7 August Garden Tasks That Set Up Your Best Fall Season in Florida

Everybody wants to talk about the fall garden. Nobody wants to talk about August.

The gardeners with the beautiful October beds full of tomatoes and peppers and greens? They didn't get lucky. They did the work in August, when it was 98 degrees and nobody was watching.

August in Zone 10a is not a dead month. It's the setup month. It's the month that decides whether your fall season starts strong in September or whether you're playing catch up until Thanksgiving. So let's talk about the 7 things I'm doing in my garden this August, and why you should be doing them too.

A few links below go to my Amazon storefront. If you buy through them I make a small commission and it costs you nothing extra. Everything on there is what we actually use in our own beds.

1. Start your fall seeds now, but not outside

This is the one people get wrong every single year. If you wait until the weather feels nice to start tomatoes and peppers, you're two months late.

Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant need 6 to 8 weeks from seed before they're ready to transplant. Count backwards from late September or early October, when the heat finally starts to break, and that puts your seed starting date right here in August.

The trick is to start them in trays somewhere protected. A shaded patio, under a covered porch, even inside near a bright window. Baby seedlings cannot handle an August afternoon in full sun, and they don't need to. Let them grow up in the shade and they'll be strong teenagers by the time the weather is ready for them.

The trays and seed starting mix I use are on my storefront. Use a real seed starting mix, not soil out of the bed, because garden soil packs down in a cell and the roots never get going.

2. Feed your beds while they're resting

If your beds are sitting empty right now, good. Empty is fine. Ignored is not.

August is when I load my beds up with compost, chopped leaves, and anything else that feeds the soil. The heat and the rain break everything down fast, which means what you add now is ready food by fall planting time.

Nothing fancy about it. You put good stuff in the bed now, the bed feeds your plants later. If you make your own, here is how I compost in Florida. If you are buying amendments instead, the soil helpers I go back to every year are on the storefront.

3. Plant a quick cover crop

If you don't want to look at bare dirt for six weeks, put southern peas in the ground. Cowpeas, black eyed peas, zipper peas, whatever you can find. They germinate in this heat like it's nothing, they fix nitrogen in your soil while they grow, and you can either eat them or chop them down and leave them right there as free fertilizer before you plant your fall crops.

Sunn hemp works too if you can find seed. But southern peas are cheap, they're everywhere, and they're delicious. That's a win three times over.

4. Keep growing the heat lovers

August is not a month where nothing grows. It's a month where the right things grow. Okra is happy. Sweet potatoes are happy. Callaloo is thriving so hard you'll be giving it away. Seminole pumpkin, cassava, chaya, hot peppers, all of them are built for this.

And if you planted roselle back in spring, keep it watered and be patient. Those calyxes are coming, and by the holidays you'll be making sorrel while everybody else is buying it in a bottle.

If you want the full list of what handles this heat, I broke it down in my July and August planting guide, and there is a whole July garden walkthrough on video too.

5. Check your fruit trees after the harvest

Mango season is winding down, and right after harvest is the best window to do any shaping or size control pruning on your tree. Not heavy pruning, just enough to keep the fruit within reach next year. A mango you can't reach is a mango for the squirrels.

While you're out there, give all your fruit trees a look. Clear the weeds from around the base, refresh the mulch, and keep it a few inches away from the trunk. This is also the heart of storm season, so take out any dead or crossing branches now, before the wind does it for you and takes half the tree along with it.

The loppers and pruners I use on the fruit trees are on my storefront. Clean cuts heal. A crushed branch from dull blades is an invitation for disease.

6. Plan your fall garden on paper

Sit down with a cold drink in the AC and actually plan it. What's going in each bed. What you're starting from seed versus buying as transplants. What your family will actually eat, because a beautiful bed of kohlrabi nobody touches is just expensive compost.

And order your seeds now. Every fall the popular varieties sell out, and every fall somebody's in my comments asking where to find them in October. Don't be that person this year. The seed varieties I plant here are on my storefront, sorted into warm season and cool season so you are not guessing.

Not sure what earns a spot? My book The Florida Grow List: 50+ Plants That Won't Let You Down is exactly what it sounds like. Proven plants for Florida, when to plant them, and no fluff.

7. Get your beds and setup ready before you need them

Walk your garden like an inspector. Irrigation lines clogged? Fix them now. Mulch thin? Top it off. Trellises leaning from summer storms? Straighten them before fall crops need to climb.

And if you've been planning to add or upgrade raised beds, August is the time, so they're filled and settled before fall planting. Mine are from Vego Garden, and the code ROOTEDINJS10OFF gets you $10 off sitewide.

The season starts before the season

Fall doesn't start in fall. Fall starts right now, in the ugly hot weeks when it feels like nothing is happening. Seeds in trays. Compost in beds. Peas in the ground. A plan on paper.

Do these 7 things and your September self is going to be so grateful. Skip them and you'll be at the garden center in October fighting over the last leggy tomato transplant. I've been both people. Trust me, be the first one.

When September gets here, my fall garden calendar picks up right where this leaves off, and my September planting list tells you exactly what goes in trays and what goes straight in the ground.

I also post one thing a week on Patreon, garden journal one week and a recipe the next, five dollars a month.

Tell me in the comments which one you're starting with. And if you're already growing callaloo through this heat, come brag a little. You earned it.

You're not a real gardener until you've lost a few. Keep growing.

— Toni

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