ve used binder clips those are wonderful they’re going to rust out there but they might last a season or two maybe three paper clips um you know anything you can think of to you know carefully pinch it off and you can start that process when it’s about the size of your fist maybe even a little small smaller than that and that’ll keep it white so this was in my garden bed now across that’s actually 8 feet so it’s a little bit of a um you know doesn’t quite show it looks makes it look like it’s taken up the whole eight feet it took up probably about six feet just to let you know how much space you need this is violet Queen here and this is graffiti this purple one here this is the same photographer um uh so usually when you have the purple that you grow when you cook it it becomes the chartreuse color like the two front ones and the Veronica and the back with all the texture um so you know if you want to show off to your friends have a dip and serve it raw you know cut it up in pieces and serve it raw and you can just say oh yeah I grew those yeah the different colors and this one here uh one of the names for it is cheddar there’s other varieties but cheddar is a common name so moving on to collards kale and col Robie so with um collards and kale you can either um direct seed or transplant and the definition of that direct seed means you’re putting the seed into into the growing area the the spot that you’re going to be growing it transplant means you’re either growing it inside and you’re going to transplant it to the growing area or you buy it from a nursery and you’re going to transplant it to that growing area so with collards and kale you can do both with col Robbie I like to direct seed and I’ll show you that you can kind of see the Tap Root here and that’s why so anything that you’re eating the root or it just has a you know one strong tap rot I like to direct seed those kind of plants so um you can with the co Robie those grow kind of upwards more those you can plant 6 to 8 in apart with the collards and kale I would recommend at least 12 to 15 in apart uh know the variety that you’re getting and if you can look up online to see how big they’re allowed to get sometimes you might want to leave 18 inches between plants so collards are just an elegant looking plant I think but any of your fall vegetables that grow in this Mosaic form you can just cut off outer leaves of what you need for the meil the meal you’re preparing so say there’s only one of you or maybe two of you maybe you only want two or four leaves so just cut those from the out outer part of the plant and let the inner part keep growing those new tender leaves inside now if you’re like me and you love collards and you have room to plant several plants then each time you’re going to have some you can plant you can um cut one or two leaves or maybe three leaves from one one to three from another until you have as much as you need for that meal so um also very good for you another brassical olaria the subvariety is aaila most people don’t care about scientific names I find it interesting myself so of the kale uh this is the winterbor kale isn’t that just lovely look at all the frilly leaves it has so the brighter leaves right here in the middle of this plant that’s the new tender leaves coming out so you want to harvest from the outside only what you need for the meal you’re preparing and let those wonderful tender new leaves keep coming for you so this is the red boar um I love the flavor just as much as the winter boar and many of the other KES but I really love this plant because it’s so pretty you know in the winter time you don’t have flowers blooming so it’s kind of nice to have a splash of color out in the garden and when this plant starts growing and that cold hits it it starts turning this purple with the leaves and then the mid veins are pink so it’s it’s all so pretty and it just happens to taste just as good as the other KES now this is Handover salad it has a milder flavor for a kale and it grows in a little bit different uh manner so you just get your hands in there and cut off what you need and tuscanos been growing our area for a long time and you know with any of these that you’re harvesting from the outside say you have to be away for a while maybe your uh daughter has a baby and you want to go and help her for a couple of weeks or you’re called away for a while for some reason you come back and those outer leaves have gotten a little bit tough all you have to do is cut the leaf bring it inside rinse it gently pat dry it and run a knife down both sides of that midleaf or that sorry mid Vin and that’s the the the tougher part and the rest of it’s going to be delicious so you can either cook that mid Vin or cut it up and put it on your compost pile so kale um absolutely delicious you know for uh it got it got its comeuppence is the way I like to say it uh people realize all the nutritional value that it has and so they were making smoothies out of it and kind of like Po potato chips they make kale chips out of it you can do so much with kale just be a little bit creative so that Co Robbie that I’ve mention so um the whole thing is edible now if you look real close by his right by David’s right hand this is David Parish um you can see the the vein sorry the root coming through but the whole ball is edible now some people remove the outer part but the whole ball is edible these stems are edible you can cut them up and like 3 to 5 inch pieces and use them for dips the leaves are wonderful U my go-to I like to say soups stews stir fries you can you know if you don’t have enough leaves for a side dish then you can add it to something else so you can see the the purple one it’s called Purple early purple Vienna and the white one over here happens to be cic there is a early white Vienna as well but this is actually its root down here of the purple and then this is the basil plate so that’s where the vegetable connects to the root so I would cut all that off and the rest is edible now I don’t like to bad mouth a vegetable but I will give a a small warning on this notice it’s very high in vitamin K well vitamin K helps with blood clotting so if you know if you’re some people have a tendency to bleed a little bit more so this would help as we get older sometimes we need uh blood thinners so this actually works against those blood thinners but in you know normal living it’s very good so turnips uh don’t forget to eat the turnup greens but let’s talk mostly about the the uh the the bulb under the root under the soil so um you can plant so with all there’s four root crops that I keep together so beets carrots radish and turnips beets carrots radish and turnips so all four of them are root crops all four of them you want to direct seed so you don’t want to transplant uh and all four of them I highly recommend you harvest slightly immature so just check to see when it should be harvested in the case with the purple toop white Globe which I’ll show you another picture here that explains why it’s called that with that one it’s about 52 days to harvest so I’m going to be looking in the 40s of days and probably Harvest then now you can do secession planning or weekly row planning with all four of these beats carrots radish and turnips so with that say you want seven turnips every week so you plant go out there say Monday morning and plant your for seven plants tag it and date it the next Monday scoot down about five or six inches or maybe you’re scooting up depending on what direction you’re going in your garden and plant for seven more turnips and then tag it and date it and keep doing that until you reach that what seventh week and so you’re now you’re into your 40 of days so 42 49 days that’s about when you should be looking to harvest so what you want to do is check that first planting that you planted the first week if it’s ready just kind of poke your finger around the root if if it’s ready to be harvested Harvest it tussle the soil a little bit maybe drop in a little bit of fertilizer and testle the soil a little bit more and then replant that row and then the next week you can you should be able to harvest the second row so it’s you know secession planning or weekly row planting and you can do that with all four of those beets carrots radish and turnips so this is you can see why it’s called Purple top white Globe um very good for you very tasty my aunt used to love um let’s see olive oil a little bit she had to have that brown sugar and a little bit of butter or margarine oh she was in heaven when I made that for her so moving on to mustard another Brasa Brasa I pronounce it Junia I have heard it pronounced other ways delicious grows very good in our area it adds a little bit of bite to your salad or maybe you like the whole side dish to be you know a little bit um hate to use the word Sharp but it kind of wakes you up it’s a wonderful flavor I usually add a little bit of butter or margarine and olive oil um some people might want to sweeten it up but I don’t I don’t usually put any sweet in it so all different varieties that do very good in our area very well in our area so moving on to radish and daon so hopefully you’ve had one or the other or both uh the top picture is the Cherry Bell you probably see that in the grocery store now that’s one of the four root crops of the beets carrots radish and and turnips now the Cherry Bell it’s small whoops it’s smaller and it you can usually Harvest it in about 21 days that’s three weeks so if you do secession planting or weekly Road planting you can start harvesting quicker so you it’s a fun thing to plant and it very good to cut it up and put it into your salads so the dieon oh and there’s all different kinds of radish that do really good raffinos sativus is the scientific name so something I find very interesting about the radish is when I think of antioxidants I think of berries but here we are with a vegetable that’s offering you you know high and antioxidants now the daon it’s an Asian radish um I hadn’t even heard of this until I was wandering through the master Garden or vegetable garden many years ago what 15 18 years ago and um they were harvesting some daon and uh David and some of the other people out in the garden were telling me a little bit about it so of course I had to come home and grow some myself and uh go to my local HMT and I buy some if I if I can’t be growing it you know if it’s the wrong season and I found that you can uh cook it I I don’t eat it raw I guess you probably could eat it raw but uh when I cook it I either go Savory or sweet so it does it’s good both and don’t forget to eat the tops so the tops are edible too so this is rafin sativus the variety or subvariety is L patas and there are all kinds of daon that grow good in our area moving on to lettuce I just learned the the the um sign language this is lettuce go fig so um with lettuce I’m not even thinking about planting lettuce until late October early November you want the soil to be cool um if if the soil is warm or if it warms up outside that lettuce gets confused and it it thinks it’s time to what they call bolt and it wants to put on seeds so you want to you want to allow the season to come in the fall season to come in before you start planting your lettuce now when you plant your lettuce you can either do it from transplant or direct seed either one if you’re direct seeding you want to just make the seed make contact with the soil and gently water in because this seed needs light to germinate so you don’t want to cover it up with soil just have it make contact with that soil and gently water it in now something that we find in our uh lettuce Gardens is if you’re a grazer like I am I love to graze in fall vegetable gardening go off go peel off a a leaf of cabbage and lettuce and arugula and oh cilantro and then roll it up like my vegetable tortilla and eat that while I’m walking around in my garden so if you do that with lettuce you might have noticed a little bit of a bitter bite to the lettuce it’s the liquid inside that white sap that latex inside of it that’s what’s a little bit bitter so what you can do to alleviate that is say you know you want salad this evening Harvest this morning just what you need for that meal bring it inside gently rinse it off gently pat dry it and if you have one of those produce bags that real thin clear uh plastic produce bag put it in that put it in the refrigerator six to eight hours and that should take care of all that bitterness so easy isn’t it so all kinds of lettuce that does very good in our area different colors different textures go for the leafy type vegetable or excuse me lettuce um so there’s bib Bibb and cost cosos any of the leafy type lettuce does good in our area now that um iceberg lettuce that we see at the grocery store just not going to do well in our warmer climates so you’ll have lots of luck and there’s so many kinds of lettuce that you can pick from so there’s some speckled ones I used we used to buy this as freckles and then they another Seed Catalog came out with speckles so have fun with it now the Umble family I’m just going to talk about the carrots and uh with carrots it’s one of those four root crops of beets carrots radish and turnips so you can do secession planting um so you want to direct seed and harvest um slightly immature now most of your Lett carrots are going to be at least 60 days to harvest so keep that in mind when you’re planting and how much space you uh put out there if you’re doing secession or weekly Road planning perhaps instead of every week maybe you do every other week and they take up a little bit less space widthwise so your turn-ups you know your turn-ups get 3 to four inches wide so so you want to plant those far enough apart Center to Center when you put your seeds in um to where the the each turnup will have enough space to grow and not fight for nutrition now carrots they’re not as big around so you can plant them a little closer three to four inches apart instead so uh all kind doas Kara is the um scientific name um I love this T I love them all but I love this Orange rocket yum so okay so garlic is the last thing I’m going to talk about and I get long winded talking about garlic so uh good for blood pressure aliam sativa is the scientific name so with garlic um so if you cook you know the difference between a clove of garlic and a head of garlic uh one of my favorite sayings that I guess I kind of made up is never be ashamed of what you don’t know yet so that is why we talk to each other we listen to you know people talk about something they know something about so um you’re planting cloves when you plant now say you are having some friends over and you’re going to be cooking and the recipe calls for three cloves of garlic and you go to your kitchen counter and oops you’re out of garlic but you have some garlic growing in your garden so you can go go out there and cut off one leaf from one garlic plant one leaf from another garlic plant another one leaf from another garlic plant so you really only want to cut off one leaf per plant and only as much as you need to create that garlic flavor um because you need photosynthesis if you cut off too many leaves you don’t get that sunlight hitting the leaves to create that carbon and you know Go full circle to feed that plant so um there’s a lot of flavor and nutrition in the leaves as well as the garlic head so this is the garlic head so it has had when you buy these in the store or at your feed store it’s going to have these thin layers of I think of rice paper it’s very thin layers of skin on it so this is with that skin pulled off so this whole thing is a head this is a clove this is a clove you know each segment is a clove so when you’re going to plant these in your garden one keep in mind in our area we only grow soft neck there’s soft neck and hard neck the hard neck does not do well in our warm climates so we’re tempted to buy garlic at the grocery store but you don’t really know if that’s hard neck or soft neck so I just go to my feed store my my call it my feed store wob bash is my feed store but you want to go to the one closest to you and I just start calling them in September and you do you have your garlic in do you have your onions in and when they start getting things in I know it’s safe for me to start planting and your feed stores only carry what grows in that area so if you’re listening to me from say Montgomery County or maybe north of that um your feed store might carry something different than my feed store carries so keep that in mind so when you’re planting these I wait I leave that skin on see that top right I leave that skin on until I actually get into my garden and then I peel off that skin and I’ll peel off one clove and put that you want to put that in one and a half to two inches under the soil level so you’re putting it really deep in there one and a half to two Ines under and you know with seeds it doesn’t matter which way the seed is facing but with the clove of garlic you do want you do want so if hopefully y’all can see my mouse so this head of garlic right here you can see this is the top this is where the roots were there’s that basil plate when you put that garlic clove in you do want it to be facing with the pointy end up and the the what was the root end down so that’s the last I have are there any questions you might have absolutely we’ve got some great questions coming in hang on just one sec so uh let’s start off Ross on uh Facebook wanted to know would you recommend uh some night shades for The Fall season and if so which ones okay so not in the nightshade family there’s tomato I think tomoa is in there but anyhow tomatoes peppers um potatoes and what am I leaving out here but those three so a lot of people do fall Tomatoes now you want to start planting those most people are planting those August um and what they do because it’s so hot in August some people will actually string up some tarp on the Sunny Side kind of away from where your plants are so it’s getting a lot of indirect light but it’s not getting that deep penetrating sunlight and potato uh excuse me peppers I think I left out peppers a while ago um Peppers yeah U quite often Egg Eggplant was H suggested in the comments eggplant is in the night jennif family thank you I knew I was leaving some little buddy out there thank you we got some smart people around so I’ve never grown eggplant in the fall but I have had some eggplant last through the fall so yeah that would probably be good but as far as production um you will get to you probably get tomatoes and I recommend the smaller ones when you grow the bigger ones because there’s so many days to harvest you’re you’re kind of playing with fire you know it’s it’s real hot and then it might get real cold so I recommend something smaller for fall tomatoes and for Peppers you’ll probably get good production with those two especially great question Ross great uh also Kiren also on Facebook wants to know what are the benefits of harvesting early uh so uh good question Kirsten so um in particular those four root crops so I’m glad you asked because I didn’t mention that so if your root crops if you leave them in too long they can start splitting and you know in in the soil and that will attract all kinds of insects to feed on it they can also start getting bitter and they can start getting hard so only with those four root crops I recommend harvesting slightly uh early slightly immature great question Kiren um I have a question you You’ mentioned at one point there about talking about soil temperature and in regards to like when to plant um how do you is it just kind of a yeah is there a soil thermometer is so no um the best thing is to go by that chart that we had that planting chart now I recommend for if you’re you know if you’re experienc in gardening it’s a little bit easier to go by the chart and watch the weather some people are just very good at paying attention to the weather my husband’s from a farming family so it’s second nature to them but for me I really have to put a little extra effort so if I know that fall is coming but yet here comes a warm front then I know to hold off on those lettuce seeds that I was going to put in or maybe another crop that I was thinking about putting in otherwise just fall back on that planting chart and it helps tremendously yeah Skip and and a whole crew I guess redid that planting chart I think it was 2019 if I remember right okay and so it’s updated again for us yeah and that’s obviously we’ve got links to that in the comment section so please look for that there uh and you know speaking of weather you know we just came ACR come out you know hurricane Barrel just came through obviously when you’re planting you know it can be you know excessive rain excessive wind and you can prep in some ways any just general rules of thumb on vegetable gardens and if we happen to get it some more extreme weather uh in the future yeah so a good good point to make now in the case of a hurricane as as we can all guess it’s just kind of hard to fight it but with um other plants and seminormal gardening um you can put put tomato cages around around your vegetables or other cages or trellises or some kind of protection and then you can put um floating row cover around that and that’ll stop some of the wind now there’s also something called Frost cloth and that’ll stop more wind so floating row cover is very thin and that Frost cloth actually helps protect from some extreme temperatures and a little bit more of the wind so those are possibilities good to know good to know well okay I think that about wraps us up with questions is there anything else you wanted to uh to mention anything coming up with uh the Master Gardeners or I know obviously we’ve put the links in there there’s a a survey in the uh um that I put in the comment section if you uh if people are able to fill that out we would love that um let’s see also we have of course you your fertilizer you we you pointed that out we’ll have to let people uh uh those some good uh good brands so we do have some plant sales coming up and you can go onto our website and look under events and uh find out when those will be they even have the schedule for next year that you can look up as well yeah absolutely absolutely well listen thank you so much uh one more a couple more things before I’d like to remind everybody about our next show which will be on August 20th at 11:00 a.m. we’ll be discussing growing bulbs in Texas uh a must watch for anyone who is looking to enhance their garden with beautiful and resilient bulb plants so mark your calendars and join us for that uh and if you Jo enjoyed Today’s Show please tell a friend or of course like and share our video to help us spread the word we do appreciate anything you can do for us uh thank you again for watching and thank you so much Teresa it was wonderful it was amazing uh and I would say uh to everybody else happy gardening thank you John thanks for John the master gardeners and everyone that came to join us today thank you so much for attending I’m so glad you said that I forgot to mention uh all the people helping behind the scenes Robin Martin Janice Joanne of course Celeste h helping out Jeffy Jeffy Jeffy I don’t know if she was in the in the back but she might we always thank her anyway so anyway thank you everybody and uh and happy gardening thank you