When the first direct seeding of the fall happens can be different every year even if we try to make it same because the weather has a massive impact on it.

The third week in August is when we aim to direct seed fall crops although if there is a heat wave with temperatures in the triple digits we have to push it back.

This year it has been slightly cooler this month than normally in August which has allowed the first direct seeding to go ahead as planned. There is forecasted to be some hot days in the middle of next week but its surrounded by cooler days.

The seeds planted directly in the field need a soil that is moist to germinate well in and if its too hot then it becomes extremely hard to keep it wet with the soil drying out fast.

We laid some row cover on top of the carrots after we direct seeded them to hopefully help them germinate better. In the spring we use row cover to warm up the crops but now we are using it to keep the soil more moist for the carrots by irrigating with sprinklers on top of the row cover.

The earliest fall planting of carrots is always the most challenging with temperatures potentially still getting much warmer but its necessary to seed carrots now so that we can start harvesting them at the end of October or early November.

In addition to the carrots we seeded arugula, radish, beets, spinach and turnips. Hopefully we will be beginning to harvest the radishes and maybe some arugula in about 30 days.

Once the first of the fall crops come in there hopefully will be lots of them as we are direct seeding another round of everything in two weeks. The radishes and turnips are getting seeded every week to help have a consistent supply all fall and then we have larger plantings later with the plan for them to be able to be harvested off of all winter.

It will be a very full display at the farmers market once the fall crops come in to go along with all the summer veggies that are still thriving.

The heirloom tomatoes are picking back up with our fourth planting ripening. They are looking really nice and are very flavorful.

Not having the temperatures be triple digits every day is helping them ripen at a better pace than in July when the third planting rapidly ripened almost every tomato it had on the vine.

Seeding lettuce in the greenhouse every week means that every week we have more to plant and its still a small amount with only two varieties. The next plantings we are adding more varieties so they will be larger plantings.

The lettuce we planted last week is already starting to grow nicely and along with that comes the first weeds so we need to get them weeded with the tools we have tomorrow.

If we wait too long the weeds will be pulling more water and nutrients away from the lettuce plus it will take much longer to weed since it likely would have to be done by hand.