Planting Fall Crops in What Feels Like Fall Weather

What a lovely day it was on Monday with the temperatures reaching only the low 80s and a cloudy day with tiny sprinkles of rain.

It definitely did not feel like a mid-August day, more like a day in October.

Maybe the weather knew we were playing fall crops and decided to mimic that weather. The temperatures will rise to the mid-90s for the next week at least.

The busy planting day started with some broccoli and cauliflower before we planted some lettuce.

We then did our first direct seeding of the fall planting carrots, spinach, turnips, beets, bok choy, radishes and arugula.

Seeding those crops with it still be hot weather can be challenging so we will have to make sure to stay on top of the watering over the next two weeks as they germinate and start to grow.

Additionally we seeded more lettuce, broccoli and cabbage in the greenhouse for upcoming plantings. It is awesome to see how quickly everything is growing in the greenhouse after it germinates.

Last Thursday we used a one row transplanter that attaches to the tractor which we got from Debbie and Robert Ramming of Pacific Star Gardens to plan our first fall crops of lettuce, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, broccolini, kale, collards and chard.

Instead of one person dropping plants on the ground at an even spacing and the other person crawling along planting them both of us were able to plant while sitting. The tractor driver kept it going straight while the person on the transplanter placed planted into the fingers that rotate in a circle dropping the plants at the desired spacing.

Using it the first time took some adjustment and it was only a little bit faster than hand transplanting but when we were done with it for the day we did not feel any bit tired like we would if we hand transplanted all those plants.

We had some issues with the bunching greens that we planted last Thursday so we have had to reseed some more trays of them.

Before it cooled down the middle of last week was over 100 degrees and that seemed to help our tomatoes ripen as we have had an uptick after it started to slow down.

Our second planting of peppers are now ripening and we are starting to harvest them which is exciting that we have much more than before.