I love that you can grow a whole meal with beans corn and squash---protein, bread and desert. And you don't have to do anything special to store them. After all the canning and preserving I've done, it's great to grow things that can just sit on the counter all winter, ready to use.

I love that the Four Sisters (corn, beans, squash & sunflowers) can be sown direct in the ground. I gardened for two decades before I grew these plants (Alaska was too cold) and once I had a bit of warm dirt, I was enchanted by the simplicity of it--make a hole, put in a seed. Not a little, has-to-be-thinned-on-your-hands-and-knees kind of seed, but a big fat seed you could see and hold between thumb and forefinger. Then up comes a big, fast-growing, plant that shoulders aside obstacles and grows. In addition to the simplicity and fun of it, my experience has been that direct-sown plants catch up with transplants, and may have a deeper, more drought-resistant root system. But if you need time to get the garden ready for them, or need to avoid weed or pest pressure on your seedlings, transplants are a good option too. It's mostly about what you enjoy doing, what you have space for, and when you have time available to plant. If you do start them in pots, 2 or 3 weeks ahead of transplant is plenty. Their roots need room, and more than a month in the pot will stunt them.

Soil preparation for New World crops is easy. These crops were perfected by people who used a digging stick and a hoe--no tractor, no plow, not even a spade. They don't need a perfect fine powdery seedbed. What they do need is organic matter. These crops originally were grown in forest clearings, in soil created by centuries of fallen leaves--full of organic matter and fungal mycelium. (This post has more on how New World crops differ from European crops.)

Once they're growing, summer crops vary more than you might think. They all need warm weather and are killed by frost, but they like different niches. The traditional ways of growing them recognized this. The Three Sisters of North America and the Milpa agriculture further south planted these crops together. This creates different niches. Instead of everything growing spread out with direct sun from all sides, there are different degrees of dappled shade, of wind exposure, of moisture, and so on. In the cloudy wet climate of Northern Europe, getting enough sun was a problem, and plants spread out in rows without any shade was a good idea.  In much of North America, our seasons are much more extreme. Unless you live in the fog belt all summer, try giving your plants some shelter from brutal sun and wind. Try letting them take care of each other.

Beans are renowned for their ability to enrich the soil. Colonies of special bacteria in their roots are able to use nitrogen from the air as a food for the plant. But as Will Bonsall has pointed out, the roots can't climb out of the soil to access that air--there has to be aeration in the soil. Compacted, hard, mineral soil doesn't have spaces for air. Organic matter provides the meeting place of soil, air, and water where roots can make optimum growth and nitrogen-fixing bacteria can thrive. In tillage systems, this is provided by tilling or spading-in compost, manure, shredded leaves, etc. In no-till systems, the tunnels made by earthworms, last year's roots, and other living things aerate the soil.
Once the beans are up and you can see all the little plants, hoe the bed well (but shallowly--the roots are near the surface) and mulch between the rows.  Weed competition decreases yields appreciably. I like a thick band of straw that prevents weeds from growing back and keeps bush beans from falling over as the pods get heavy. Even pole beans are sensitive to root competition and should be well mulched. This will also help keep the soil well-aerated, both by worms and by preventing sun and water from hardening the surface.

Bean plants enjoy the same temperatures humans do. They need warm soil and temperatures above freezing, but they overheat in temperatures above 85 degrees. When it gets too hot, you can see them swivel their leaves so that the sun strikes the leaf edges rather than their top surface. In hot-summer areas, it's important to choose the right varieties (Rattlesnake is particularly known for heat-tolerance. We don't carry the famed Pacific Northwest variety Blue Lake because it doesn't bloom or make fruit over 85 degrees.) You will get better yields during hot weather if you position beans where they get afternoon shade, or else use shadecloth. The type that casts 30% shade is best in most places. This website (which I have not affiliation with at all) has a handy charts for helping to choose the type and weight of shadecloth to use. I use 30% shade and prefer the more durable woven type. You don't need  fancy installation. I use bamboo stakes stuck into the ground at the corners of the bed and slanted strongly outward to counteract the weight of the cloth. A rubber band will secure the cloth to the pole.

Squash seems to love growing in a compost pile. This tells you three things: It likes a lot of nutrients. It isn't picky about how fine the soil or how "finished" the compost--it will grow in stuff that's downright chunky and stinky. And it sprouts best in warm, moist places.

When you're planting squash is the time to bury your kitchen waste, a few inches below the seeds or transplants. Then mulch well with straw, leaves, hay, or piles of weeds you just pulled. Use whatever you have that can keep the soil covered and provide a steady diet of organic matter. Vining squash can be grown up a trellis to save space, or they can be planted at the edge of the garden where they can run out over a rough, paved, or unirrigated area outside the growing beds. Do not let them grow so close to corn that they try to climb it--they'll pull the stalks down. You can let the vines run amid corn, sunflower, or amaranth stalks as long as you don't let the tendrils start trying to climb the stalks--just snip any clinging tendrils. Most summer squash has a bush habit, which is compact and saves space, but is not as vigorous or drought-resistant.

Speaking of which, you will probably see squash leaves wilt and droop a bit in hot sun. This is a water-saving measure. Rather than try to keep their big leaves turgid and flat which would take a huge amount of water and hydraulic pressure from the roots, they let them droop a bit to reduce the surface area and change their angle so they're not facing the sun directly. If the plants are truly thirsty, the soil will be dry 1" down, and the leaves won't perk up when the day cools. If the leaves look normal again once the sun is off of them, they don't need extra water. The rough, hairy surface of squash leaves and stems is another water-saving measure--it minimizes evaporation from the leaves by slowing the flow of air past the surface.

Corn is a giant grass, and needs water and fertility to fuel it's fast growth. It is traditional to give it a source of nitrogen in the furrow or hill. (A hill is just a group of seeds planted in a cluster rather than spread out in a row.) Manure, compost, alfalfa meal, fish hydrolysate, blood meal and many others have been used. However, the heirloom and open-source corns we carry are thrifty plants that were not bred for excessive inputs. Good garden soil with compost at planting time and again at tasseling should be fine in most situations. On the traditional farm or homestead, hoeing weeds out of the corn was a constant summer job. In the garden, you can often hoe once and then mulch to keep weeds down and root competition at a minimum. Another approach is to plant clover or beans as a nitrogen-fixing understory.

Corn uses sunlight in a way that's unusual in our gardens but more common in tropical plants, called C-4 photosynthesis. Plants that use C-4 photosynthesis have a different structure and chemistry that enables them to keep their pores closed during the heat of the day, minimizing water loss and enabling harvest large amounts of energy in sunny weather. This trait makes corn and sorghum extremely fast-growing and productive right through hot weather and midday sun.

In the traditional "Three Sisters" garden, corn provides a trellis and some light shade for pole beans, while the beans enrich the soil and squash shades out weeds. You can see them in the photo--no bare soil, beans growing up the taller corn; zinnias and sunflowers at the edges. Corn, in it's turn, turns direct sunlight into sugar, some of which it secretes from its roots to feed the others. To make this work, you need a tall variety of corn with stout stalks to support the weight. With the shorter varieties of corn, use bush or semi-runner beans. Many of the older heirloom "bush" beans are actually short vines, called semi-runners. They are perfect for a 5' corn plant. King City Pink Beans and many of Carol Deppe's beans are examples of the semi-runner trait. This post has more on Three Sisters gardens.

Sunflowers are unusual in that they can sprout in cold soil. So you can start them first. If you want primarily flowers, make two or three plantings, say in April, May, and June. You can also prolong bloom by cutting off the flowerheads when the petals drop. Of course if you want seed, you need to leave them to mature. In order to beat the birds to the seeds, harvest the minute the seeds are hard and loose in the head, or cover them with bags to foil seed-loving birds. Sunflowers make just as good a scaffold for pole beans as corn does. Or for a really spectacular planting, try sowing morning glories at the base of the sunflower stalks once they are about a foot tall. This post has more on sunflowers.

Tomatoes are the quintessential summer crop, so it's easy to think they can soak up all the sun there is, and just pump out more and better harvests. Certainly that's the idea behind pruning and trellising them. If you live in a cloudy climate that's absolutely true. In much of the West, however (and increasingly elsewhere) they need all their leaves to shade the fruit from sun scald. And may need additional shade during hot spells. Try watching them and the forecast. In high heat, they often drop their blossoms because they are too stressed to make fruit. You can prevent blossom drop by giving shade when the forecast is for temps over 90.

Above 90 degrees, these plants shut down. So give them a break (and give yourself more consistent harvests.) Have shade cloth handy. If you know they will need a little shade break in every afternoon, you can position them so they get it. Try planting on the east side of a corn block. They'll get that important morning sun to get them making sugars and growth, then a break when heat gets high in the afternoon. Or maybe there's a spot where trees cast some afternoon shade. Use it. Do you have a patio or porch with morning sun and a few hours of shade at midday? If you aren't sure of the best position, put one or two plants in each of your possible sites and see which works best. Mulch is even more important with tomatoes than with other crops because fluctuating soil moisture causes cracking and blossom end rot in the fruit.

Where I live (cold springs, heavy soil, bad sun scald) peppers do best in 3 to 5 gallon pots. The plant in the photo at left is in a pot with a mulch of small stones to preserve soil moisture and retain heat into the night.  Plants in pots warm up fast in spring, can move to a spot with afternoon shade in hot spells, get full sun when the season cools off, and move to the greenhouse, porch, or indoors to ripen in fall.

Consider pairing peppers with bush beans, basil, or other bushy companion to give shade from the side, where the hanging peppers are vulnerable to scald.  Sun from directly above seems to be more to their liking. I think they evolved down in arroyos, beside little creeks, and like to have sun straight down on their canopy but not under it. Just a guess, but that's what works for me. In traditional milpa plantings, they are in among taller plants like corn, or surrounded by beans, or under the dappled shade of tomatillos. I've seen farmers bend taller plants to cast a light shade right over their peppers. It keeps the fruits safe from scald and the plants to flowering and fruiting through hot spells. 

The traditional first plantings of spring are spinach, peas, lettuce, and greens. What gardeners love about them is that they grow very fast in spring, are ready to eat in just over a month, and taste wonderful.

In the past, these crops were often the first taste of something fresh after a winter of dried and salted foods. They are still a spring treat and a health boost today. Their juicy crispness is the outward sign of the vitamins, fiber, hydrating gels, anti-oxidants, and myriad other compounds that make us feel better. 

All of these plants need to grow quickly before heat sets in, so they need adequate moisture and fertility. However, they also need enough warmth to fuel growth, and good drainage. Oak trees leaf out when the soil and air temperatures are right for peas and greens, so watch the trees in addition to the calendar.

Peas, spinach, and lettuce enjoy a less acid soil(pH 6.5 to 7.) Traditional practice has been to dig the bed over and incorporate manure, compost,or other sources of organic matter, along with some wood ash or lime. No-dig methods instead use a layer of compost on top of the soil, into which the seeds or transplants are planted. (If the soil is very acid, ash or limestone can be spread as well.) If soil is unseasonably soggy, and too wet to dig or to plant into, I suggest either making your first plantings in containers, or dumping compost/potting mix, on top of the ground and planting into that.

The fastest-growing salad of all is a little California native called Miner's Lettuce. It grows wild in my garden under a big black walnut tree. It's rare to find an edible plant that is both shade-tolerant and tolerant of the poisons secreted into the soil by walnut trees. Amazingly, it has a very mild flavor and juicy texture that has made it a favorite of chefs. It is always my first harvest of the year.

Spinach loves cool weather and and needs quite a bit of moisture to start. Indeed, if your soil is dry, I suggest soaking the seeds for an hour or two. It should be planted now for a spring crop, and again in the fall, as it is adapted not only to cool weather, but to short days. The longer days of summer will make it bolt and taste strong.

Lettuce is the simplest of all to plant and use. A fast-growing, cold-tolerant variety like Emerald Fan, Bronze Arrow, or Hungarian Pink Winter gives you salads very quickly, with the tender texture that is the hallmark of spring. Like most greens, it needs to have space to develop without check. If you will not be able or willing to get down and thin your lettuce, consider transplants. It's easier to thin little pots or trays at table height, and they can go into the ground with room to grow.

Peas are the only one of the bunch that takes two months to crop instead of one. But the new practice of harvesting pea shoots means that even peas can be giving you a harvest quickly. Whether for shoots or pods, peas are easy but not terribly vigorous, so it's good to know their quirks. In cool spring weather, they should be planted more shallowly than other legumes, about 1/2 inch deep. (Late summer plantings should be deeper to take advantage of moisture further down.) They can be transplanted with care when very young, if conditions outside are too wet, windy, cold, or unready, And they need support.

Peas are climbing vines, and don't do well sprawling on the ground. Even very short "bush" varieties are vines, and will not stand up on their own. Short varieties can do well in tomato cages, while taller sorts need a trellis or fence. You should view the heights in seed listings as possibilities, not facts. Cooler weather means the vines will keep growing, while hot or very cold weather will stunt them. Last year's cool spring meant that my Cascadias, normally 4' tall, grew to 8 feet.

Further, they climb in a special way, which needs the right support. Beans, morning glories, and some other vines grow by twining; they'll go round and round a pole in a spiral. Peas will not. Vertical supports are almost useless to them--they need a ladder. They make hand-like twigs called tendrils that grab onto supports as they go. For peas, you need to provide support with horizontal wires, woven branches, bushy twigs, or other horizontal or diagonal handholds a foot or less apart. Pig wire or concrete reinforcing wire works well. Posts with sisal or hemp twine are great; you can cut the twine and compost the entire mass, twine and all.

The turnip/mustard tribe, and has flavors that range from mild to fiery. I like Mizuna and Mizpoona Salad Select for early salads. The fiery mustards like Green Wave, and Dragon Tongue are tamed with cooking, gaining rich complex flavors that are traditional complements to cheese or pork. Carol Deppe once made a quick, dense planting of Green Wave Mustard in a layer of compost spread on her concrete driveway. The planting was cut & processed all at once for freezing. (Detailed in The Tao of Vegetable Gardening.) It would not be an option for long-term or repeated harvest, and needs cool, damp weather. But it put the compost to work until she was able to use it in the garden, and gave a huge crop that stocked the freezer. It shows that given moisture and fertility, these fast growers can make a lot of food in a small amount of time and space.
See the possibilities here.

This week, I'd like to spotlight tips for two specific vegetables that you may be starting now--tomatoes, and the cabbage/broccoli family. (AKA cole crops--as in coleslaw.) These are probably the most popular vegetables for starting indoors for transplant later.

That word "transplant" is one of their key similarities. Both tomato and cabbage/broccoli seedlings have many small, flexible, fibrous roots. Their root systems increase by making more and more small roots, which form a  mat around the plant, rather than the existing roots getting larger and deeper. What's more, new roots can sprout from any stem that is touching the ground, not just from the original root. This is a key characteristic for plants that cope well with disturbance. In nature, disturbance might come from erosion, flooding, landslides, or animal activity.

In the garden, a prime disturbance is transplanting. Tomatoes and cabbages often show increased growth when transplanted, because their roots are stimulated to new growth by disturbance. Setting the seedlings a bit deeper at transplant gives the roots more soil to colonize, and takes advantage of their ability to make roots from the stem (adventitious roots.) Other plants with different root types resent transplanting. I have written about the various root types HERE

Even if temperatures are warm enough to start seeds of these vegetables outside, you save space, water, and nutrients by starting them in containers (pots, flats, module trays, etc) or in a nursery bed. It also gives you more time to prepare their final destination in the garden.

As I write, snow is falling and my road is closed. That brings to mind another factor in seedling success--heat.

The plants themselves differ widely in hardiness--a tomato plant can't take any frost at all. The seeds need soil to be at least 60 degrees for sprouting, and sprout fastest at 85 degrees. Given that moist soil will be about 10 degrees cooler than the air, heat mats do improve germination, even in the house. Their relative, peppers, need even more heat and will be stunted for months if they experience too much cold as seedlings.

Kale and cabbage are mainstays of the winter garden, famous for frost-hardiness. However, if you've ever let one go to seed, you might have noticed that after overwintering, they bloom in spring and the seed matures in midsummer. Their seeds fall onto warm soil. Biennial kale and cabbage need a minimum of 55 degrees for sprouting, and sprout fastest at around 85 degrees--just like tomatoes.

Broccoli is the same species as kale, but bred into an annual form that sprouts and blooms all in one season.  It will germinate in cooler soil--around 45 degrees--than it's biennial relatives.

Many annuals from Asian and Mediterranean regions are better adapted to cold soil, because in their homelands, they needed to grow and finish before the soil dried up in summer. Peas, lettuce, Asian greens, favas, turnips, endive, and cima di rapa sprout best and are tastiest in cool weather. Started in modules or flats, you can be eating them in just over a month in spring weather, and even faster if you start some in a tub in a window indoors, where you can clip young leaves as they form.

Carol Deppe developed her new Goldini II zucchini to be used both as a regular summer squash and as a dried winter staple. She had noticed that most modern summer squash didn't taste good when she dried them in her dehydrator. She knew, however, that Native American peoples dried slices of squash as a light, portable, winter food. So she started breeding with tastier, larger (less labor in cutting and picking) and more versatile zucchini in mind. Here are her suggestions on how to use her new squash for drying:



"Most zucchinis have a bland flavor when dried. Goldini Zucchini II has a unique spectacular flavor quite different from the raw or cooked squash or anything else. Prime size for drying is about 0.8 lbs to 3 lbs. The dry squash slices or powder can make unique and delicious soups and stews. Slice 3/8” thick for slices that take about 45” to reconstitute boiling water or in a soup or stew. Slice 1/8” thick for vegetable chips to use as dippers. Slicing in a salad shooter gives very thin small slices that reconstitute and cook in about 5” in a soup or stew. For larger squash with more mature seeds, halve and remove seeds before slicing and drying. Dry in a dehydrator at 95 F, an oven on low, in the sun, or on seed racks in the sun. You can grind the dried slices in a coffee grinder to make a powder that is a good base for instant soups and stews. Store dry squash in air-tight containers. See The Resilient Gardener for complete information on making and using dry summer squash slices as a long-storing staple."

I don't sell tools or books, and I don't get any kickbacks from anyone for my recommendations. I'm just an opinionated gardener with a few suggestions.

Not all tools are designed as such. Our most-used tool is probably a simple bedsheet. I pick them up at the thrift store, and we use them in a zillion ways. Need some shade for your seedlings? Bedsheet on sticks does the trick. Weeding? Spread out a sheet and throw the weeds on it instead of having to carry a bucket. Hauling brush to the burn pile or straw to the compost? Fill a bedsheet with the load and gather up the corners for a big carrying sack that dumps easily. Working next to a patio or sidewalk? Protect it from mud with a sheet. Kids playing with blocks or legos and then don't pick them up? Solve that with a bedsheet too--lay it down before they start, then just gather up the corners instead of dozens of pieces. Cleaning seeds, sorting your recyclables, etc etc etc.......sheets make it easy. Another standby is cardboard in all sizes. And when weeds get out of hand, a black tarp is often the solution.

I think bamboo poles in every size from 4' to 10' are a great investment. We use them constantly, for trellis, stakes, tripods, shadecloth, and so on.

The short-handled tools are the ones I often reach for first. They are like a more powerful hand, and good ones become friends. These are hard to find in stores, and make great gifts. Our favorite supplier is Shovel and Hoe. They use the tools themselves, have a large selection, and are very helpful.

• a serrated hand sickle makes short work of brambles, weeds, grass, and even small branches. We use this all the time. You can also use it to cut off weeds at ground level in no-till beds.   https://www.shovelandhoe.com/Japanese_Garden_Knives_Sickles_s/92.htm
• a hand weeder. My favorite is the 18" Negiri gama hoe. I also use this for opening a furrow for sowing. Shovel and Hoe also has a shorter negiri hoe with a comfy grip in right and left hand versions. There are many other weeders from Japan, Korea, and Europe as well.
• a heavy-duty hand hoe. We love the cuttlefish hoe for attacking woody weeds and even for transplanting. www.shovelandhoe.com/Cuttle_Fish_Hoe_P_40_p/921.htm
• Felco pruning shears are standard in the vineyard, orchard, and farming worlds.
• ARS scissors are wonderful for finer work and harvesting

We manage the garden with no-dig, no-till methods, but do a fair amount of tree planting, compost turning, terracing, weeding & weed cutting, leveling, building, and other tasks that require digging or cultivation tools. The right tool can make the job fast and easy.

The long-handled tools we use most are:

• a regular pointed spade, kept sharp, for digging holes or trenches
• a flat-fronted shovel for moving gravel, sand, loose soil, manure, etc
• a manure fork or hayfork for moving straw, hay, and even cardboard
• a forged digging fork (Bulldog or Spear & Jackson tools are truly forged and really worth the money) for transplanting large plants, removing deep weeds, etc
• a steel garden rake for leveling, smoothing, and removing stones or debris
• a leaf rake of springy metal or bamboo
• a mattock for removing woody weeds, and digging among rocks or tree roots
• a stirrup or scuffle hoe for weeding
• a collinear hoe, razor hoe, diamond hoe, wire weeder, or other very thin light hoe for weeding among plants. Johnny's Selected Seeds carries a good line of these, designed by farmer Elliot Coleman. Shovel and Hoe has a long-handled Korean weeder hoe that looks good. You won't usually find these at the hardware store. The standard American hoe that you will find there is at the wrong angle for weeding. It's great, however for moving soil around, like when mixing a pile of potting soil or amendments, or when you are creating new beds.

Books are important tools. 

If you are just learning to garden, there are many books out there, but for starting out these days, I would go no-dig from the start and avoid a lot of weed problems. If you are on heavy clay, or excavated subsoil (as in subdivisions where the topsoil was stripped off when grading the site,) you may want to till once, after getting a soil test, to incorporate amendments and compost. 

In the past decade, there has been a major shift in garden practices, based new understandings of soil biology and the soil food web. This recent research confirmed the intuition of no-dig gardeners that disturbing the soil kills the organisms that feed our plants.

How-To books for beginning to advanced gardeners:
An early pioneer of No-Dig gardening, Charles Dowding has written many books, culminating in the recent No Dig, which makes it easy and accessible. While he gardens in England, his methods are proven in many climates worldwide. I recommend his website and YouTube channel as well. It is simple, attractive, low-key, and gives you the benefit of his decades of experience, which has enabled him to eliminate all the non-essentials. Another online resource is Huw Richards' YouTube channel. Huw is in his twenties,  grew up doing organic gardening, and is now working at integrating no-dig and permaculture into a raised-bed home garden. The videos are beautifully shot and very simple. While the climate of the UK is not like mine, I find that American home garden YouTubers are mostly too frenetic, too dogmatic, and too fixated on hacks and tricks. One exception is Epic Gardening (in San Diego), a good resource for the beginning or intermediate urban farmer.

The Living Soil Handbook, recently published by farmer Jesse Frost, is the most accessible, simple, and practical book on no-dig that I've found from a US author. It is based on his farm, so he is doing lots of beds full-time, but with hand tools, not tractors. His No-Till Growers YouTube channel and No-Till Market Garden podcast have been pivotal in the rapid exchange of ideas that have transformed small farms and gardens recently. There are many good books and videos from farmers who are experimenting with this, and the No-Till Growers channel is a good way to locate them. While the British YouTube channels usually feature soft music and beautiful gardens, Jesse is punk/jazz on a Kentucky farm, with acerbic humor and plenty of economic realities. Both styles are fun and helpful.

The Living Soil Handbook is a guide to doing it. If you want to learn more about the critters in the soil that make the soil food web work, check out Teaming with Microbes, by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis.

Korean Natural Farming, and it's simplified version, JADAM. are also transforming the garden/farm world with techniques for increasing fertility with locally available microorganisms for free or cheap. Nigel Palmer has written a guide to locating and using local microorganisms, The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments, from Chelsea Green Publishers. There are numerous how-to videos online from Nigel, Huw Richards, Chris Trump, and others. I've posted simple recipes here.

My favorites for the intermediate and advanced gardener:
My favorite contemporary garden authors are Carol Deppe and Will Bonsall. For a blend of humor, deep experience, thoughtful innovation, and true vision, they are unequaled. Not that we always agree. I don't use the same irrigation method as Carol, and am not vegan like Will. Neither is no-dig like me. But their books are endlessly inspiring, informative, and useful. Good gardeners don't all garden alike, but they are all observant, flexible, and learn from experience.

Carol's books The Resilient Gardener and The Tao of Vegetable Gardening  are engaging, humorous, practical, thought-provoking, and absolutely unique. She has been a pioneer of breeding and growing vegetables so that ordinary people can feed themselves through good times and bad. And she gives a lot of thought to what bad times might involve, from a simple back injury to flood, earthquake or total electrical failure. Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties is exactly what it says, but much more interesting and inspiring than you might think.

Will's book is Will Bonsall's Essential Guide to Radical, Self-Reliant Gardening. He has thought deeply during his decades on a Maine farm, and I learned a lot from his well-thought-out methods of composting, weed control., and crop selection. He has an excellent introduction to seed saving. The chapters on companion planting and on using woodchip, grass, and leaves are especially useful. 

Finally, I highly recommend The Medicinal Herb Grower, by Richo Cech. It is a humorous but deeply observed and deeply-felt book on how to have a green thumb, that is, how to understand what plants need and want from you. 

Garden Classics that are especially important to me:
I learned to garden in the early 80's by reading John Seymour's classic The Self-Sufficient Gardener. His vision of a self-reliant subsistence homestead is still compelling, and his lore on individual vegetables is detailed and includes many perennials.  In that respect, he is still fairly unique, with instructions for everything from growing Good King Henry and rhubarb to making parsnip wine and keeping chickens. His climate was similar to the Pacific Northwest, but with much colder summers. (The British climate is warming rapidly, and is no longer so different from ours.) He was publishing around the time (1970's) that rows were giving way to permanent beds in home gardens, under the influence of John Jeavons, Alan Chadwick, and Chinese garden masters. While I no longer dig the beds, I still find Seymour's work invaluable because it was embedded in an entire way of life that sustained generations of cottagers in a largely cashless economy.

Eliot Coleman's seminal book The Four Season Harvest, as well as his later books, have been very influential--he is the father of modern winter farming in hoop houses and high tunnels. His daughter Clara now produces the Winter Growers Podcast.

I still learn lots about how to use form and color to make beautiful garden pictures by rereading Gertrude Jekyll's classics, especially Wood and Garden.  Another great book for training your eye is Color in your Garden, by Penelope Hobhouse.  For integrating flowers and design into a food-growing space, get your local library or used book store to find a copy of Joy Larkcom's Creative Vegetable Gardening. The gorgeous photos in this book are matched (for once) by the advice of a shrewd and experienced gardener.

​Our gardens are part of the nation's agriculture, if a small part. And books that articulate a real vision for the future of agriculture are precious. Wendell Berry has long been an inspiration. Lately, Michael Foley's book, Farming for the Long Haul has expanded and updated Berry's vision with a world-wide view of the possibilities that we could still use, but modern agriculture has forgotten. It is exciting to read about solutions instead of just problems!

Fall harvests are different from ongoing summer harvesting. The goal is to bring in everything that's usable, before damp and cold ruin them. Here are some tricks I've learned to prolong the harvest, improve quality, and preserve things longer in good condition. You'll find tips for greens, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs.

Tomatoes are many folks' first concern. You can help keep them going longer by removing dead or yellowing leaves, providing good air circulation (by pulling out less-productive plants if need be) and covering them if overnight frosts are predicted. You can also ripen fruit faster by cutting the plants back. If you clip off  the tips of the vine that have new flowers and very immature (dark green, undersized) tomatoes, the plant can put all of its energy into ripening those that have a real chance of being usable.

However, they won't go forever, and if you are seeing cracking, mold, soft spots, frost damage, or brown stems, it's time to call it quits on the season. If a heavy rain is forecast, that is another cue to harvest. When the plants get a lot of water all at once, they take it up so fast that it expands the fruit, making them crack, spoil faster, and lose flavor. You will want to harvest all usable fruit, then cut the plant at ground level and compost it.  (or cut branches off and take them under cover for picking and sorting.) As you pick, sort the tomatoes into 3 boxes or pails:

1. Fruit with some red color that are on their way to softening for the table. Use these over the next week or two. They can ripen on the kitchen counter.
2. Fruit with a pale green color and normal size, with or without some beginnings of red. These will ripen indoors over time if you have the space. (I put them on newspaper or in cardboard flats under the kitchen table.) If you don't have space to lay them in a single layer somewhere, they can be canned or frozen as green sauce/salsa/chutney, or fried, or used as a salad ingredient. In some parts of Italy, only green tomatoes are used in salad; red ones are cooked.
3. Dark green fruit. These will not ripen indoors; they'll just rot. You can use them as-is for pickles or chutney. Or you can compost them. (Or feed them to animals)

Use tomatoes promptly as they ripen--no point in letting them get funky and have to throw them out. If there are more than you can use fresh, but not enough to can or process--or if you don't have time now--cook them in the oven, stovetop, or microwave, and throw them in the freezer to deal with later. Or grill them, if you have the barbecue fired up. If you are really overwhelmed and need to get your harvest safe before you lose it, you can just put tomatoes straight into the freezer in bags. They will take up more room than if you'd cooked them somehow, but they'll be totally usable. Making that big batch of salsa or sauce might be a more attractive prospect in January than it is now.

Unripe tomatoes should be stored longer-term at cool room temperature; the floor or a pantry or back room is good. The best way I know of to ripen and store tomatoes is to use box flats--the cardboard trays that result when stores cut boxes of drinks or canned goods for display. Some people call them beer flats; any store that handles beer or soft drinks will have them if you can get them before they are put in compactor. Whatever container you use, the tomatoes should be in a single layer, and it saves a lot of time in the end if you arrange them from most ripe to least ripe in the box, shelf, floor, or whatever. Check them every few days, and remove both the usable ones and those that are leaking, moldy, or dubious in any way.

Peppers are another summer crop that can't go long in cold wet fall conditions. There are several great ways to store and use them. Hot peppers are more adaptable, faster-ripening, and less susceptible to mold, so keep a close eye on sweet peppers and cook them soonest.
I like to keep some pepper plants in pots, especially if they need a long season or are very susceptible to sunscald. Their small root systems adapt well to a large pot,  and they prefer a light soil, so potting mix works well for them. I can move the containers so that they get midday shade when the danger of sunscald is great, and full sun during the early and late parts of the season

• If you have a greenhouse or sunny window, potted peppers will be happy indoors and continue ripening fruit. I have some Criolla Sella plants that I overwinter in my unheated greenhouse. They are a different, more hardy species than other peppers. But even tropical peppers can overwinter in the house.
• Plants or branches can be cut and hung up indoors. Usually a lot of fruit that is full-sized but green can be ripened this way.
• Fruits with sunscald or any other damage should be used or frozen right away.
• Unless you live in a very very dry climate, don't attempt to dry peppers in ristras (strings.) Instead, spread them out with plenty of airflow in a dry place. They dry best if you clip off the green stem and cap with kitchen scissors and spread them on racks with air all around. Use a fan if needed, or a dehydrator if the weather is moist.
• An easy condiment is pepper vinegar: chop hot peppers, salt them, and put into a jar, then fill it with vinegar. Keep in the fridge for long storage. Keeps pretty well on the table or kitchen counter too.
• My recipe for fermented peppers or hot sauce is HERE.
• Sweet peppers or fleshy hot peppers that you don't want to dry are easy to prepare for freezing. Either blanch them (immerse in boiling water) or fry them (this gives the best flavor) and freeze.
• Pickled peppers can be either long-brined or vinegar-based. Recipes abound.

Summer squash are a feast-or-famine kind of thing. Hyper-abundant during the season, then gone.
You may eke out a few extra harvests or get past a freak early frost by covering the plants with bedsheets. Then when you have a good day for harvest and frost is in the forecast, take everything you can and compost the plants.
Every part of the plant is edible. So if you're really trying to save money or you are short on other foods, you can cook (and freeze afterwards, if desired) the young foliage and growing tips. They have a pleasant mild flavor and lose their prickles when cooked.

• Like all squash, they don't freeze well as a raw vegetable. But cooked squash dishes can be frozen. When they're thawed and reheated, you'd never know they'd been frozen. Solve two harvest problems at once by cooking tomatoes and zucchini together (preferably with olive oil and basil) and freezing in containers. You will be so glad to be able to thaw out some pure summer next January!
• Squash blossoms are a delicacy in both Mexican and Italian cookery. You can harvest the male flowers all summer, but at the end of the season, pick every flower you can and dry or freeze them. The petals are the edible part; tear them off and discard the base and hard parts. They are traditionally stuffed and fried, but I generally just add them to soup, quesadillas, or pasta sauce. They make an outstanding pasta sauce just cooked in butter with a few green onions or chives.
• Most people don't realize that zucchini keep better on the kitchen counter or in a bowl on the table--or a box on the shelf--than in the fridge. Their big enemy is moisture and mold. Use the smallest first. You can harvest them all the way down to thumb size. Large ones last longest; they can last up to 2 months, but aren't as tasty as the little ones.
  
• Summer squash can be dehydrated, making a lightweight, low-volume product that can be stored in jars in the cupboard. This is how Native American tribes who migrated over the course of the year were able to store and use their squash.
  

Winter Squash will store for months and months indoors, but it can't stand any frost. As the vines start to look yellow and wilty in the fall, get ready for harvest. You might want to cut back on water so the ground is not wet and the fruit starts to harden more. You can also cut the vines so that no new squash fruits are formed. Flowers and immature fruits are both edible and delicious--the very young fruits are just like summer squash. If these are removed, the plant's energy will all go into sweeter, longer-storing mature fruit.

1. Watch the forecast and your own sense of the weather. If frost threatens, it's time to harvest--even if you have to do it by flashlight. Squash that has been frosted will get rotten spots and spoil.
2. Harvested squash should go under cover where it will stay dry and safe from frost. Heavy dew or rain can promote rot. Don't wash them, but wipe off any mud and bring it into a warm place to cure.
   
3. Sort the squash by maturity: a fully-mature squash will have a brown, hard or corky stem, not a green soft one.  The skin or rind of the squash will be too hard to pierce with a fingernail. These will last 3-9 months if cured properly. Use small squash with soft skins within a couple of weeks, cooked like summer squash. Fruit that is more mature but not fully ripe should be used within a month.
   

Curing is the step that helps the squash store longer at room temperature, and fully develops the sugars that give great flavor. To cure, the fruit needs a dry warm place with good air circulation for at least a week. Ideal curing temperature is 80 to 85 degrees. If daytime temperatures are still warm, you can use any dry airy place. Our nights are cold and dewfall is heavy, so I bring them inside and put them in the loft. After curing, you can store squash anywhere that is dry (humidity below 85%) and not freezing--55-60 degrees is ideal, but I just put them under the bed or on the floor somewhere. Milk crates work well to store squash, allowing them to be contained and compact but still airy.

Start eating delicata and acorn squash first; they are good from harvest until January. Butternut (moschata) and maxima squashes keep developing their flavor until November, and usually store in good condition into the spring.

Herbs vary a lot in how they can best be stored, or even if they need to be.

• Most herbs dry well, but the amount of flavor that is retained in the dried product will vary depending on the plant. How you dry them makes a big difference as well. They should not be dried in the sun, which will vaporize the flavors. They should be in the shade and indoors, unless your climate is extremely dry. Nighttime moisture will cause the herbs to turn black and lose flavor. You can pack most herbs very loosely in a paper bag and hang that, or you can make them into bunches no more than an inch thick where they are tied together. Rubber bands and coathangers work well to hang herbs for drying. When they are crispy-dry, take them down and store in airtight jars.
  
• Basil loves heat and is daylength-sensitive, so it wants a summer garden, not a winter windowsill. The flavors are oil-soluble, so your best bet is to just make pesto and freeze that. Or heat the leaves in oil and then freeze. Or coat the leaves in salt and cover with oil, then keep in the fridge. Or see the infused oil recipe under Rosemary, below. You can dry it, but will lose a lot of the flavor.
• Parsley is very cold-hardy and will stand through the winter in most climates. It also dries well. Or will grow indoors in winter.
• Sage and Thyme stand outdoors all winter, but lose quality and will not make new leaves. They dry well for winter use.
• Rosemary grows outdoors in zones 7 and above. People try bringing it indoors in colder climates, seldom successfully. Try this: clip a bunch of twigs to the same length and pack them into a jar. Fill it with oil and infuse for a week or two. Drain off the oil and discard the herb, as well as any water in the bottom. The oil will give the flavor of rosemary without the needle-like leaves. It keeps well in the cupboard.
• Dill is easily dried or used to infuse vinegar, with or without some garlic and hot pepper. Great for salad dressing.
• Cilantro loses its flavor when dried. It is quite cold-hardy, and can be grown outside or on a windowsill and clipped as needed.

Greens are hardier than summer crops, and don't need to be all taken in at once, unless deep, deep cold is expected. But the way you manage and harvest greens can make the difference between a slug-ridden, unpalatable crop and one you can use and enjoy all winter.
Of course, cabbage is supposed to make a head for harvest all at once. But most leafy greens can be managed so that each plant can be "cut and come again." Collards, kale, chard, and Asian greens like Tatsoi do well with this style of harvest.

Lettuce and Salad Greens:
Most commercial operations get a cut or two of baby greens and then replant. But with the right kind of harvest, yours can keep growing and giving good harvests for several months. The photos above show how.

• Rather than harvesting whole heads, harvest the outermost leaves weekly. This prolongs the life of the plant in several ways. Not only does it mean you harvest bit-by-bit, but it actually changes the life cycle of the plant to keep it in more vigorous growth. The plant responds to this "renewal pruning" by growing faster, and staying longer in its vegetative, or "teen-age" stage, when the leaves are juicier and sweeter.
• Commercial salad growers clip the plants with a sort of mower. But you will get better quality and many more harvests per plant if you pick leaves by hand instead of cutting.
• Grasp the leaf you want to harvest at the very base, pinch, and twist. The leaves will be bigger and stay fresh longer, while the plant will grow better without cut surfaces that host rot.
• Fastest regrowth occurs when you leave 6 to 8 leaves in the center of the plant. This gives it enough leaf surface to photosynthesize and the hormonal cue to grow faster. Commercial operations that cut a bed of greens straight across often get only 1-3 cuttings, while hand harvest leaving the center leaves can give you 12 or more harvests per plant.
• If very severe weather threatens and you need to harvest a really large amount of greens at once, here are some options: Lettuce and salad greens can be kept as whole heads wrapped in damp cloth in a box in a cool place. They will keep for about a week, possibly two, depending on temperature and the variety. Brassicas, including all the cabbage, radish, Asian greens, mustard, kale tribe, will keep longer than lettuce with that treatment. They can all be turned into fermented products for longer storage by salting into (non-metallic) buckets or jars. For freezing, just dip into boiling water till wilted, bag, and freeze.
• Make sure to remove and compost any yellow or pest-eaten outer leaves. Slugs primarily target old moribund leaves, so keeping plants tidy will prolong their life and vigor. This is true of every plant you grow. Whether it's lettuce, rhubarb, or tomatoes, removing yellowed leaves or those that are down in the mud will cut down on pest problems and keep your plants healthier.

One reason gardeners often have too much zucchini, not enough, carrots, and bitter lettuce is that they forget to plan for how long each crop will last.
Some plants are only harvested once; carrots just give the one root for example. Lettuce can be stretched to several harvests if you cut leaf-by-leaf rather than the whole head, but the plants will start to get tough and bitter as they bolt to seed. To have good quality over a long period, you need to have new ones coming along at the same time your first ones are maturing. This is called succession-sowing. If you wait to replant until after you've harvested, it's too late.

For crops like this, you need to leave some empty space when you first plant, so there will be room for the second wave. You'll need more seeds for this type of plant than for longer-lasting ones.
Root crops, and many leaf crops fall into this category, along with bush beans and determinate (bush type) tomatoes.

Other plants give many pickings. Some go all summer. One indicator of long harvest is a vining habit. For example, pole beans produce all season, while bush beans give a big harvest and quit. Determinate, or bush, tomatoes cover themselves with fruit and then stop. Indeterminate, vining tomatoes go on and on, bunch by bunch.

Below is a guide to which plants need replanting and which ones don't.

Plants that need succession-sowing: These will need to be planted every 2 weeks for a continuous supply.
Sow summer crops in succession through June.
Sow hardy crops* again starting in mid-to-late July for fall and winter harvests.

*arugula, bush beans, *beets, *heading broccoli, *cabbage, *carrots, burdock, *chicory and endive, corn, fennel, *lettuce, *Asian greens, *radishes, *spinach, sunflowers, determinate tomato, *turnips.

These can produce most of the summer from one planting: If you season is very long and hot, you may want to plant a second wave or a later variety to keep up quality and yield, but each plant will be picked over and over and produce many harvests.
Starred * plants are often planted in July for a fall crop.
Pole beans, *sprouting broccoli, chard, *collards, cucumber, eggplant, *kale, melon, okra, peas (replant once) summer squash (zucchini), indeterminate tomato.

These usually make one large crop, so they are planted once, (or twice for a longer harvest period.) Crops that are normally succession-sown  can be handled in this way if they are meant primarily for storage--freezing, canning, drying, or fermenting. In garden planning, these will usually be succeeded by a different crop or a cover crop. For example, when corn is harvested, there will be no time for more corn to mature; the space will be planted to a winter cover crop or a fall vegetable.
Starred crops take a long time to mature but are winter-hardy and can be used slowly out of the garden over the winter, as they hold a long time in cold weather.
Dry beans, corn, winter squash, onions, *leeks, *parsnips, *storage beets, *winter cabbage, *rutabagas, grains

The necessities for any garden are water, nutrients, air, heat, and light. These lead to biological activity which leads to plant growth. In wet or flooded conditions, the excess water crowds out air in the soil, leading to rot and stagnant soil.
In addition, wet soil is constantly being cooled as water evaporates off the surface. This may not be a problem in warm weather. In spring and in the north, it is a major obstacle.

The big challenges are to replace stagnant, anaerobic soil conditions with aerobic, active ones, and possibly to warm the soil cooled by evaporation.

1. If soil is utterly sodden, trying to work it or even step on it is problematic. If you need to get a garden going and don't have time for things to drain or dry, consider using containers to get started. Or dump a pile of potting mix, & compost on top of the soil and plant in that.
2. Air is critical but you don't want to damage the soil structure by digging. Digging too-wet soil ruins it for a year or more. (I know; I've done it.) Start by poking holes as you would to aerate a lawn. Pull aside any mulch or covering. If there are plants in place, leave some there, with air space around them, to draw moisture up and out. You don't want a dense canopy preventing evaporation, but even a dead plant here and there can act as a wick to evaporate more water out, if there is good air circulation all around.
   
3. When you can't dig yet, earthworms can. You don't want to cover the whole bed, but a stripe of compost or a few blobs of compost, dead leaves, woodland duff  or even shredded paper or cardboard dotted down the bed can jump-start aeration.
   
4. If the problem is likely to be ongoing, go with high narrow beds or rows. University of Alaska researchers found that 18-24" is the maximum width for good drainage and biological activity in wet, cool environments. Make rows that are 8-12" high and 18" or less wide for very cool areas or very wet soil.
   
5. As you are planning those rows and plantings, remember to space plants more widely than is recommended. You don't want them crowded together, because it reduces air circulation. Good circulation is your first defense against plant diseases, which flourish in damp conditions. For the same reason, avoid unnecessary fencing, enclosures, and plantings. Let air sweep through the garden. If wind is a problem, use a porous, partial barrier that slows wind but doesn't produce dead air. For both frost and disease protection, make sure there is somewhere for cold or soggy air to drain away if possible--ideally downhill from your garden, or at least downwind.
6. Plant disease-resistant varieties. If your climate is getting rainier, you may need to add new varieties to your lineup of favorites. This is especially true if it is getting both wetter and warmer, because that's when diseases thrive. Look for disease resistance in catalog entries, and ask your state Cooperative Extension Service for recommendations. Better yet, ask the Extension Service in a state that is near you, but historically has been wetter, with more disease problems. They will already have more experience there.
7. Look for earlier varieties than you have been used to. If your planting is delayed by wet, unworkable soil, or your season is rainier, you may need more time for things to ripen. More moisture can keep things in vegetative growth longer, too.
8. If soil is not too soggy, forking it over to introduce air will enable soil to breathe. If the soil has been submerged or so soggy that it is smelly rather than fresh and earthy-smelling, introduce live microorganisms right away to start aeration. Compost, manure, and biological inoculants are all appropriate.
9. It is tempting to work in sand for better drainage, but compost is a better choice. Sand added to a heavy soil usually produces something resembling cement. If you find the soil is still too heavy after you have worked in all the organic matter you can, pea gravel, crushed lava, rice or cocoa hulls, dead leaves, or even perlite might be a better choice to provide drainage.  Think again about what organic matter might be available to you. (Avoid sawdust, wood chips, and bark within the soil.)
10. Do a soil test, and if you need calcium, gypsum might be a good choice. It doesn't raise the pH of the soil like lime, but it does help the soil flocculate (stick in tiny clumps) which allows better drainage.
11. If evaporative cooling of the soil is a problem for your plants, avoid straw or other pale or soil-shading mulch. Apply only after soil is warm enough for good growth. If moisture continues to be a problem, leave soil open to the air. Best of all, put down a layer of compost as a mulch--it is dark to absorb heat, and encourages earthworms that make the soil more porous and better-draining. If you have wet soil, put any funds you can into getting more compost--it's the best buy of all.
12. If cold wet soil is a chronic problem, use hotbeds to get warm soil for your spring plantings and summer crops. A hotbed is a compost pile covered with dirt that you plant in.  It traditionally consisted of a pit filled with horse manure, with a cold frame above it. The heat generated by decomposition enabled norther European gardeners to grow crops like melons.
13. Wet soils are often nutrient-poor. Get a soil test and follow the recommendations. If you are getting much more rain than usual for your location, be aware that your usual fertility scheme may not be adequate. Plants may need more direct fertilization, either as a side dressing, drench, or foliar spray, than you are used to.

Variety recommendations:

• Take advantage of the wet to plant seeds that thrive in damp, even marshy conditions. Carrots, parsley, cilantro, lovage, angelica, celery, and other Ubellifers (plants with umbrella-like flower heads) have germination-inhibiting compounds on the seeds. These natural chemicals must be washed off before the seed can sprout. In normal damp soil this can take 2 weeks. In wetter soil it can go faster. (In normal conditions I soak parsnip, carrot, and parsley seed overnight before planting.) In nature, these plants live where inundation by winter rain or spring snowmelt is followed by a dry summer. That's why they have chemicals to prevent sprouting until there is enough water for the plant to establish, and why they have very deep taproots to find deep moisture later on.  Parsnips especially benefit from a soaking--natural or contrived.
• Many North American wildflowers like a wet start, as they originate in areas where soil is wetter at the beginning than later in the season.
• Asian Greens have the best performance in wet, cold spring soil of any plant I know, with the exception of Chinese or Nappa cabbage, which is an insect magnet.
• In wet heat, go with Southern favorites like Southern Peas and okra.
• Of all the kales, White Russian has proved itself the most resistant to winter flooding and soggy soil. During the growing season, most brassicas like a lot of water as long as they also have good drainage. Work in lots of compost, or plant on a mound.
• Peas and Lettuce like the same things as cabbage or broccoli--lots of water, but good drainage and lime. The tall rows described in #4 above work well. However, for a quick crop like lettuce, a container is often the best way to achieve good drainage in spring without re-doing your beds, or making them dry out too fast in summer.
• Onions are basically a swamp plant when young.
• Celery is the most water-hungry of all vegetables.
• Hot mustards are extremely disease-resistant and resilient. Try Green Wave, Dragon Tongue, or Braising Mix.
• Among herbs, parsley, lovage, chives and hyssop do well in wet conditions.
• Among perennials, Evergreen onions, chives, leaf celery, and sorrel are best bets.
• Corn like most grasses, can drink a lot of water to fuel fast growth. Give adequate spacing and watch for disease.
• Squash's big sprawling plants and big leaves can take up and evaporate a lot of water. Watch for disease--choose resistant varieties, make sure it has lots of food (compost or manure) and give it probiotic sprays to prevent mildew--a common hazard. transplants are safer in soggy conditions than seeds.

These have difficulties in wet conditions:

• Mediterranean herbs like thyme, sage, rosemary, savory hate wet feet.
• Basil has disease/mildew problems and will need foliar sprays of probiotics.
• Peppers are a plant of sandy soil and good drainage. They do well in containers, so consider pots if your ground is wet.
• Tomatoes except those with disease resistance. Cherokee Purple is a possible choice. There are others bred specifically for certain diseases.
• Chard and beets need very good drainage
• Bean seeds will rot in wet cold soil; regardless of the calendar, don't plant until the soil is warm.
• Melons and cucumbers may crack or be flavorless if over-watered, as will tomatoes or even squash that are ripening fruit when they receive sudden increase in water.

Smoke acts on growing plants in several ways, and the effects of smoke will vary depending on what else is happening in your area. Temperature, latitude (day length), humidity, and soil makeup will all change the effects of smoke to some extent.  Some effects you can change, and some require you to change your expectations. Here is what we learned last year as we coped with the nearby August Complex fire--the largest in California history at that time.

1. Smoke changes the amount of light plants receive. We got a dramatic illustration of this when it was so dark that crickets sang and we had to use a flashlight at 3pm. Over the next few days, plants in the garden changed their growth habits, some switching from growth to dormancy, others putting all of their energy into flowering or ripening fruit. Plants that are day-length -sensitive will be most affected by this. Tropicals, coming from lands where day length doesn't vary over the course of the year, usually don't notice. Even if they don't react to day length, plants are receiving less light, and light energy is what powers photosynthesis. So growth may slow. Jobs that take a lot of energy, like ripening seed, will be especially affected. Don't depend on size as an index to ripeness. You may have to harvest smaller corn, beans, or peppers.
2. If smoke is thick, it usually changes the heat and humidity patterns as well. It may shade your location enough that temperatures drop. We went from temps in the 90's to the 70's as the smoke thickened. That will slow your plants down. It may make the air more humid and nighttime temperatuures higher if it makes a "lid" that keeps hot humid air from rising and dissipating. It all depends on atmospheric conditions where you are, so monitor the National Weather Service forecasts for your area. 
3. The compounds in smoke can dry out leaf surfaces, just as sprinkling salt on them would. Monitor the actual conditions by digging into the soil to see how much moisture plants have and checking leaves for chemical burns or drying. If you moisten the leaves at all, wet them thoughly; you want to wash chemicals off, not just liquefy them on the leaf.
4. Smoke will cut down the amount of time and energy you have outdoors. Be aware of this at the beginning so you can set new priorities and apportion your time effectively. There's no point in doggedly pretending you can do everything you normally do, then failing at it. Make sure you do what is most important. It might be most realistic (and be best for your health) if you don't start new projects, cut out any jobs that are not essential, and find ways to streamline or reduce the rest. For example, if its getting late in the year, you might get a few more green beans or tomatoes, but maybe the best use of your time this year would be to cut them down and pull a tarp over them so they can compost while you start some winter crops in pots.
5. Flavor can be affected on fruits and vegetables that experience smoke over a long period. And leaf surfaces can become choked with ash or fine smoke particles so that the plant can't breathe. (Plants breathe through holes called stomata in their leaves.) We found that washing plants well with a very fine spray gave them renewed vigor and health. Mist nozzles for your garden hose are available in hardware stores and nurseries or online. They are marketed as a way to get rid of aphids and mites ("Bug Blaster" is one brand) and they do work well for that.  But they work equally well to clean leaves and even some flowers without damage.
6. Ash can affect your plants' growth, and your soil. We found that washing the ash off of our plants produced a dose of dissolved potassium and calcium that gave them an end-of-season boost. Not all gardens will react positively to ash, though. Magnesium, calcium, and potassium must be in balance in the soil. Soil tests are needed for you to know.
7. Depending on how far you are from the fire, smoke may contain different compounds, including acids and oils. Anyone who has burned green pine or fir knows how much greasy "creosote" these woods can produce when green. Should you use a mild soap solution, as you might for aphids? The jury is out on that one. If I were to try it, I would use plain water on half the bed and the soap solution on half, then wait for results before going further. The same goes for neutralizing acids or bases. I would want to test the water running off the leaves. If it is very alkaline, I would consider a foliar spray of very dilute (1 TBsp per gallon) apple cider vinegar.
8. Probiotics will help. The living microorganisms in compost, compost tea, "Effective Microorganisms,"  Bokashi, or any of the Korean Natural Farming preparations will help digest toxins, build a beneficial microflora on leaf surfaces, and help the roots to cope with the changes in soil chemistry. These are generally used as foliar sprays or applied as a root drench.
9. Compost will help. You can dig it in if you are planting for fall, or you can put it around existing plants. Compost buffers nutrient imbalances. 
10. You can also feed microorganisms with prebiotics. For a foliar spray or root drench, you can use a very dilute solution (1-2 TBsp per gallon) of molasses or milk, mixed with a source or biological activity, like compost tea or a couple of tablespoons of yogurt. As a side dressing on the soil surface, mix compost with powdered beets or moisten with the above mixture and apply a thin layer along the row beside the plants.

Recommended plants:
This is a new area for most of the gardening community, and there are few guidelines out there. However, I will share my experience and observations along with what local farmers observed during past fire years.

Plants that have to ripen fruit did the worst. Tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant had delayed ripening. Plants with soft leaves, especially leaves you eat, were affected. Lettuce, for example. Squash, with its big soft leaves and need to set fruit, were adversely affected also.

Beans did better than other fruit-producing plants, possibly because I grow mostly beans that come from marginal environments and are adapted to hot, alkaline soils. Pellegrini romano did well. Rattlesnake, with it's tolerance for marginal conditions, did well. Round Valley (Covelo) beans, Nodak Pinto, Carol Deppe's resilient beans,  Borlotto, and Yessica's Inca Beans all did well. Bush green beans were more affected. Dragon tongue did best, but was less juicy than usual. Provider and the Bush Mix bore poorly and were tough. The purple beans in the mix did better than the green or yellow ones.

Corn was delayed by falling temperatures and reduced light, but Carol Deppe's dry corns matured dry ears in spite of late planting and smoke. The longer ripening period made corn more susceptible to insect damage, but it did all right otherwise.

Sunflowers did well. Brassicas did well; the alkaline ash and reduced temperatures suited them down to the ground. I usually surround my cabbages with ash to deter slugs, anyway. And their waxy leaves resisted smoke damage. Those stalwarts, chard, arugula, and turnips did fine, as they always seem to. Endive also did well, probably because the leaves are more sturdy than lettuce.

I welcome comments from others. As we proceed into new territory, our shared observations are the only guide we're going to have for awhile.