Everybody wants to talk about the fall garden. Nobody wants to talk about August.
But here's the thing. 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.
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.
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.
My grandmother never called it soil science. She just never let good scraps go to waste, and her garden never went hungry. Same principle. Feed the soil now, and the soil feeds you later.
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.
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.
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.
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
Here's what I want you to take from this. 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.
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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