By Mike Isbell
University of Georgia

So you didn’t get your garden planted this spring because the
ground was so wet, huh? And you still want to plant a garden.
Well, plant a fall garden.

In most cases, choose early-maturing vegetables. Lettuce,
radishes, spinach, turnips and peas can be started from seed.
Lettuce and radish can be seeded about every two weeks. Broccoli,
cauliflower and collards can be transplanted toward the middle of
August to mid-September.

For hardy crops like cabbage, cauliflower and collards, count
back from your average first frost date (if you know) the number
of days the vegetable takes to mature (if you know that), and
plant at that time.

Backup plan

If you don’t know either of those, then call your county
extension agent and find out.

For half-hardy plants like beets and carrots, allow an additional
week. And for tender crops like beans and sweet corn, allow an
extra two weeks. Hopefully, this will keep an early frost from
killing your vegetables before they mature.

The garden pests will be out there, so be extra diligent in
watching for them.

You can grow an abundant crop of fall tomatoes, but where can you
buy young tomato plants in the middle of the summer?

Cut the suckers

The easiest way to solve that problem is to cut small suckers
from spring-planted tomatoes and let them grow to full-size
plants.

You may have pinched out suckers at the first of the season, but
some have grown back in the axil of the stems. They should be 4
to 6 inches long and have a growing point with several leaves.
Sometime this month, cut the suckers from the plant, remove the
lower leaves up to the bud and place them in a jar of water for
an hour or two.

Then plant them in pots for later transplanting or plant them
directly into the garden. Keep them watered heavily for a few
days until they’ve taken root.

If you don’t want to do that, then simply lop off the top foot or
so of a healthy plant and set it in water for a few days, then
plant it directly into the garden. Just don’t forget about. It
will need to be watered and mulched well until roots form.

If you don’t want to do that, just forget the tomatoes.

(Mike Isbell is the Heard County Extension Coordinator with
the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and
Environmental Sciences.)