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Vegetables & Herbs

Vegetables

• Supplement rainfall as needed to provide 1 inch of water weekly. The goal is to keep the top 6–8 inches of soil moist. Water early in the morning so that foliage dries. Wet foliage encourages disease.
• Transplant broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower plants in mid-August. Seed Chinese cabbage by mid-August. See the chart below for other vegetables.
• For most vegetables, harvest early in the morning when water content is highest to ensure the best flavor and texture. For peas and corn, harvest in the afternoon when sugar content is highest, especially if the weather is cool and sunny. See Harvest for details on specific vegetables. Harvest garlic once several of the lower leaves are brown but 5–6 of the top leaves are still green.
• Monitor broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower for worms, squash for borers, and eggplant and tomato for flea beetles.

The chart below uses 10-day intervals based on our Orange County frost dates. We use conservative 10% frost date ranges of April 11–20 and October 11–20, meaning that there is only a ten percent likelihood of a later spring frost or earlier fall frost. Planting in the middle of a vegetable’s date range is the most reliable choice.

Herbs

• Pinch back basil, catmint, and catnip to prevent flowering and keep them bushy, but allow some basil plants to bloom to attract bees. Sow a new crop each month to harvest leaves. When you need a few chives from the garden, cut generously to encourage new growth. Snip the extras into short segment, put them in a plastic container and store in the freezer.
• Basil downy mildew is here to stay. Leaves will look yellow and spores will be visible on the undersurface of the leaf. Flavored basils, such as lemon or cinnamon, are less susceptible, and there are now resistant varieties of traditional Italian sweet basil: four Rutgers varieties and Proven Winners ‘Amazel’. If you confirm infestation, you can report your findings to Cornell Universtiy.

Fruits

• Continue spraying tree fruits and bunch grapes with a fungicide.
• Prune out dieback on blueberries.
• Prune the fruiting canes of raspberry and blackberry plants after harvest is over. Cut canes at ground level.