Late Summer Garden Tips: What should you be preparing and planting in your Georgia garden right now?
8 Fall Gardening Steps to Take Right Now in Atlanta and Georgia
Get Excited for Fall! Summer garden burnout is real, y’all. It’s August, the peak of summer, and Atlanta is in full-blown jungle mode. Afternoon deluges, mosquito swarms, and sweat in places you didn’t think quite possible. The garden is spilling out every which way - tomato vines outgrowing their trellises, eggplants flopping free, okra towering out of reach. It’s all a bit overwhelming - leading many gardeners (rightfully so) to throw up their hands in defeat this month. Instead of looking back in despair, this is the time to look forward to new prospects: the Fall Garden. Fall gardening in Atlanta and in Georgia is such a respite from the summer - cooler temperatures, less pest and weed pressures, and everything grows a bit more orderly. We see many gardeners give up after summer’s had its way with them, but we want to encourage y’all to keep on growing!
Celebrate your successes! This was a really tough summer to grow. If you struggled, we’re here to say you’re not alone - and it’s all a part of organic gardening in the Southeast! With an early drought and long heat wave, if you got anything to survive it’s worth celebrating. Take a moment this month to note which plants and varieties thrived. If you do not already have a garden journal, we highly recommend it! This will help you with planning year after year, tracking crop rotations, diseases, pest cycles, and it will generally help keep you connected with your garden and its seasonal changes. Remember though, every year is different; heat, water, storms, etc. all impact the garden differently year after year, so having a flexible attitude and expressing gratitude for whatever success you may have had is the key to happy gardening!
Consider saving seeds from anything particularly tasty or resilient! Saving your own seeds is an excellent way to grow more resilient and sustainable gardens. Not to mention it’s a great way to save money too! Just make sure you are saving seeds of open-pollinated varieties. If the tag says it is a hybrid or has “F1” listed, it may not maintain the distinct qualities you found desirable. If you’re just getting started with seed saving, beans, tomatoes, okra, and peppers are great ones to start with. When and how you harvest the seeds are all dependent on the plant. With okra, for example, you wait until the okra pod has dried on the plant to remove the seeds - making sure they are completely dried before you store them in a glass jar in a cool dark area. Tomatoes, on the other hand, require a little extra work. We recommend checking out this Seed Savers Exchange article to get more information on best practices in seed saving.
Decide what you want to grow for fall. Cool temperatures are for roots and greens (plant parts that are closer to the warm soil surface!). Some plants will offer continuous harvests (kales, collards), others will be one and done (carrots, beets). Think about what you like to eat and cook when choosing crops. Scroll down to see the list of vegetables we recommend growing this fall!
Make room! This is when tough decisions have to be made. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, will all continue to produce until the first frost. However, some plants will slow their production considerably. So to leave the plants or not? Typically, I try to prune the plants as much as possible so they are not taking up much horizontal space. I will pull plants out if they haven’t been good producers that summer, have no fruit currently developing, have any diseases, or I have enough harvest (maybe 4 tomatillos plants was 2 too many). Keep in mind that for greens, it’s easy to simply plant around the summer crops, plus the mature plants will provide much needed shade for the young Fall babes. When you’re finally ready to remove the summer plants, cut them out from the base instead of pulling out, so you don’t disturb the Fall crops. Don’t want to clear anything out, but want to keep growing? Add more raised beds! This Fall can also be a great time to expand your garden space by adding more beds. Thyme to Party can help with any garden expansions or custom raised bed install you are dreaming up.
Start Planting! Carrots and Beets are the main crops that will not grow very well after October, so it’s best to get those in during August. Otherwise, you have some flexibility with the other plants, especially if you invest in cold protection like frost covers. While you wait to yank more plants from the garden, you can sow seeds in trays/containers for transplanting later in September (kales, collards, bok choy, broccoli). Our September blog post will discuss layout, spacing, etc. more in depth, so be on the look out for that!
Keep feeding the soil. Summer crops can be heavy feeders and likely use up a lot of your soils’ nutrients. Be sure to replenish the soil nutrition for Fall. We like to add worm castings and/or finished compost at planting time for slow-release nutrients and texture enhancing. Fish fertilizer is applied once a month for an immediate nutrition boost. Leafy greens typically need a lot of nitrogen, so comfrey tea, blood meal, or mature manure are also great additions for Fall.
Fall is also a perfect time to get your soil tested. Especially if you had some wonky growth or disease issues on your summer crops, soil testing can help you figure out the root causes and sort out solutions. Testing assessed macro and micronutrient levels, as well as PH. Your county’s agriculture extension office is typically the most accessible way to get soil testing. Their website will have a link to receive the soil test kit and all you have to do is dig up some soil from the garden and send it back to be tested in the labs.
Harvest the Fruits of your Snackyard! And, after you’re done all this gardening, don’t forget to take a break to enjoy the continuing summer bounty. Figs, muscadines, and paw paws are all ripening up in August/September , so if you don’t have any growing in your garden, first-make immediate plans to source plants from the Snackyard Sale, and second-visit a local market for some or try your hand at foraging! Muscadines and Pawpaws are both native fruits and can often be found at the edges of forests.
Our Favorite Vegetables to Grow in Atlanta and Georgia in the Fall
Bountiful harvest of swiss chard and different greens at a client’s garden last fall in Buckhead, Atlanta!
Kale: We recommend the Red Russian variety for reliability, tender and mild flavor, and the gorgeous purple-green hue that it adds to the garden aesthetic. One of the most cold hardy of all brassicas, kale can easily overwinter in our mild Atlanta winters providing a continued spring crop! We seeded these in July and will get them in the ground in September for a fall harvest. If you get them in late, don’t worry! They will overwinter easily and you will get a good spring harvest. Watch out for cabbage worms! This little pests can do some serious damage, especially on seedlings. Try to check your transplants every other day for cabbage worms - typically on the back on the leaf - and remove! Once plants are established, they are more resilient to pest damage. 5-7 Kale plants should produce a hardy bunch each week.
Harvesting our favorite shorter carrot varieties - best for our clay and compact soil!
Carrots: Have you ever compared the flavors of store-bought carrots to home-grown? The difference is almost unfair. Carrots are a great fall crop, but do prefer to get into the ground a bit early in August, for an October-November Harvest. Carrots grow best in sandy soil, which can be a little hard to find in the clay-based area around Atlanta. Even in raised beds, we prefer to grow shorter carrot varieties like Napoli and Bolero. If you want more Carrot Tips - check out this instagram post we did.
Collards: A southern staple, collards are another easy and reliable one! This year, we’re trying out champion collards, a non-heading variety that is bred to be both more bolt-resistant and more cold hardy. Last year, our Atlanta winter was all over the place with a warm spell in December causing premature bolting for many of our fall plants and sensitivity to cold temperatures later in the winter. We think these will be a reliable variety for our changing climate. They are said to be more tender as well. Again, we started seeds in July and plan to get those in the ground by September in order to get a solid New Year's harvest! Cabbage worms also really love to eat collards, so keep checking in on the leaves while the plants are young. 4-6 collards plants will provide a solid bunch each week.
Lettuces: We are big salad fans on our little Atlanta homestead, so we always grow multiple varieties. Our favorite varieties are Yugoslavian Red Bibb, Thai Oakleaf, and Spotted Trout. Typically butterhead/bibb varieties are more heat resistant, so may be a better bet when starting in the heat of late Summer or early Fall. You can grow lettuce out into full heads, but we find it more efficient and quicker to seed them close together in rows for loose leaf cutting. When September comes, we just sprinkle seeds down rows that are spaced about 6-8 inches apart, no thinning needed. Arugula can be grown this way too! They grow thick and gorgeous and we just do small harvests throughout the week, harvesting the larger leaves on the outer edge of the plant.
Tatsoi, our favorite spinach substitute in stir fries and smoothies!
Bok Choy and Tatsoi: Bok choy and Tatsoi are two Asian Greens that are frost-tolerant and easy to grow. They are a great substitute for lettuce in salads, or are tasty cooked in stir frys and soups. We are still looking for favorite varieties here, however we have found that the purple bok choy varieties are not as hardy. Because Bok Choy and Tatsois are typically grown as heads, we like to plant them in successions, seeding new plants every few weeks for a continuous harvest throughout the fall.
Turnips: Turnips are a Southern classic and yet, folks these days are really sleeping on ‘em! Turnips offer a lot of culinary options - roasted, sauteed, mashed, even pickled! And the leaves are great to braise or mix in when cooking collards. Purple Top is the traditional variety and grows so well over the Fall season. Hakurei is an Asian variety that produces smaller roots - about the size of a golf ball - that grow in half the time. We recommend growing both in succession, first direct sow Hakurei, then a few weeks later, plant some Purple Top. Turnips are also fairly resistant to pests, only getting some leaf damage here and there, which should not impact the root growth much.
Radishes: Radishes are very satisfying to grow since some varieties like Cherry Belle or French Breakfast, are ready in under a month’s time! Fall is a great time to try growing Daikon varieties too! Daikons are much larger radishes, ranging from 3-12”, and are typically a bit milder tasting. Because of their larger size, they also are a bit more multi-functional in the kitchen; raw, pickled, grated, sauteed, roasted, or blended into a soup! Daikons also serve double-duty and help improve the soil with their long taproots aerating the soil. Try out Bravo, Luobo, or Miyashige daikon varieties this Fall!
Beets: Like carrots, beets also want to get in the ground early for Fall since they are not as frost-tolerant as the other roots. Red Ace and Touchstone Gold are our favorites to grow. You’ll often see Beet seedlings for sale, but we recommend direct sowing as much as possible, especially since beet seeds are so large and easy to sow.
Cilantro: Cilantro is THE cool weather herb to grow this Fall. Did you know that each cilantro seed actually is two seeds? Two half circle shaped seeds combine to make the round ball we are familiar with as cilantro seeds (also known as coriander). Cilantro’s aromatics can help with pest prevention, so we like to plant it densely around the garden. Besides garnish, it’s perfect for an array of sauces from chutneys, pestos, or creamy yogurt-based blends.
Second Planting of Spring/Summer Veggies:If you are still wanting to hold on to the tastes of summer, you can also try to do a late succession planting of some summer crops in August. Green Beans sown in August will come in during October. Summer Squash, Zucchini and cucumbers should also come through by October. You can also transplant cherry tomatoes if you have a fairly sizeable seedling or cutting.
What else can you plant in the Fall? Cabbages, broccoli, beets, leeks, onions, garlic, parsley, dill and cauliflower can all be grown in the Fall. Cabbages, Broccoli, and Cauliflower are more challenging and take up a lot of space for a long period of time, so we only recommend those if you have room and a willingness to experiment. Garlic and Onions often get planted later in the season, so we’ll talk about those then!
What’s next?
Make sure to sign up for our newsletter below, and we will continue to do this monthly garden series. Next up in September, we’ll get into the nitty gritty of planting including spacing, companion planting, and layouts. Be on the lookout!
