The Secret Second Spring
August is the gardening world’s hidden second spring. If you wait until temperatures drop to start your fall garden, you are already too late.
The residual summer heat warms the soil for rapid germination, while the impending cool autumn air provides the perfect environment for plants to mature. Navigating this transition is the key to a massive late-season harvest.
Here are the 17 exact crops you need to get into the ground this August.
Vibrant Late-Season Flowers
1. Chamomile: German chamomile thrives when sown in late summer. It establishes quickly, offering a fragrant flush of blooms before the heavy frosts arrive.
2. Snapdragons: Get varieties like Tall Maximum, Magic Carpet, or Orange Wonder in the ground right now. They will root deeply and provide intense late-season color.
3. Hollyhocks: Planting Indian Spring hollyhocks in August gives them a vital head start. They will build strong root systems over the winter for an explosive vertical display next year.
4. Gomphrena: The QIS Fiery Sunrise blend easily handles the remaining August heat. It creates long-lasting, drought-tolerant blooms that hold up well into autumn.
5. Calendula: Often called pot marigold, calendula is a fall garden workhorse. Sow Resina, Pacific Beauty, or Zeolights for edible petals and natural pest deterrence.
Crisp Cool-Weather Roots
6. Carrots: August is the ultimate window for fall carrots. Sow Cosmic Purple, Shin Kuroda, or Atomic Red varieties now to ensure they mature just as the first frost aggressively sweetens their roots.
7. Daikon Radish: Miyashige White daikon requires warm soil to germinate but demands cool weather to size up. Its massive taproots naturally break up compacted garden soil.
8. Watermelon Radish: The Mantanghong watermelon radish is visually stunning and mildly spicy. Starting it in August prevents it from bolting under intense mid-summer stress.
9. Beets: Early Wonder beets are fast-growing, dual-purpose plants. You can harvest the tender greens in early fall and pull the mature roots just weeks later.
Hardy Greens and Stalks
10. Kale: Red Russian kale is practically bulletproof in the fall garden. An August sowing ensures a steady harvest of greens that become noticeably sweeter after a hard frost.
11. Celery: Merengo celery has a long, demanding growing season. Starting it in late summer gives it the precise temperature gradient it needs for thick, crisp stalks.
12. Amaranth: Edible Red Leaf amaranth effortlessly handles the brutal tail-end of summer. It provides a reliable, heat-tolerant green while your cool-weather crops are still tiny seedlings.
13. Leeks: King Richard leeks are incredibly cold hardy. Plant them now, and you will be pulling thick, mild stalks straight through the early winter months.
The Brassicas and Fall Peas
14. Broccoli: Di Cicco and Belstar broccoli varieties demand an August start. If planted too late, they simply will not have the daylight hours required to form substantial main heads.
15. Cauliflower: Cauliflower is notoriously fussy about temperature swings. Getting Twister or Romanesco seeds started in August ensures the complex heads form during the stable, cool days of late autumn.
16. Snow Peas: Mammoth Melting snow peas race against the first deep freeze. An August sowing gives the vines just enough time to trellis and produce massive, sweet pods before winter takes hold.
Overwintering Alliums
17. Bulb Onions: Varieties like Yellow Granex, Gladstone, and Walla Walla need a massive head start. Sowing them in August allows them to establish before winter dormancy, resulting in exceptionally large bulbs the following spring.
