The last day of summer is technically September 22nd, but the change in season makes itself known in the garden well before that. Early summer crops slow their production and begin to die back. With that said, we are not done with summer crops just yet. Over the last few weeks we have been pulling out the old and starting a fresh but smaller batch — a few tomatoes, bell peppers, and cucumbers. There is space to do more, but we have top-dressed some beds and are letting them rest while we prepare for the official fall crops: lettuces and other salad makers, carrots, onions, brassicas, and so on.
Fall is arguably the best growing season in North Florida. The heat backs off, pest pressure drops, and the cool-weather crops — lettuces, carrots, onions, brassicas — thrive in ways they simply cannot in the summer months. We look forward to it every year.
For those unfamiliar with letting a bed rest, it is a simple but important process of leaving a plot bare and topping it up with compost, manure, and minerals. This is vital for soil health — and for the nutritional value of everything that grows in it. Every vegetable we harvest takes something from the soil. If we want to keep growing food worth eating, we have to put back what we take out.
Gardening with permaculture in mind means helping to renew everything the ecosystem consumes — the insects, the microbes, the whole web of living things working beneath the surface. Here is how we approach it:
Very high internal temperatures combined with gasses from decomposing compost create a small but real risk of spontaneous combustion — particularly in dry conditions. Extreme heat can also damage or fully neutralize the mycelium network you worked to preserve. Solarizing is a useful tool, but keep an eye on covered beds and use judgment about when conditions make it appropriate.
Resting is most commonly done during the hottest part of summer and the coldest part of winter — the times when growing is hardest anyway. In winter, layering compost and covering beds serves a different purpose: it insulates the soil, protects beneficial insects seeking refuge, and can shield root crops that overwinter for spring harvests. In short: healthy soils make healthy plants, and healthy plants make healthy food.
During the spring we broke new ground for a garden plot. We love our raised beds, but some crops — brassicas and larger greens especially — are simply too big to make sense in them. Generally we use the raised beds for lettuces, radishes, carrots, and onions. Crops in the beds can be easily covered with row covers or bug netting, which goes a long way toward limiting pest issues including, but not limited to, bugs, deer, and our resident mulch movers 🐓.
The new ground, while not completely stripped of nutrients, had been growing little more than grass for a long time. With limited composting resources we started using it as a dumping ground for kitchen waste and old potting soil to begin building things up. We decided to try eggplants, squashes, and sunflowers to start.
Knowing the soil ecosystem needed help, we dug planting holes approximately 18 inches in diameter and 12 inches deep, filling each with a mix of finished compost and garden soil. Going larger than the plants actually needed at the time was intentional — it gives the roots room to expand into good soil before they reach the depleted ground beyond, and gives the mycelium network space to establish. Sometimes when roots hit nutrient-poor soil, they rebound on themselves and create a tight, crowded knot — a perfect environment for pests and stress. We wanted to avoid that from the start.
The experiment started out well enough, but pest pressure proved to be more than we could handle in some areas. Being a new plot, there are no fences yet. We knew it was a risk — this is a working-class garden and things take time.
It started with rabbits. What we did not fully appreciate was how destructive they can be with sunflowers. It started with one plant nipped off about eighteen inches from the ground. As the others grew and the nights went on, the count increased — until the last one standing, a three-headed plant nearly four feet tall, was cut in half overnight. Not a single petal or seed was missing. They were not after the harvest. They just wanted to cut things.
Then the vine borers and squash bugs arrived. We did what we could — kept the stalks trimmed, killed bugs on sight, and for a while the plants were actually re-rooting themselves where the vine borers had split them. But the squash bugs multiplied quickly, chewing holes into the fruit and working over the exterior of the plants. With temperatures and frustrations both running high, we made a decision: choose our battles. The remnants went to the chickens. The ground is now covered and solarizing.
Next up were cucumbers, direct-sown against a fencing panel held up by t-posts. First came powdery mildew — not surprising, since this summer turned out to be unusually hot, humid, and rainy rather than our typical hot and dry. The perfect breeding ground for fungal problems. A treatment of a copper-based fungicide got hold of it quickly and crisis was averted.
The cucumbers took off. Within a week or so they were at the top of the fence, covered in flowers, and making both us and the bees very happy. Fruit set well, and by about a month in we had cucumbers approaching peak ripeness.
On the morning of the first anticipated harvest, we went out to find blobs of clear gel on the leaves beneath the expected fruit. On closer inspection: tiny holes, and small green worms getting settled in. Pickle worms. They devour cucumbers from the inside — infesting ripe fruit and freshly pollinated young ones alike. The entire first harvest was destroyed, pulled from the plants, and fed to the chickens.
Pickle worms are the larval stage of a moth native to tropical regions that migrates into the Southeast during warm months. They are hard to spot until the damage is done — the clear gel you see on leaves is an early warning sign. Once you know what to look for, you can catch them earlier.
While we try to stay as organic as possible, sometimes intervention is necessary. In this case we turned to Spinosad — an organic pesticide derived from fermenting a naturally occurring soil bacterium called Saccharopolyspora spinosa. It acts as a paralytic to the worm and is approved for organic use. It worked.
The final challenge, as of this writing, has been deer. Fortunately they gave the plants only a light trimming — but without a fence in place, we never know what the morning will reveal.
We try to handle things organically whenever we can, but we are also realists. A total crop loss helps no one. When organic options exist that are effective — like Spinosad for worm pressure — we use them without hesitation. The goal is a healthy garden, not a perfect philosophy.
Every season teaches something. This one has been particularly generous in that regard. A few things we are carrying forward:
Every day results in lessons learned. We know more now than we knew yesterday — and that is growth, pun intended.