Giant Veggie Gardener Edition - August 2026

For gardeners in hot, dry climates, September is a month of contradictions. The days are still hot, the monsoon has largely failed, and plants are struggling. But cooler nights are coming, which means both new challenges and new opportunities. In this episode of The Garden Journal, host Alexa Bradford and Janine Cavassel — known as the Tomato Lady — walk through the practical adjustments needed to keep a vegetable garden productive through late summer and into fall, with a focus on pest control, disease prevention, and timing the transition to cool-season crops.

Weather, Water, and Protection

The defining condition of this growing season has been extreme heat with very little rain. Cavassel notes that many days she watched rain clouds "go around me," and her water bill has been extremely high as a result. With temperatures now cooling to the high 80s during the day and the low 60s at night, the ripening process for warm-season vegetables begins to slow. The key intervention is to be ready with row cover — lightweight fabric that can be thrown over plants at night when a freeze threatens. Cavassel recommends anchoring one side of the cover at the base of the bed with rocks, then draping it over the plants as needed. Crucially, you must remove the cover the next morning so the sun can warm the plants back up and keep them ripening.