re: 2026 Fall Garden Thread

Some of my newly planted strawberries are already dying.

Gotta be something wrong with the soil. I’m going to have to dig it all out and replace.

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Some of my newly planted strawberries are already dying.

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Pulled all mine that I planted last year. Between difficulty watering and birds, I just can't make it work. Asparagus crowns from Etsy are coming in soon and are going in that bed.

Two projects completed this morning. Planted the 10 Jersey Knight crowns I got from Etsy, and wired my new Rainbird wifi sprinkler controller. Very satisfying.

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Can you harvest the greens without harvesting the turnip? My rutabaga greens are huge but the actual rutabaga are nowhere near big enough.

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Yes, plus the leaves will grow back. For some reason I do not get turnips big enough to eat. This is the third year of growing turnip greens. I don't know why the turnips will not grow. I just get the turnips from Walmart and use our greens. These all work great in turnip backbone stew.

Near Ferriday LA, I planned a bunch of stuff in July and the first week of August. My pole beans completely failed— I'm convinced as a result of poor soil preparation. My yellow squash got a virus and haven't produced anything except for a few weird mottled and stunted things.

But everything else has been very successful. I've harvested large amounts of butternut squash, got a nice dozen watermelons out there just about ready to be picked, I just harvested my cowpeas, the zucchini and cucumbers are producing steadily, I'll have some pumpkins for Halloween, the okra just started producing, and my tomatoes are finally starting to fruit.

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have given up trying to grow squash since I've had very little production out of them when I was making the effort. I'd get a few early squash and then the borers would take over and do what they do to the plants. It didn't matter where I planted them or what I did to try to prevent the borers from getting a foothold on the plants, they would always show up.

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I am going to try one more season. New plan is one plant per pot so I can pay special attention to each stalk 360 degrees. Catching the males in traps seemed to really cut down on the eggs, but my crop ended up failing due to lack of sun. I have eliminated those beds completely.

My wife has given up growing squash and cucumbers due to the cucumber beetles and SVB.

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There are some squash varieties that the vine borers leave alone.

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Your winter squash varieties are pretty much safe from the borers.

Knock wood, but I've grown cucumbers for many years in my spring/summer garden and have never had an issue with any pests. I usually split my big trellis between good size slicing cucumbers and the smaller pickling varieties.

I cooked some during the week. I boiled them for 5 minutes and poured out the water. Rendered some bacon down then added the greens back in. Cooked them down for about an hour. Very good.