By: Isabelle Puente

Tennessee’s summer weather is coming to an end with only 48 days until the fall season.

Here’s what you can do to maintain your summer gardens, landscapes and what you can expect from farmers in West Tennessee.

So far this summer, Tennessee has seen their usual weather of high heat, high humidity and a lot of rain. But, as we get into the season of cooler temperatures, low humidity and the seasonal ending of plants and crops, we start to wonder what we can expect and what maintenance measures we can take.

Celeste Scott, Horticulture Specialist for West Tennessee with University of Tennessee Extension, gave insight on how we can sustain our plants and landscapes during Tennessee’s transition period (period between ending of summer and beginning of fall).

“There are lots of things we can be doing in our home gardens and landscapes in August, for our landscapes, I always want to encourage people to continue to water,” Scott said. “By this time of the year everybody is tired of taking care of their gardens, so lots of times we kinda’ fall off on our weeding, we got to keep those weeds down, manual hand-pulling is the most efficient and effective way to make sure you get the roots out.”

Scott also encouraged people to look at their woody shrubs and evaluate if there is any pruning that needs to be done as this period is the last opportunity to do so before the end of the season.

According to Scott, past August is not an ideal time to do any severe pruning as it could harm the plant and not give them enough time to heal before the dormant season.

For any vegetable gardens you might have, Scott encouraged folks to continue to harvest their
warm season annual crops because when we stop harvesting them, they stop producing as much.

Scott also encouraged folks that are thinking of planting cover crops in their gardens to start
preparing for those now by getting the soil ready to begin direct seeding.

Daniel Wiggins, Agriculture Extension Agent with University of Tennessee Extension Crockett
County, gave insight on what we will see from farmers with summer crop season coming to an
end.

“This year we’ve had a really good planting season in the spring, it was fairly dry but we had
sufficient moisture to get our crop up, get our herbicides sprayed” Wiggins said. “Then we’ve
gotten really good rains throughout the summer and since we’re a little early this year on our
planting season, our harvest season should be a little bit earlier, our harvest season will probably begin in the next couple weeks.”

Wiggins said that with the weather fluctuations we saw during summer, farmers saw some of the best looking crops they’ve had in the last five years. Overall in West Tennessee, farmers were able to see good rains to make a good crop and make enough yield and haven’t had to deal with drought conditions as much.

For maintaining those crops during the season, Wiggins said they plant in the spring and typically put out herbicides with the residual and some soil activity to prevent weeds from coming up. Throughout the year, they also use post-emergent sprays of herbicide to kill the few weeds that are able to come through.

Wiggins explained that any time in the next couple weeks, folks will start to see farmers in the fields as well as combines, sprayers and cotton pickers on the roads all heading to the fields getting ready for that harvest season. Wiggins also explained that as we move closer to October, we’ll start to see wheat crops going into the ground.

For more information on how to sustain your gardens, landscapes and crops, you can visit
https://westtn.tennessee.edu/.

(PHOTO: Celeste Scott and Daniel Wiggins)