If you thought it was time to sit back and enjoy the harvest, think again! You'd be missing out on the bounty of a fall garden. You can plant carrot, bean, lettuce, cilantro and radish successions all through the summer. Start fall beets, kale, spinach, chinese cabbage and daikons. There's even time yet to sow some summer plants - like summer squash, cucumbers and sweet corn.

Keep in mind that summer is a very harsh time to be a seedling! Be careful to keep your soil moist while the seeds are germinating. It's best to have young plants somewhere where they'll get shade relief during the afternoon.

This could be next to your tomatoes, pole beans or other trellises: when the plants are young and most in need of protection, they'll be shaded. By fall, the surrounding plants will be finished and ready to pull up to open up the area to more light.

In summer, we like to start seeds in raised nursery beds outdoors: the soil won't dry out as quickly as flats or pots would. You can put your nursery beds where there's some afternoon shade and then transplant to sunnier areas of the garden once the plants are larger and better able to stand up to the heat.

Lettuce, spinach and cilantro often don't germinate well in hot weather. You can start them somewhere cool indoors - even the refrigerator! Our gardener friend Pam sows lettuce in an outdoor nursery bed in the evening under shade cloth, waters the seed in, then covers it with an inch or so of crushed ice.

There are some plants that need to be started by July in order to get them to maturity while there's still enough heat, and, often more importantly, daylight. Now is the ideal time to start second plantings of cucumbers and summer squash. Early-maturing varieties of sweet corn, like Buhl or Golden Bantam, can still be sown in early July.

Peas for fall harvest should be started in July. We find it takes longer for our fall pea plants to reach maturity, so expect them to take a week or so more than in the spring to begin producing. Plant them where they'll get a few hours of shade - preferably in the afternoon to relieve the heat. Dwarf plants like Cascadia and Sugar Daddy snap peas and Oregon Giant snow peas are good choices, since the harvest is earlier and more concentrated.

You can continue to sow successions of lettuce, carrots, radishes, and green beans. Some things, like spinach, beets and kale, you should probably wait to sow until late August or September.

There's still time to start cabbage and broccoli, but unless you're in the Deep South or on the coast it's best to start them as soon as you can! It's a little too late for us here in central Virginia, but our friends further south can still start their Brussels sprouts for the Thanksgiving table. (We like them parboiled, then roasted in butter.)

Since weed seeds may have trouble germinating in extreme summer temperatures, you may your find your young fall garden easier to maintain than the same plants in the spring. Transplanting will also give you a leg up on the competition.

Good luck and remember to write to us with your questions (and photos!).