Here we are at peak summer and all that early season work should finally be paying off. All those fruiting plants: the tomatoes and cucumbers, zucchinis and eggplants, peppers and summer squash are all ripening on the vines. The onions, garlic, shallots as well as beets have matured and can be used now. The basil and other summer herbs are still going. Now is the time to be creative in the kitchen and, if you can stand the heat, get your Farm To Table cook on.

Unfortunately, this is also the season of fungal diseases, summer pests and extreme heat- so it can be easy to get distracted worrying about your plants survival. Indeed, the game now is to see how long you can keep some of these annual plants alive and yielding before they succumb to their eventual seasonal demise and make way for the rich hearty flavors of fall.

Truth be told, one of the real skills of a grower is getting the timing right. Many of our favorite fall crops must be planted around mid-August if they are to yield before winter conditions arrive, but often those precious summer crops are still occupying garden space long past that window.

What to do? Well, the first thing is make sure to have a garden plan to serve as a roadmap and guide planting decisions over the course of the season. Edible Eden offers garden plans for any size garden that will help maximize your space over the course of the season.

If you don’t have a plan in place; consider interplanting some fall crops in and amongst your yielding plants over the next few weeks so that when they do go down your kales and cabbages will rise to the occasion and fill their space.

Here at 2601 Taney, we are thinking a lot about timing as we continue our extended baby watch. Teri was at 40 weeks a week ago and now we are trying to go about our lives knowing that at any minute labor will begin and we will need to step away from whatever we were doing and head to the hospital.

It’s a good thing we have plenty of beautiful produce to munch while we are waiting!

Stay posted for news of the soon-to-arrive baby Rosenstein and enjoy that summer produce while it’s here.

Farmer Josh