In the Garden Right Now
In the garden right now · West Central Florida · Zone 10a
Reset and restart
Late summer · August and September
This is the quietest the garden gets all year, and it fools people into thinking they missed something. You didn't. August is not a harvest month down here. It's a setup month. Everything you seed in a tray right now is what you eat in November.
Going in the ground
What I'm planting
- Tomato, pepper and eggplant seed. Into trays, not the ground. Start them four to eight weeks before you set them out. Get them in the ground by the end of September. The window closes here after that.
- Okra. Last call. The window closes at the end of this month. Seed straight in the ground. Okra hates being moved, so skip the tray.
- Southern peas. Last call on these too. They run through the end of August here and then the door shuts.
- Seminole pumpkin and calabaza. The two squashes that shrug at Florida summer.
- Summer squash. It goes in now, not just September.
- Carrots, bunching onions and bush beans. All three can go in right now. Carrots and bunching onions run from August all the way to March. Bush beans get August and September.
- Callaloo. Amaranth if you want the formal name. It grows like it has somewhere to be.
- Malabar spinach, longevity spinach, Okinawa spinach. The last two make no seed at all, so you plant a cutting from somebody else's plant. That's how mine started.
- Roselle. Late August is a real window. It does not flower on a clock. It is a short day plant, so it flowers when the days shorten in September and October, and the calyces come in October and November no matter when in the window you planted.
- Papaya, pineapple, sugarcane. Still fine to set out.
- September only: collards, kale, mustard, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, pole beans, cucumbers, turnips and luffa. These wait for September, when the door cracks open.
Producing
What I'm picking
- Starfruit. Peak. August and September is one of its two best windows all year.
- Guava. Main crop, August through October. It gives a second smaller one in early spring.
- Barbados cherry. One of three to five flushes it throws in a year. Three weeks from flower to fruit.
- Miracle fruit. Flushes roughly every two months. In a pot down here you can get six harvests.
- Longan. August is it. By early September we're done.
- Mango. Tail end. If you still have fruit it's a late variety like Keitt.
- Jaboticaba. A light scatter. Its real peak is late March.
- Ginger and turmeric. What went in back in spring is sizing up underground now. I dig it once the tops start to die back.
- Sweet potato and boniato. The slips that went in back in spring are what I am digging now.
- Also going: sugar apple, atemoya, avocado, passion fruit, papaya, banana, jackfruit.
- From the beds: okra daily at peak, boniato, sweet potato leaves, callaloo, malabar spinach, chayote, long beans, peppers, and Everglades or cherry tomatoes.
Struggling
Where I'm losing
- Rain. Almost 70 percent of our whole year of rain falls between the middle of May and the middle of October. August and September also catch the tropical systems.
- Roots drowning. Papaya, avocado and passion fruit can be gone after 48 to 72 hours in soggy soil. Not weeks. Days.
- Fungus and bacteria. Bacterial spot and target spot on tomatoes. Gummy stem blight on the pumpkins, so keep mulch off the vine base and water in the morning only. Mango anthracnose is worse in a wet year.
- Root knot nematodes. Their numbers are highest at the end of a crop, which is right now. Okra, beans, peppers, squash and cucumbers all feel it.
- Bugs with an appetite. Silverleaf whitefly, southern armyworm, melonworm, pickleworm, tomato pinworm and melon thrips are all working overtime.
- Regular tomatoes. They will not set fruit when nights stay above 70. That's physics, not your thumb. Everglades and cherry are the two that keep going.
- Cool season anything in August. No broccoli, no cabbage, no lettuce. Wait for September and October.
- Loquat and mulberry. Out of season, both of them. Loquat comes back February through May.
Dates on this page follow the UF/IFAS Central Florida planting calendar and the tropical fruit harvest tables.