As we start moving into late summer in the garden, I have been looking ahead to what will be in the garden this fall. As the cucumbers and zucchini start to age out, especially the first succession planting, there are a number of great vegetables that appreciate the coming cool weather. Carrots have already been planted for the past few weeks, but spinach and baby lettuce greens have just started sprouting again! It feels mighty good to see new seedlings breaking ground again.

These successions of spinach should be ready to harvest by mid to late September. I will be planting successions of them roughly every two weeks right through to the end of September. If everything goes well, I'll have a good batch under row covers before Thanksgiving that will last most of the winter. I'm a huge fan of fresh, creamed spinach at Christmas!

That said, we are in the last week or two of fall plantings for a bunch of things. This is our last chance to seed head lettuce, full-sized Bok choy, kohlrabi, and turnips. You still have a bunch of time (about three weeks or so) for arugula, radish, baby lettuce, and spinach, so don't put those seeds away yet.

If you want to plant seeds now, be sure to look to soil that has a mulch on it or cover it with a shade cloth. We really want to the soil tempature to be in the 70s for most of these fall crops to germinate well. A stick thermometer that is about 2" deep will give you a good sense of where your soil is at before you throw away good seed.

Bugs and Pests

This summer, I got pretty blind-sided with Pepper Maggots ( Zonosemata electa). They are small, yellowish-white larvae that infest pepper fruits. The adult flies resemble small houseflies with distinct yellow and black markings and typically lay eggs on the underside of pepper plants in early summer.

It was the first time I really had trouble with them and there are definitely a batch flying around the community garden. I’m working hard to remove any damaged fruit as quickly as possible in order to prevent any larvae or pupae from making their way into the soil. I planted my peppers with a fairly deep layer of straw mulch under them. So I will definitely take away the mulch at the end of the season and be sure to compost it well in order to kill off any pupae or larvae that might want to overwinter in it. The Cornell Extension in the City just put out a good bulletin about them that you can find here: https://mailchi.mp/00981ffef63c/nyc-market-growers-update-17850318​

Other management strategies include:

• Floating Row Covers: Apply floating row covers to prevent adult flies from accessing the plants and laying eggs in June/July.
• Soil Solarization: Consider solarizing the soil by covering it with clear plastic to heat the soil and kill any pupae present. This might work if you do it soon, but as we get into late September it can be hard to get your soil warm enough to do much good.

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