Beverly Welch is joined by Angela Chandler from The Garden Academy. Bev and Angela talk about the best Summer vegetable options for your garden!
– [Beverly] Hi, I’m Beverly Welch
here at The Arbor Gate
with Angela Chandler from
the Garden Academy.
– [Angela] Hi, Beverly.
– How are you?
– I’m doing great.
– Well, you know, Angela, it’s the end
of summer and our spring garden is done.
– It’s done.
– We’ve harvested it, we canned,
we froze, and it’s time to think
about the season ahead.
And yes, it’s not too late to replant
a lot of these summer veggies, right?
– It’s really not. You know, when
it gets hot, people kind of think,
you know, “Oh my gosh, gardening season’s
over,” but there are a lot of things
in our climate that will grow all
summer long, and actually go
all the way to our first frost.
– Which can be January.
– It could be, if we have
another mild winter.
– That’s right. I think the one thing
that surprises people the most,
is that they can have
a second crop of tomatoes.
– There are several things that
we plant as spring crops in
that late February, early March, that can
be planted again. One is the tomatoes.
They should be thinking about planting
peppers. Peppers will go for a long ways,
too. Eggplant can go in, again, and even
a fall planting of summer squash.
– Oh, absolutely. Now, you went in
the herb house and picked this one
out for a particular reason.
– I did. You know, a lot
of us direct seed squash,
but one advantage to buying a squash
seedling like this is that this stem is
stiff enough that I can take a strip of
just aluminum foil, or even newspaper, and
I can loosely wrap it around this stem,
and that will discourage the squash vine
borer that gives us so much
trouble in our area.
– That’s great to know.
Another thing, you know, we’re always
anxious in the summer about
our green leafy vegetables,
because we’re fairly limited,
but this is a real winner.
– It is. The Malabar spinach, or
Basella rubra, one, it’s very pretty.
– It’s gorgeous.
– It’s a vining plant, it sends
out that tall tendril, that’s just
looking for something to climb.
It has these little buds of little pink
flowers on it. And it is a summer spinach
substitute, is the best way to say.
– And it is a re-seeder, so…
– It is.
– So once you get it
established in your garden,
you will get it back year
after year, oftentimes.
– Yeah. And actually
enough to share, as well.
– And as you mentioned,
it’s such a beautiful vine.
It’s one of our Ornamedibles, right?
– It is an Ornamedible, for sure.
– So, beautiful in the
landscape, and speaking of that,
you know, if you like yellow blooming
hibiscus, how about some ochra?
– Ochra. You know, ochra is
a hibiscus, which a lot of people don’t
realize. It has a beautiful yellow flower
with a very deep-colored throat.
This is a plant that will literally go
from now until a good freeze knocks it
down. It’s very happy in the
cooler temperatures of the fall,
and it’s a pretty plant as well.
– It is a beautiful plant.
– And you don’t have to
let it grow really tall.
You know, I’m short so I’m always thinking
about that. And if it gets too terribly
tall, you can tip it back, it will branch
and actually give you more production.
– Great. Well you know,
and even, like this one,
for instance, is orange.
[crosstalk]
It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
So aside from our transplants over here
right now, what are we looking forward to
as far as our seeds?
– This is another thing, is that
starting in the first of August,
that’s when we need to start thinking
forward to our fall garden.
A lot of these things, like cabbages,
and Brussels sprouts, and broccoli
those take about six to eight
weeks from seeding until they’re
ready to go in the garden.
So we need to start these
in August, so that they’re ready to
go in starting mid to late September.
– So we can just use these
little pea pods, start them,
keep them in a little bit cooler space.
– In a little bit cooler
space. You can also do some
pre-germination if you want to, but if
they’ll start with the Arbor Gates Organic
Blend for their fertilizer and the Soil
Complete, using these pea pods is
a great way. You can plant a whole
garden in one of those trays,
and then just get them started off,
just watch their sunshine.
The plant will kind of tell
you what it needs.
If it’s getting tall and leggy,
it probably needs a little
more sunshine. So just be prepared,
it’s easy to move that one flat
around the garden.
– Now these are planting, or
starting our seeds for our fall garden,
but we can direct some of these
cucumbers and squash into the ground,
in August and September.
– That’s right. This is, again,
like, our second planting of these
plants. And the cucumbers that they’ll
want to grow this time of year are what we
call the Burpless, or Suyo,
Japanese cucumbers.
– Some people call them English
cucumbers, but they don’t have the
hard, dark, green skin, and they’ll
do very well this time of year.
– And they’re [inaudible], I have to say.
– Oh, they’re wonderful.
– They are so good.
– Now, we also have something
here that is become a very
popular kind of superfood, if you will,
and people don’t realize how well it
grows here. Here, it becomes
more of a…it’s a perennial.
– It is. It’s a root-hardy perennial.
So this is Moringa,
and it is a health food. Many people take
the leaves and they’ll harvest a group of
leaves, and they dry the leaves and
then use them in their smoothies.
They can be tossed into soups or eaten
fresh as well, if you like that.
Then the flowers are a very pretty little
pale yellow flower. And then the seed pod
is known as a drumstick, and
those are used in cooking as well.
So, Moringa is a pretty plant. It can be
tip pruned, if you want to keep it fuller.
You can either save seed and re-seed, or
you can simply cut it back when your first
morning of frost comes, if the weather man
gets that right. You can cut it way back
and mulch it and cover it with a cardboard
box, and it’ll stay there all winter long,
then just pull it off in late February,
and it will come back out.
– Oh, that’s easy enough.
– It is very easy.
– Perfect. So, it’s never too late.
– Never too late.
– And you’ve got a great
planning guide for us on the website,
and on the app. Everything is so useful,
I can’t wait to get back in the garden.
– Yeah, fall’s the beginning
of our garden season.
It’s almost time to get ready.
– Thanks, Angela.
– You bet.
