"FARMER PAUL" PREPARES FOR THE FALL GARDEN IN WATKINSVILLE, GA

Sadly, the tomatoes are about finished and the eggplant and peppers are still hanging on.

"Farmer Paul" is busy today plowing our back 40 for the fall garden. Here in Oconee Co. GA, we are able to plant a fall garden, some of which generally survives the winter. Already, we have planted broccoli, collards, spinach, lettuce and onions. Some of the spinach and lettuce washed in the recent heavy rains and he'll replant them along with some Swiss chard.

The broccoli does better here in the fall than the spring as it likes cool weather. Some years it doesn't really cool off until November, so the broccoli tends to be a little strong. It is most happy when it has a little frost. Then some years we have an early hard freeze, which ruins it as well. In a perfect year we have large broccoli yields with a great flavor.

Unless we have unusually cold weather, the lettuce and spinach will stop growing in the winter but survive and then take off in the early spring. Swiss chard will grow all winter and sometimes remain to grow again the next fall, but we usually need the space for summer crops and plow it up.

I'm still trying to figure out how to have good fresh lettuce AND homegrown tomatoes at the same time!

These are some of the Radiator Charlie's Mortgage Lifter tomatoes that Paul grew last year. They way overlap a piece of bread when you make a tomato sandwich or BLT.