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Vegetables & Herbs

• Plant onions and radishes. See the chart below for other vegetables.
• Order garlic.
• Remove tomato blossoms so that all nutrients flow to tomatoes that are already set. Tomatoes stop fruiting when night temperatures fall below 65°F and days become shorter.
• 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.
• If you do not have a fall vegetable garden, it is a good time to chop, burn or discard dead vegetable plants so that diseases and insect pests do not overwinter.

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.

Fruits

• Spray nectarine and peach tree trunks for peach tree borer.
• Pears should be picked at the hard ripe stage and allowed to finish ripening off the tree. The base color of yellow pears should change from green to yellow as the fruit approaches maturity.