A Lot of Bang For Your Buck

It is Fall gardening time. No more sweating to death in the garden; cool breezes and mild temperatures make this a great time to dig in the dirt.  I pulled up everything from the summer garden back at the end of August.  Some veggies would have kept on producing, but we were leaving on vacation and when it gets that hot and miserable outside, I'd rather pull everything up and take a break.

It is also a great time to send a soil sample off to the state AgCenter and find out what you need to add to your soil before next Spring. It is recommended that your should test your soil every three years.  My pH is always a little high and this year was no different, so I had to add sulfur. They also recommended some potash.

  

I tilled in the nutrients, repositioned the drip tape, then planted spinach, kale, collard greens, cabbage, and lettuces.  They will need fertilizing three weeks after planting and again two weeks later.  Our teacher, Dr. Katheryn Fontenot of the LSU AgCenter, said she likes calcium nitrate at a rate of 1 tsp. per plant.

Anyway, between pulling up summer plants and waiting for your fall plants to mature, the garden can look a little barren.  But there have been two plants that have really done yeoman's duty for me this year; wave petunias and narrow-leaf zinnia.

First, the pots of wave petunias I planted in March. I started with one hanging basket per pot.  Then at the end of June when they began to get leggy and ugly, I cut them way back with a pair of scissors and fertilized them heavily.  They popped out again and kept on going.  I repeated the process at the end of August.  This picture was taken this yesterday.

 

So that's eight months from an initial investment of $30.....equals $3.33 per month for both pots together.  That's a lot of bang for your buck! 

Second, is the mounding narrow-leaf zinnia.  They are an annual and come in white, yellow, orange, and pink. they bloom all summer and get 12 - 15 inches tall and wide.  They are drought tolerant and disease and insect resistant.  A gardener friend of mine calls plants like this "bullet proof".  But the reason I like them is they give me pretty fall color without having to plant something new or waste money on mums. (I like chrysanthemums, but their blooms just don't last very long for the money invested.)



March - November... a lot of bang for the buck!!



Other Fall Veggie Info:
 
Okra can be cut off to knee length in late August and it will bush out and keep producing pods until frost. Of course that's if you want to keep cutting okra everyday like it requires!

There is a new lettuce variety called "Drunken Redheaded Woman".

 Soft neck varieties of garlic do better in Louisiana than hard neck varieties.

Happy Fall gardening,
Shelli