Start These Seeds Now For The Best Fall Garden.

Hey friends, we are on our second month of starting seeds for fall gardening, which is by far my absolute favorite time to garden. It is still a little hot. I mean, it is October. It's still very hot. What am I saying? But we actually start seeds now for fall so that they're at the perfect temperature when they're all mature. And I find actual fall gardening. I mean, not right now, cause this is a little bit harder, but the actual growing of fall is, oh, chef's kiss. So amazing. I love it so much. And then when we get into winter, that's equally as amazing with a few fewer vegetables. So today, I'm going to show you all the things that we're starting for September for our fall garden. We're going to do some things in trays and we're going to do some things directly in the ground. Cause I know that's always been a really big question. What do you start directly versus trays and why do we do that? So we're going to go through some of the top vegetables. We're going to plant them out together and I'm going to give you some tips along the way. Make sure to stay to the end because I'm going to put up a full list of the exact varieties that I'm growing this season in case you want to follow along and grow them too. Let me give you an update on all the ones we started last month. Um, the tomatoes, the calendula, and here's like some of the Brussels sprouts, the collards, the cauliflower, broccoli, all of these. Now the tomatoes and the calendula came up quicker and then we had like a storm. So, uh, they got very little light in the beginning. So they did get a little bit leggy. And so I wanted to up-pot them and I up-potted them deeper. Um, these guys, they weren't leggy at all. Um, but I noticed that they were yellowing a little bit. So I was like, let me up-pot them, give them a little bit more room to grow. You can see we've got our kales and our collards and everything else. If you remember, we also did some flowers. So the snapdragons and the petunias are going wild. Those definitely need to be planted or up-potted. The only thing that is not done great is the celery. Man, they take forever. I told you that the last time, but I've got one plant there and one sprout right there. And then I have a few other flowers that I started more recently. We also started one squash down here and it was probably just a little too early for me. It's so hot. It sprouted and then it kind of just fizzled out. I also wasn't paying as close attention to it as I should have been. So I'm going to restart those today and we're going to do those directly as well, but we're going to do it in a little bit more of a shadier spot. I also started some seeds indoors just because I like to have a backup plan. I used to always start my seeds indoors using my hydroponic systems. And then I would transplant them out. And I've started to notice through the years that it's actually seems to be easier just to start them outside because the process by which I have to harden those guys off in two ways, taking them out of the water and into soil is one hardening off process. And then it's taking them from a shaded area to our full sun, wind, heat, everything outside. It's like two hardening off periods. So they do grow very healthy. And honestly, I will say the inside plants always like do so good. It's just, it's so much work for me to have to transition them, but there's pros and cons with everything, right? If you start them inside, they tend to start more quickly. Uh, the machine does all the work for you. So like those stubborn seeds really seem to work better started inside in a hydroponic system and, uh, outside you have less hardening off. So you do have a little bit more loss cause they're dealing with the heat and the pests and the rainfall and stuff. But yeah, you kinda, you gotta pick your battles, right? Do you want to do more work later or do you want a little bit more loss in the beginning? I'm still debating those two, which is why I did another round inside just in case, in case I have too much loss out here. I always have backups. I think is really important. And people don't talk about this enough. Um, is what do you do when stuff fails, right? Like your whole season could be over if you don't start extras. Seed is cheap. It's fairly cheap, or at least for the volume of the seeds that you get when you start lettuce or broccoli, they give you like a thousand seeds. It's pretty crazy. I think it makes sense in those instances to go ahead and start double or triple the amount of plants that you want. The worst that happens is you have some extra plants with no place to go. You can compost them or you can find a container or a grow bag and grow them in that. Now, the first plants we're going to start on this series is going to be green beans and I'm going to grow the pole variety, but there are two kinds of green beans you can grow pole or bush. And I think bush is probably more popular because they can be grown in a lot of different places. Um, you can grow them in containers. You can grow them in vertical green stock containers. You can grow them in grounds. You can grow them, um, in raised beds. Um, but you can do it all without a trellis. Now my personal opinion, and I know it's controversial is that I think pole beans produce more. They take a little bit longer to start growing, but then they're kind of like the difference between an indeterminate and a determinate tomato. A determinate tomato is going to produce all their tomatoes all at once. Well, kind of like a bush style green bean is going to produce them all at once. And then you're going to pick those and you might get a second, maybe a third round. Uh, but it usually decreases in volume and yield and size and just the quality of the beans. As you move through each cycle. Pole beans on the other hand are like indeterminates. They're just going to keep growing and growing and growing as long as you have the season. And then they are going to just continue to flower and put on more and more growth. And I feel like the beans stay good. They don't lose some of their size or their stringless quality. Now it's very important to get the right kind of beans, uh, because I grew Kentucky wonder, not a huge fan. Um, I've grown some other ones and they're a little bit too stringy. I really liked the blue Lake pole beans. Those are my favorite. Um, they're really all I grow when it comes to green beans. And I do grow, uh, the Jade bush green beans. So I do have some Jade's and I am going to kind of sprinkle them around the garden, but I'm going to wait and put everything in and see, you know, where I have some open spots where stuff didn't make it. And then I'm going to plug in either flowers, herbs, or the bush beans. When you're planting beans, you really want to put down an inoculant. And inoculant is a bacteria. It's a naturally occurring bacteria. It will naturally find your beans if you forget to put it down, but it does take a while. And the beans tend to suffer through that process. Um, so putting down an inoculant first is your best bet. And you can find it. I have one in my Amazon store. I'll put that down below. Uh, but if you're like at home Depot or Lowe's and you're looking at the seed section, there's going to be something called like a bean and pea booster. That is inoculant. It's just a little packet. It's always by the seed packets and it's like a powder almost. Now I blanketed all my beds with inoculant when I first put them in. And as long as you keep growing some sort of legume family, beans, peas, cow peas, peanuts, sun hemp, as long as you're growing them in your beds continuously, that bacteria will continue to remain. Um, if you let your beds chill or be without planting any of those legume family plants, um, you'll probably only have about two years worth of inoculant in the soil and it doesn't reproduce itself. So then what you'll have to do is you'll have to put more inoculant down. So basically the way to think about this is try to grow some legume family plants in your beds every two years and you won't have to add any more inoculant after the first time. The next one we're going to plant is going to be these guys right here, which are cucumbers. It's actually five different varieties. Um, and I just kind of mixed them together because I really don't care. I like all of them and they all look different or they flower different. Some of them are parthenocarpic. Some of them are monocetious or gynecious. I'll explain all that in a second, but basically they all behave differently. So their flowering is different or the actual size of the cucumber is different or the outside skin is different. So I can pick them out by just looking at them. But if that concerned you, you know, obviously put them in spots and label them. Now the three different kinds of cucumbers, the parthenocarpic, monocetious and gynecious is basically how they flower and pollinate. Parthenocarpic, like a sweet success, doesn't need a pollinator to pollinate, meaning it all is female flowers and they don't need male flowers to pollinate. Although I'm told that having a male flower nearby on another variety does help with pollination, but I don't know. The second kind, the gynecious is one where it has all female flowers, but it does require male pollination. So you do have to grow two different varieties and then you have monocetious, which is a type that has both male and female flowers and they, you know, reproduce the traditional way with the pollen moving from the male flower to the female flower. So I tell you all that because sometimes we have less pollinators in the fall. So having a parthenocarpic or having a gynecious where you're gonna have more female flowers and you don't have to depend on the bees as much. Maybe you'll hand pollinate. There's just some things to think about. So the other thing is in this bed right here, I have a lot of mulch and I'm going to show you how I plant in this mulch while also taking into consideration that I also have the roots of my cover crop still in here. And I'm going to be putting in an A-frame trellis. And so that A-frame trellis is going to be kind of like a rectangle. So I'm going to plant in a rectangle shape. Now, if you want to learn more about growing cucumber, green beans, or any of the rest of the vegetables that we're talking about today, make sure to pick up my book. It has a chapter for every vegetable. It talks about container growing, how to plant, whether it's direct seed, or you should start in trays. And it's all specific to here in Florida. It's in an electronic version and you can pick it up on my website, homegrownfloridagarden.com. The next one we're also going to do directly is going to be squash and pumpkins. Now, if you were growing like the giant pumpkins, like the jack-o-lantern pumpkins, I would definitely have started those last month because we're going to hit up some cold weather and it's not going to have time to get fully the right size, but I'm growing little baby pumpkins. They're actually like ornamental pumpkins, which is kind of goes against everything that I usually grow for, but I'm just obsessed with them in terms of decorations for like Thanksgiving and Christmas. So we are going to plant them here in this bed. I am not a hundred percent certain that this obelisk trellis system is going to hold them. I'll be honest. I've never successfully grown these pumpkins. And that's another thing. But I'm going to give them a shot. I'm going to give them a different spot. Last time I put them in too much shade. This time I'm going to put them in more direct sun. They'll start to get more shade as the season starts to change, but it should be good right here. Next to them, on the other side of the bed there, we're going to put some bush zucchini. We're going to do some typical zucchini and some yellow squash. And I usually will add in a winter squash, but I don't know if you can, can you see it all the way over there? There is a palm tree that has my seminal pumpkins. And so those are going to grow there. The biggest thing to consider when you're growing squashes or pumpkins is going to be how many days to harvest we have left. So like I mentioned, I'm growing the little mini squashes or the little mini pumpkins for decoration. I know that those have a faster days to harvest, which is usually somewhere around 90 to 110 days. And my zucchinis and yellow squashes, the summer squashes though typically are around like the 75 to 90 day period. It all matters how quickly we can get them on the plant, the plant mature, get them ripe and get them picked before we get cold weather. And that's going to really apply for those in North and Central Florida. When you start looking at South Florida, you guys don't really have a concern. You can grow your pumpkins and your squashes through the entire season. And really, if you're curious of where South Florida begins, it's kind of that I-4 line, the I-4 corridor that runs right across the state, anything below that typically does not get frosts. Last year we had some really crazy weather and supposedly this year we might get a little bit of that. I don't know. We'll see. But that is something to consider. Usually if you're below that line, you don't have to worry about it. You can grow squash or pumpkins all winter long. Second thing you have to consider with squash and pumpkins is whether you're growing a bush style or a vining style. A bush style is going to get really big, but it's going to stay in one space. Sometimes they're called semi bush or semi vining, meaning that they get really bushy, but they start to crawl a little bit, maybe two to three feet. You really want to give them like a two by two square foot of space. If you really want to get ample production, because they do get like really big and bushy. Now if you're growing them up a trellis, like I'm going to attempt here with this obelisk or through an arch trellis, flat panel trellis, any of those things, they'll grow upwards. The thing you have to consider there is the size of your pumpkin. And so like with the seminal pumpkins, the seminal pumpkins are actually a fairly small pumpkin. They're not like a huge pumpkin, like a jack-o-lantern. So they can grow on my palm tree and the palm tree holds them just fine. But if we're growing like a jack-o-lantern, you're not necessarily going to be able to grow them on a trellis because they're too big and they won't hang properly. Some mid size you can use like a hammock where you build like a fabric hammock that ties to the trellis and gives it added support. But if they're the really big ones, you really need to let them sprawl along the ground. And if you're going to do that, these guys are going to take up 15 to 30 feet. It is very long. Some of these vining squashes or pumpkins. The next one we're going to work on is a little bit different than how I normally tell people to start their seeds because this one is different and that is onions. So we do want to start our seeds for onions in September. Some people will start them in August. They're already hard enough. I'm not going to try to do that too. I like to do September. I actually prefer getting my onions as starts. I loved, and I'm talking loved, the Haas what was it? A sampler pack this last year. My onions were, I mean, fantastic. I really love their varieties. I loved the way they grew. I liked the way they came in. It kind of threw me off though, because the, the first ones to come in were the yellow onions and they were huge. Those were Vidora's I believe they were. And they came in first. And by first, I mean like a month or so ahead of the other ones, which were a yellow and a red, uh, so fire. And I believe it was Texas early white. I think it was, um, the, the so fire came in right after it, the red one. And then the white one came at the end and it came in like another month after that. So for three months I was harvesting fresh onions, which was so cool. Uh, the problem I had is I could eat all the yellow onions. In fact, I only have like two or three left and the white ones, I probably have like half a bag full of them. So maybe like five pounds left. The red ones, I have a crazy amount left. I think I overestimated how much red onions, um, I eat. So I got to figure out what I'm going to do with them. I'm not exactly sure what to do with the rest of those, but I need to figure out something soon because otherwise they're not going to look that great. Um, I, I could pickle them and like refrigerate pickle them. I don't think there's a canning recipe where you can pickle them. I don't know. I've got to look into that. But this year I'm going to get the starts from Haas for the yellows and the whites, but I'm not getting the sampler pack because that was just too many reds for me. So I'm going to just buy them individually. So what I did do is because I do like some red onions, I bought some seeds and these are the red burgundy. Um, the thing to think about with seeds, um, or anything with onions is that you have to get the short day varieties down here. Don't get the long day. Cause the long day is looking for a certain amount of daylight hours for, to cause it to, um, bulb out. And that daylight hours is like somewhere between 14 and 18 hours. That's for Northern climates. That's not for Southern climates. We don't get that kind of daylight here. The most we get is like 12 hours. And so short day, um, triggers to bulb at that 12 hour mark. So you always want to get short days. Now you're probably wondering like, why do I even do, why am I starting these from seed? If I could just buy starts, even if there was too many of them, honestly, I want to get more practice at starting from seed because I have not had the best luck when it comes to starting onion seeds. Uh, they are a little bit more finicky and I learned that last year. I feel like last year I did everything I could. Um, I started them in these like strawberry trays and I, and I seeded it really heavy. And then I add some soil on top, just like I'm doing right here, making sure that there's no like sticks or anything big. And then I water it in, but not too heavy. It's got to stay kind of light, not like the way that I water in most of my seeds. And then once they sprout, they need to go out in full sun. Like sitting on my patio isn't enough. These guys need to go sit in one of the beds. But the problem is they don't like all the rain. Uh, they don't like to be soaking wet. And so what I have to do is whenever we're going to have a storm, I have to run out there, grab them, bring them in here, wait for it to pass, take them back out. It is horrific. Um, I could start them probably the best way is probably going to start them under grow lights inside. That seems to be probably the best way, but I'm not there yet. I'm still trying to do this. So I'm going to see, I have another sunnier spot on my patio that might be able to protect them from the rain, but then get enough sunlight. So I'm going to try that this year. So that's why I'm actually starting from seeds. One, you know, if I don't get red onions or these don't work out, or I get a very small amount because of this whole process, I'm okay with that because I don't necessarily eat that many. Um, and I'm going to hold out for, I think it's like mid September, that Haas will start to sell their starts. And I will let you know, if you're not on my newsletter, go to my website homegrownfloridagarden.com and sign up for my newsletter. And I send out all the notices with all the links of when to start things and you know, different kinds of blog posts and everything you ever wanted to know, including when garlic becomes available, when you need to vernalize your garlic, when you need to start your onion seeds, when you need to buy your onion starts or pre-order your strawberries, like all of that I send out in my newsletter. So it's, it's a wealth of information. You're probably going to want to get on that. So that's all we're going to do for these. You can see this was dry soil and I barely watered it. I'm going to close this as like the little tray, which I normally don't do either, but onions are special. Now all of the rest of the seeds that we're going to be starting today are going to be in seed cell trays. Um, so let me tell you about the first set. We're going to do some brassicas. Now, last month we did some brassicas too. We did some Brussels sprouts. I believe we did, um, some broccoli, some cauliflower, and I believe celery, which isn't a brassica, by the way, I just kind of put it in the same category because they behave the same. So we're going to start out with a good seed starting mix. And you can see here, I'm kind of like smooshing it down a little bit cause there's gaps in air. I can feel it on the bottom and that way there's not going to be any gaps and it's not going to overgrow the pot too quickly. And then we're just going to brush the top off to make it even. So we're going to start working on the cabbage, um, a succession planting of broccoli because I'm obsessed with broccoli. And we're also going to do kohlrabi. Now I particularly like starting cabbage and kohlrabi a month after the other ones. Um, part of it is because I can wait. I don't mind waiting on those. Some people do like to start them in August. Um, if I'm going to fight for a plant to make it in August, I want to make sure it's a plant that I'm like, just can't live without in terms of eating. And that's how I feel about broccoli and Brussels sprouts, to be honest with you. The thing to consider here is how much you want to have to baby them as to whether you want to start them in August, September, or October, uh, because the hotter it is, the more you have to baby them, the more you have to water them. Um, but the other thing to think about is succession planting. The last thing you want to do is start 18 broccoli plants and then have these 18 giant heads of broccoli that you have to eat in the same week. I don't know about you, but we kind of go through probably about one head or one in it. No, probably two heads, two heads a week because we eat a lot of broccoli in this house, especially me. It's like my favorite vegetable. So what I want to do is aim to have two heads ready, at least if not every week, every other week, you know, because there's going to be so much other stuff that's in the garden, um, that is going to be harvestable. So I want to aim that I'm getting that. So the way to do that is to start them or succession plant them every week. Um, now I don't take that approach because I have noticed, uh, that plants don't always come available all at the same time. So if we start one, if we start four plants, probably two of them will come available at the same time. And then a third one will kind of lag behind and the fourth one lags behind a little bit more. Um, so then the way that I do it is every four weeks. So once a month for me, that's always like the first Wednesday of the month. Uh, I go Wednesday is my garden day in case I didn't make that clear. I kind of work and do all my seed starting and stuff on Wednesday. But, um, on that first Wednesday of the month, I will go through and do all my succession planting. So from here on out, I am going to be starting from seeds, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi and cabbage every single month at the beginning of the month from now until probably, I think it's usually I stop around February. Um, some people go all the way to March with the kohlrabi and the cabbage, especially the quick cabbages, like the New Jersey Wakefield. I might do that with the longer ones, like the Savoy. I may not do that with, I'll probably start or stop in February, but succession planting is super important so that you don't get all of it all at once. Um, you can slowly make space available in the garden. So if you're dealing with a smaller garden, maybe you only have like one garden bed, um, you don't want the whole garden bed filled with broccoli, right? You want a little bit of variety. So what happens is is when your first cauliflower is ready for harvest, you don't start another round of seeds at that point because when it's ready to harvest, it's going to take like a month or two before they're even big enough to take up space in the garden bed. So you're going to be sitting there with this blank space for two months. So instead start them in trays and then by the time that they're old enough, you'll be harvesting your first head of like cauliflower or kohlrabi and there's going to be a blank spot that you can take one of these babies and just put them in there. And at worst case, if your babies start getting a little bit too big, you can just up pot them to a larger pot and give yourself another like three to four weeks before they need to make a place in the garden for them. Now something we're going to do a little bit different when it comes to the next set of seeds, which are flowers and herbs is we're going to actually water the soil first. And this is really the best way. This is the way that you should be doing it. What I did there with the brassicas was kind of, um, make the hole and then put the seed there and then water it in. That's not necessarily a great way. Now I know this soil wasn't completely dry when I started, so I wasn't that worried that it wouldn't absorb. But when it comes to flowers and herbs, we have to do things a little bit different. We have to water it first because we're going to just barely water it afterwards so that we don't displace the seeds. Um, we're going to make our little dent here and then we're going to place the seed in the dent, but we're not covering it. And that is the big difference. This is how I've had a lot of success when it comes to starting really hard seeds. Um, difficult seeds tend to do better this way, which is like, so it's like an oxymoron. It seems like it should be the other way around, but it's because some of these flowers need light to germinate. And it doesn't mean like direct sunlight. It just means that it's bright out and it's bright in here. You know, it's not dark. And when we cover a seed with soil, it becomes dark. So we can't do it that way. And also like the little dent creates this little pocket of humidity and moisture. Um, some people like to use the humidity domes. That doesn't work down here in Florida because, uh, it does increase the humidity, which we have plenty of, um, without it, but it also cooks them like seriously, it cooks them. Um, they increase in the heat so much that they won't germinate. So a lot of the times, sometimes when people say that they're having trouble with germinating seeds and they're using the little domes, I tell them, take the domes off here in Florida. We got plenty of humidity. You don't need that. It's just heating up your seeds, but we still need for these difficult seeds to have that higher level of humidity without cooking them. So the way that I do it is I create these little dents and I put it in the little dent and the dent stays kind of wet. We only water the little dent and it stays really humid in that little pocket right there. And so, um, it has turned out to work really well for me. So we're going to start out with this one right here. This one is Aster. And I don't necessarily think this is the best time to start Aster, but I'm giving it a shot because I feel like it might work. And we're going to just put a couple of seeds. And I always over seed flowers and herbs. And you never want to just start like one or two plants. You want to start a bunch cause they're going to look good as little groupings. Another Aster here called a Violet Aster. It's going to be so pretty. I started growing these just this year, Scabiosa. I never heard of them before until I was kind of just hunting through Haas's seed collection. And I saw them and I thought, Oh, those are pretty. Let's see if they grow down here. Cause I didn't really think they would cause nothing does like to grow down here. Um, and they did, they grew well. And they actually grew into summer. Um, but I don't think that they liked it very much. So I'm like, okay, well, if they grew that well for me, I bet you that they'll grow well for me in fall, spring, or, you know, even winter. All right. The last one we're going to do is Dahlias. I normally start my Dahlias in the spring, but I can't help myself. I am going to try some. I don't mind starting from seed, but the biggest difference with starting Dahlias from seed is the fact that, um, you don't know what you're getting. You don't know what color you're getting. You don't know what flower shape you're getting. Um, it's kind of like a luck of the draw. If you wanted to know the exact color and shape of your Dahlias, you're going to have to buy tubers. And the time to buy tubers is actually now, um, I strongly encourage you to do tubers during the fall instead of the spring. Um, they do work in the spring and I have grown them in the spring, but you know, they're, they're a little bit harder. The tubers have a hard time kind of settling in. All right. Our next ones we're going to do is herbs. We're going to do parsley and we're going to do Borage. I have a hard time with parsley this time of year. So I do overseed a lot in hopes that we can get one or two that will decide to be, we'll decide to kind of tough it out. The Borage is also a little bit soon. I usually start these in October. We're going to see what we can do. I have plenty. I even saved my own, so I'm not worried about the seed. I'm just going to start with two for these because like I said, I'm not really sure if they're going to love starting now. And I have plenty for later. The next set is Bee Balm and Sage Bee Balm is also called Lemon Mint. Lemon Mint is not actually mint. It is a Bee Balm or there's another name for it. They're super tiny seeds. See if I can get them all out. Okay. Super, super tiny. This is when that little dent comes into hand because I don't even know if I got enough seeds. Let's open the other one and see if we can get some more. There we go. Now I see seeds. There we go. This is a beautiful flower and it's like almost like a wild flower. It reminds me of it's so pretty. But it also has medicinal qualities. It helps with cold and flu season. You can take it as a tincture. And then the other thing is, is Bee Balm. It lives up to its name. It absolutely loves attracting bees. The bees adore it. You're going to have a ton of bees in your garden when you start growing Bee Balm and you can just kind of leave it in. It will last through the summer. Now some of these are a little bit bigger like the Scabiosa. So I'm going to go ahead and slightly cover those up. Not a lot, just like partially. The bigger the seed is, the harder it is to keep it moist. So that's how I do it. But I still let light in cause I still need it to see. Is there anybody else that's big? No, the rest of these Adalis are a little bit big. So I'm just going to like partially cover them. And then we're going to do a very light watering once again. Now we're going to keep these guys sitting right here underneath my fan, underneath the shade, out where they're protected from the rain. We're going to keep them here until they sprout. I want to be very, very clear. The minute that they sprout, any one of these trays, the minute that they sprout, they need to go out into the full sun area where you see my plants over across that little, the pool gate. On the other side of that, they need immediate full sun. If you let them sit here for even a day, they will get leggy and it's very hard to overcome that. So as you're walking by your space where you're keeping your seeds, you need to just look at them and see if you have any sprouts. If you have any sprouts, pick up that individual tray, not the whole thing, but the individual tray that has sprouted and take it out to your full sun location. If you're growing them inside, this is less of a concern. You can just keep the lights on them and keep it really close, like within an inch of the top of these trays. But since I start most of my seeds outside, that is really imperative and you will get leggy if you don't do that. So I know you guys have been patiently waiting. I'm going to put up on the screen here all of the varieties that we started today together and all the ones that I am growing that I am starting this month. These are all, some of these are tried and true, right? Some of these like the quarantine cucumber is one of the ones that I have been growing for years. The gray zucchini, also another one that I absolutely adore for a squash. The blue lake green beans pole, those have been growing, but there's some that are brand new, like the little mini pumpkins. I have tried them. I haven't always had the best success. But this way you can see exactly what I'm growing and you can kind of follow along. Maybe you can start some of these same seeds and we can grow them together and share our experience with them. We did a really great job with starting our seeds. And now we have one more task that is super important. Please forgive the messiness of my office right now. But the thing that we have to do is what's in here. That's right. It's our garlic. So these were garlic heads that I personally grew last year. That I think that they're the best ones of my batch. I have the Sicilian artichoke. I think this one like tasted the best of my last batch. And then the inchelum red, which is phenomenal. It's so consistent for me. Now I did not order these. Like I said, I grew these. These are my largest cloves or heads of cloves that I was able to grow and I've been saving them. And now they need to go in the fridge to start the vernalization process. Now, if you ordered, like I gave you guys a heads up of when Haas was doing their pre-orders, you're probably not going to get those until another few weeks. So no stress. You will receive them sometime this month from my understanding. That's how Haas usually does it. But obviously look at your specific order. And they're going to send them to you in a box, open it up, make sure there's no plastic in there. They usually send them in like netting with a little bit of like wood chips or something in there. It's like pine shavings. I think that's okay. All of that is fine. As long as it's breathable, cardboard, paper, those kinds of things, no plastic. We're going to take these and we're going to stick them in the refrigerator for six to 12 weeks. 12 weeks is better than six. This is my outside fridge. So we usually keep drinks and like snacks for our nieces and nephew. So I'm just going to place these guys right in here and I'm going to forget about them until like basically Thanksgiving comes. Once Thanksgiving comes somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I'm going to plant them. Last year, I did Thanksgiving because we had cold enough weather that it worked out. I do like to try to get these out when it is kind of cooler outside. I don't want to put them out when it's one of those, you know, November days, that's like 80 degrees. You're kind of like waiting for the right time to occur, which would be the time where the nighttime temperatures are like dipping down to the 40. In case you didn't know, garlic absolutely loves cold weather. It actually prefers it, which is why we're sticking it in the fridge to basically make it think that it's going through a very typical winter because we just don't have that level of consistent 40 degree temperatures for garlic. We get good temperatures, but we definitely pop in and out of the seventies and eighties throughout the winter. So garlic is not super crazy about that. And it gets confused and it thinks that it sprouted prematurely. It just gets really confused. So we stick it in there from now until basically Thanksgiving, when you get it to Thanksgiving. And then when Thanksgiving hits, then we start thinking about looking at the 10 day forecast and saying, Hey, should I put it in now? Should I wait a couple of weeks? Let me look for a good spot where we have some nice cool overcast, cooler conditions, and then we're going to plant it. And by then it will think that it just went through, you know, two to three months of winter. And now it's waking up and it's in the typical spring for us that's winter, but it's going to feel like it's in spring temperatures. And then it's going to sprout. So just to give you an idea of how that actually works with the garlic, they want to be cold. So you did a great job today. We got a lot of things done and I'm so excited for fall. If you want to check out my fall garden planning video, I'm going to put it up right now. So that way you can make sure that you get all your planning done and you know exactly where all of these little babies are going to live and all of their beds and some of the tools that I use. Thank you for hanging out with me. We got a lot done and I'm really excited about fall. Happy gardening.