FALL GARDENS
Are Dallas gardeners just looking for any excuse to work in this heat? Listen to Common Sense here: the middle of July is reserved for racy spy novels, tall glasses of iced tea, and Spider Man movies. Settle onto that couch, look at the garden out the window, and move only to refill the pitcher of mojitos.
Obviously Jim, our Earth-Kind® and WaterWise Demonstration Garden vegetable guru, didn’t get that memo. By late June he already had diagrams, plans, flow charts, and supplies for the Fall Garden. He sprouted a frenzied list of freeze dates and vegetable maturation periods. He is more organized than Martha Stewart.
Trowel at the ready, the first veggies called up were tomatoes; their installation set for June 15 to July 25. Right on their heels are the Thanksgiving favorites: acorn and butternut squash for July 1 to August 1. Sugar pumpkins and cole transplants are set for July 15 to August 15. Green and yellow beans step up from August 1 to September 1. Spinach, carrots, lettuce and radishes go in from August 15 to September 10. And finally, mustard greens, beets, and turnips will be planted from August 25 to September 5.
Just makes you want to sweat.
Really, if you think about it, Texas is in denial about autumn. We really have extended summer through mid-October served up with a large dose of fall allergies.
I know this from personal delusion. Mike and I scheduled our wedding for October 1, thinking of cool breezes, rustling leaves, pumpkins, and mums. San Antonio weather sprung a record-breaking heat wave, and sweat rolled off the wedding party.
But what Dallas gardeners In The Know will tell you is that if you get off the couch, fill your compost pile with the scraggly spring tomato vines, and plant now in the summer heat, you can have a blockbuster fall harvest. Cooler autumn temperatures coax bumper crops of tomatoes and pumpkins. Come see Jim’s fall garden!
Elizabeth
DALLAS GARDEN BUZZ 
Thank you Jim (and Elizabeth) for posting the dates for when you will be planting your fall vegetable garden. I forwarded them to the members of Hope Community Garden. Hopefully our fall vegetables will be more productive than the “slim pickin’s” we are harvesting for the food pantry right now.
We have every ounce of hope along with you for those fall gardens! thanks for letting others know about Dallas Garden Buzz!
Thanks Jim (and Elizabeth) for sharing your dates to plant vegetables for fall gardens. I have forwarded the post to members of Hope Community Garden. We are eager to begin planting for fall, even in this heat.
Carolyn
What a great article – calculated to get us all stirring.
On the garden diagram, does it matter which way the beds are oriented – ie, which way is north?
Thanks!
Hello Deirdre,
The winter squash, herbs, pumkin row is on the North end of the garden. Let me check further and give you an answer on the directions beds should face.
Dallas Garden Buzz