Fall Plantings

We would be happy to get rained on today but looking at the radar it’s Southeast so I will have to water my seed sprouts this morning. Yesterday we took measures to subdue our fire ant habitat and built a new bed where we plan to plant lettuce today. We are really enjoying seeing all the new growth and everything thriving in this heat break.

We have administered our fire ant controls as their colonies have moved up into some plants and are damaging okra, squash, and melons with their aphid farming. We hope to take them out with a two-phase plan. An orange oil, garlic concoction used as a mound drench and on the ground we sprinkled a spinosad ant killer. Then we watched the ants carry the harmful chunks back into their mounds to destroy themselves from the inside.

Matt hand tilled over our previous bean/carrot patch with a grubbing hoe. We found one carrot, that was a nice treat for Paul.This soil is very loamy and in a partly shady location to serve as an excellent habitat for an all star lettuce mix we ordered from Johnny’s Selected Seeds we will plant today. This mix contains Green Oakleaf, Red Oakleaf, Green Romaine, Red Romaine, Lollo Rossa, and Redleaf lettuces.

The sun gold tomatoes will be back soon as the tomato berries are starting to form and the plant is covered in little yellow flowers. The tomatillos are keeping pollinators busy and fruits are beginning to develop. The sweet potato chunks we planted have already developed leaves. Sugar snap peas are breaking out of the ground as well as spinach and Arugula. All the plant life is loving this cooler weather as we are shifting into the next season of Autumn.

This morning I could see that the ant killer was very affective, spinosad is an organic control very useful to keep these unchecked pests from destroying anymore crops. We will be keeping the ground moist for our seedlings and planting more seeds to take advantage of the perfect growing conditions.