It is time to start getting your fall cole crops ready to put out.
For those of you that heeded my suggestion in June and started your seeds, you can relax and wait a week or two for a little cooler weather. If you did not start your own seeds, you will be hunting for a place to buy plants. Usually there will be one or two area suppliers that will carry fall cole crops.
When transplanting your fall cole crop, it is best to plant it 2 inches or so deeper than it was in the pot. I usually pinch off the bottom two leaves and plant several inches of the stem in the ground. The plant will develop roots along the stem which will help in the hot, dry latter days of summer. When cooler weather hits, your plants will be rarin’ to go!
One thing that changes for the fall garden is watering.
Your new plants will not have a deep root system developed, so you will need to keep the ground moist (not soggy) to protect them from the hot summer sun as they develop. One good way to do this is to mulch with straw, grass clippings or something similar. Mulch will keep the ground around the plant a little cooler as well as protect the soil moisture.
If you are planting seeds, planting your seed a little deeper will help with this also. By planting a little deeper, about 1½-2 times the recommended depth on most plants, it will get the roots started a little deeper and protect the seeds from the dry summer sun.
One other thing to keep in mind, in order to get another growing season out of the garden, fertilizer and liberal amounts of compost or other organic matter should be applied to the soil. Fall’s predominantly leafy vegetables are heavy feeders. If you have grown another crop in the same area, the nutrients might be depleted.
Hope you all are ready for the second shift. You’ll be glad you did when all the tomatoes, corn and other summer vegetables are over with and you have some fresh greenery to munch on.
On a different note, I wanted to remind you that the Missouri Master Gardener Extension Program will be having a training session beginning Aug. 17.
Are you interested to learn more about gardening? Do you have a passion for sharing gardening information and making your community a more beautiful place? If you are interested, join us for the hybrid format of Extension Master Gardener (EMG) Training in Mid- Missouri.
This program’s train-the-trainer mission is sharing research-based horticulture information with the public through educational outreach. The EMG Training helps you to gain new horticulture knowledge and become a community resource for science-based information. It also helps to educate adults and children about the gardening benefits and meet fellow gardeners.
This training is 12 weeks long, consisting of lectures and field session. The training starts from Aug. 17 and ends on Nov. 16. The lectures will be presented through Zoom from 9:30 a.m. -12:30 p.m. on Thursdays. The first face-to-face orientation class will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 17, at the Cole County Extension Center in Jefferson City.
The in-person field sessions will be on following date, time, and locations:
5:30-7:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 5 — Tour around the Governor’s Mansion to look different types of flowers.
10 a.m.-noon, Saturday, Sept. 16 — Fruit and Veggie Garden Tour at 719 West Broadway, Columbia. (Rain date is Saturday, Sept. 23, same time and location.)
5:30-7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 4 — Neighborhood Landscape Tour in Columbia. The address of exact location will be provided before the tour.
5:30-7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 26, at the Cole County Extension Center. We will learn about lawn management and soil management in the garden.
5:30-7:30 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 16, at Cedar City Room, 810 Sandstone, North Jefferson City, MO 65101. We will learn about plant propagation and IPM/Plant Diagnostics.
The fee to attend the training is $200, which includes EMG Core Manual. Interested participants need to register online before July 31 from the link: https://extension.missouri.edu/events/extension-master-gardener-training-mid-missouri.
Happy gardening!
Peter Sutter is a lifelong gardening enthusiast and a participant in the MU Extension’s Callaway County Master Gardener Program. Gardening questions can be sent to [email protected]