We have had 90 plus degree weather in TN for about the past month, so it has been hard to think about getting ready for fall gardening. Before we went out of town, I transplanted a TON of lettuce, kale, and swiss chard seedlings to nursery pots and placed them where they would be watered while we were gone. (We ran the sprinkler (fed by the river) the entire time we were gone.) When we returned, the seedlings had turned in to real plants.
I wanted to wait to plant them until the weather moderated some so they wouldn’t be too stressed. Well, today was the day. The high for today is only supposed to be 84 degrees which is about 10 degrees cooler than yesterday, and the 10 day forecast looks like the cooling trend will continue, so I decided to get busy.
First up, I had to reseed my troughs behind the garden shed because the heat had killed all the baby carrot plants except in the trough that is shaded by the asparagus plants. Then I got to work on the south side of the house. I pulled down the rest of the butternut squash vines, and raked out the leaves and then I got to planting. I planted “Mambo” kale (from Johnny’s Selected Seeds) up against the house because it will be a while before we harvest any of that. Next to that, I planted “Brentwood” (seeds I bought at Ace) and that’s a red lettuce. Then I moved to the other side of the HVAC unit and planted an entire flat of swiss chard and next to that, I planted the large variety romaine lettuce plants. I was in the home stretch and really wanted to quit because my back was killing me and I was so hot, but I pressed on and planted the smaller variety of romaine and another red lettuce Rouge D’Hiver. It was easily a couple hundred plants from 5 flats.
Here’s the final result:
All these seeds were started at the same time. It’s funny how much faster some things grow versus others. I expect that we’ll be able to start harvesting lettuce in about 4 weeks.
I’m looking forward to the chard because I have a TON of butternut squash and I found a delicious Caribbean stew that calls for chard and butternut squash and it freezes really well.
