With Some Work, A Spring Garden in Fall is Possible

We’re blessed to live in Central Texas where we can grow a garden nearly year round. The hardest part, though, is keeping it alive during the heat of the summer.

If you plan correctly and provide water and shade, you can even grow another spring garden in the late summer. This week I met with Fayetteville gardener Phillip Stein, who did just that.

He planted this garden on Aug. 3. On Wednesday he had a seven-foot-tall stand of sweet corn and tomatoes about to ripen, not to mention a few baskets of cucumbers he already picked.

“It just takes water,” he said.

We all know it takes a few other things. But, yeah, it takes a lot of water to grow a garden in August, especially this August.

Stein employs a drip tape irrigation system. He said he purchased all the supplies at ATS Irrigation in Brenham. The system involves supply piping made from rigid plastic that connects to lengths of flexible drip tape laid out along each row in the garden.

All of the components are black in color. Water standing in the pipe will get really hot during the day. Stein said he made the mistake of watering during the heat of the day once and cooked some of his plants. Watering should take place in the early morning or night with this system.

He said rabbits occasionally chew on the drip tape. He replaces the lengths of drip tape about once a year. Drip tape not secured to the ground will blow around in the wind, especially when plants are small. Stein uses metal wire and plastic tent stakes to secure his drip tape to the soil.

Drip tape systems typically run at low pressure and require a pressure regulator. Other options include timers and liquid fertilizer injection systems. Drip tape systems work best when growing crops in long rows.

The biggest benefit I saw was that the drip tape only waters the crops you are trying to grow, not the weeds. When you overhead water with a sprinkler or a hand wand like I do, you end up watering the weeds, too. Stein’s garden looks much neater because he’s not helping the weeds.

I prefer to grow vegetable crops in blocks instead of rows, but I’m starting to reconsider after seeing Stein’s drip tape set up.

Stein takes a hybrid approach to gardening. His garden is about 75 feet by 25 feet. The native soil is blackland gumbo. He said he mixed in about 32 cubic yards of good, sandy topsoil from Industry. He also added 16 cubic yards of mushroom compost to the plot. He uses conventional chemical fertilizers.

“My grandpa dumped truckloads of Triple 13 for years on his farm in Odem in the 1920s to 1950s, and that blackland/dryland is still super productive to this day, if it rains,” he said.

Stein said he puts out about 25 lbs. of Triple 13 on his plot before planting. He sidedresses his tomato plants with a little extra phosphorus. He also sidedresses his sweet corn with a 14-6-8 fertilizer.

But he stays away from toxic pesticides.

“I’m awfully protective of the bees,” he said.

He grows basil to attract the bees. He said he occasionally uses Roundup to keep weeds at bay around the edge of his garden but not in his garden. He regularly tills, and he recognized the damage that tilling does to microbial life in the soil. But the tilling saves his back from having to bend over and pull weeds all the time like me.

I might disagree with a few of Mr. Stein’s methods, but I can’t argue with most of it. It works for him. He’s growing healthy food for not only his family, but also the family of a sharecropper who helps Stein in the garden.