Category Summer

A week away in the middle of summer can undo a season's worth of timing if you don't plan for it. Here's how I arrange plantings and ask for help before I ever pack a bag.

Ending tomato season isn't about a date on the calendar, it's about reading the plant. I pulled mine too early one year and too late another, and both taught me something.

I told myself the plants would be fine without shade cloth for one more week. They weren't. This is what I lost, what it taught me, and how I protect the garden now without anything permanent.

I used to water whenever I remembered, which meant whenever it was convenient for me, not the plants. Here's the actual rhythm I settled into after getting it wrong for years.

There's a moment each summer when new seedlings stop being worth the trouble. I don't use a fixed date to find it, I watch the garden, and one year I ignored it and paid for that.

For years I sowed everything the same weekend and drowned in produce for ten days, then had nothing. Here's how I finally learned to stagger plantings in a small rowhouse garden.