Patti: Hi, I’m Patti Moreno, The Garden Girl.

Mel: And I’m Mel Bartholomew, The Square Foot Gardening Guy.

Patti: It’s August, it is harvest time.

Mel: Oh! Boy the heat and the–but our plants doing so well, they’re such in abundant harvest size, you don’t know what to pick next. And if you don’t pick it, it will just keep growing and more keeps coming. We’re busy harvesting, a lot to harvest now, what have you been getting from your garden?

Patti: Oh! I’ve been getting eggplant and squash, and of course my herbs are in, they’re full glory right now. Corn--

Mel: Oh! Yeah.

Patti: A little bit of corn.

Mel: And I’ll bet from your vertical garden, you’re getting tomatoes, cucumbers, pole beans, and more squash. Different kinds of squash.

Patti: Absolutely.

Mel: So today we want to talk about not on the harvesting, everything and how to use it the abundant harvest but you want to think ahead a little bit and now we can start planting this month in the middle of summer for the full growing.

Patti: I love it. So what are some of the things that we can plant right now in August because you know we’ve harvested some, we’ve cleared it away a couple of a little bit of spaces now.

Mel: We’ve got some squares here and there that are ready to replant. Now the full crop is just the same as the spring crop but in reverse. The nice thing is we don’t have to go through all the work of planting seeds indoors attending them, hoping they don’t get too leggy then when they’re big enough, we have to start hardening them off like taking them outside and they try to bring them in, forget all that. Nature does everything for you.

Patti: Right.

Mel: Because it’s warm out to see they sprout quickly we don’t start them indoors, we start them outdoors. And were going to take one of our squares and call it a nursery. Maybe in each mulch will have one nursery and in that, we’re going to plant all of the full crop. Now that would include all the cabbage family. We need to start those right now and we’ve start them by seeds out of doors and just think about all the different colored cabbages you have, and then we have broccoli and cauliflower, that whole family can go in now.

And as it’s sprouts then you move them into individual squares and you're–that’s all there is to do. There’s no pot’s, there’s no potting up and there’s no carrying them in, we don’t have to harden them because nature is going to gradually get cooler and that’s the hard in the process that they do.

Patti: Exactly, the plant as it grows it just going to acclimate itself to the current temperature as it gets cooler and cooler.

Mel: Yes, right.

Patti: Why do you think that people kind of cut they’re growing season off because I live in New England, I have a much shorter growing season than a lot of people in the country. And a lot of people just kind of stopped after that August harvest.

Mel: Well it comes from the old method of gardening in single rows. They’re so tired of weeding their single row garden that they’ve given up and said “Well maybe next year”.

Patti: Right, one quick question. When were starting the seeds in the squares?

Mel: Right.

Patti: Are we adding that scoop of compost as well?

Mel: Yes every time you replant a square foot, you add the compost to it and that just keeps enriching it. Now if you had missed one once a while, it’s not going to make a big difference.

Patti: And com post is a basically the fertilizer that we use. That’s why it’s going to feed the plants and give us those amazing, green, rich nutrient, rich and tasty vegetables especially in August. But we’ve got a lot of more definitely check back with us next month in September and were going to talk about preparing your garden and putting up the harvest too.

Mel: Yes.

Patti: We’re going to talk about putting up the harvest, we’re going to talk about --

Mel: Keep planting for the fall harvest. There’s a lot to do.

Patti: Well thank you so much for joining us. I’m Patti Moreno, The Garden Girl.

Mel: And I’m Mel Bartholomew and tune in next month and see all the tips were going to have in September.