Summertime and the Living is Easy

It is that time of year, when you can relax amongst your plants, perhaps enjoying some tea or a cocktail, or even a nap as you count the spoils of your gardening prowess.

I hope you are all harvesting lots of herbs and flowers, fruit and vegetables. But even as you slow down during the sleepy month of July, I know you are all antsy to plant some kind of food crop. I know because you are asking at the nursery ‘What can I plant right now in my vegetable garden??’ I am afraid the answer is ‘Not much’ but July is the month to start your planning and seed purchasing so you are ready for fall vegetables to go into the ground. This is a great opportunity to thumb through seed catalogs and order seed, or prep fallow spaces in your garden for fall gardening. Looking through seed catalogs, checking your current seeds to be sure the seed isn’t too old, and ordering new seed is actually an excellent gardening activity for hot summer days!

What are ‘fall vegetables’? These are vegetables that prefer, or even require cooler temperatures and shorter days to be successful and tasty. This includes most of the leafy greens like lettuce, spinach, chard and kale, many root crops like radishes, turnips, and carrots, the Brassica family like broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, and both sugar and snap peas. Onions can be planted both from seed and from sets in the early fall, and seed garlic is always planted in the fall. Mustard greens, bok choy, kohlrabi, and endive are perfect for fall and early winter. It is also a great time to start cool season flowers like viola, calendula, cornflowers and dianthus. Once it’s a bit cooler dill and cilantro can be successful again in the garden. The list of delicious veggies to plant for fall and winter is actually enormous and varied.

Now, 15 years ago I couldn’t give away a 6 pack of kale. The summer garden was the thing and everyone would nurse an old tomato plant into late fall to enjoy the last drop of summer. But now at Morningsun we grow and sell more than a dozen varieties of kale, and it’s practically hysteria in the nursery as people try to include multiple colors and textures of this plain Jane vegetable in their garden.

Why? I think it’s because the secret is out - many fall and winter vegetables are super easy to grow and extremely productive. I think kale is the winter version of zucchini, where the vegetable can easily overproduce for our needs, so we need to share it with all of our neighbors, friends and frenemies.

So, direct sow or transplants? Morningsun sells both seeds and vegetable transplants, and there are good reasons for both. (Click here to see our current list of fall vegetable starts for 2026, available starting late August). If you know how to grow from seed, and have some space available and the ability to keep new seeding moist until the plants are established, then seeding can be very cost effective and also allows you to try some very unusual varieties that you won’t easily find sold at nurseries. And some root vegetables like radishes and carrots hate to have their young roots disturbed and should always be direct sown. On the other hand, if you don’t have the time or seed starting skills, transplants of many of the fall veggies are easy to have success with, especially as fall temperatures even out a bit and the very hot days decrease. I suggest to use both methods so you can try many different varieties - the choices of lettuces alone available to grow from seed will spin your head (and your salad spinner!). The Master Gardeners have several good guides (click here for a handy guide) for when to plant seed and transplants for both cool season and warm season vegetables, although I find I can stretch transplanting farther into the fall the last few years with the warmer mild winters we have experienced.

This is a transitional time for seed selling at many nurseries - 2026 seed is still perfectly good, but most of the nurseries are either returning seed to the seed companies or donating 2026 seed to school projects and community gardens from late July to early September, to bring in the brand new 2027 seed. Our seed usually goes to donations, but before we finish out the 2026 seed year we want to offer our remaining 2026 seed to our customers at a discount. So all of our seed packages will be on sale, 20% off, through July 26th.

We do have a good selection of fall vegetable seed that you can plant in August and September, and also seed for summer vegetables so you can plan ahead for next year. Our flower seeds will also be on sale, 20% off!

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Dog Days of summer of course , refers to the time of the year when Sirius, the Dog Star, aligns with the sun. Dog Days runs for 40 days, from July 3rd to August 11th - 20 days before and 20 days after Sirius rises with the sun. Dog Days were once blamed for madness, fevers, and bad luck.

While historically this term is from astronomy, today it refers to the hottest, most uncomfortable time of the summer. At Morningsun, we think it’s a good time to reduce our stock so we don’t have to water so much! So we are having a progressive sale on plants - the more you spend, the more you save!

The sale is from July 18th through July 26th. Looking ahead at the weather, temperatures actually look unusually pleasant, so we are blessed and having good luck, and it is much easier to plant during the cooler days while day length is still long and the soil is warm. It’s a great opportunity to freshen up the garden so you can relax again and enjoy the flowers a few more weeks before fall gardening begins.

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Classes will resume in August and September. The Cannabis Growing classes in the spring were so popular and there were so many requests for a harvesting class that we have added a class for Saturday, August 15th.

This is a great opportunity to learn before mistakes are made, and to properly dry and store your product for future use. Click here to sign up! Stay tuned for some hands on classes in the fall learn how to make fun products with your cannabis.

The weekend of September 26th - 27th we return to an always popular Medicinal Herb weekend series with one of our favorite instructors, Brita Wynn. Learn tea formulation, lotions, salves, tinctures and more. Take one class or the full series to add to your herbal knowledge and skills. Click here to sign up!

Making homemade and small batch soap has become very popular, and the Herbal Soap Making class at Morningsun is always full! Be sure to sign up early to learn this ancient skill, just in time to make soaps for the holidays. Click here to sign up now.

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August 1st sees Morningsun attending one of our favorite events, Harvest Day, hosted by the Sacramento County Master Gardeners at the Fair Oaks Horticultural Center in Fair Oaks. Click here for a full description of the event including all of the talks and demonstrations. There are educational booths, beautiful gardens to explore and learn from and terrific vendors. We have been attending for many years and even if it’s a bit warm, the event is busy! I suggest all gardening folks in the Sacramento Valley attend this event.

On September 12th, we will be attending the Placer County Master Gardeners Garden Faire at the Maidu Community Center in Roseville. Usually a spring event, this is an opportunity to see local nurseries show off their fall plants. We know that fall is the best time to plant drought tolerant perennials, herbs, California natives and many trees, so visit the Garden Faire to start your fall planting. Click here for more information.

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For two years I have been waving my arms around in an area that has been kind of a wasteland at the nursery - next to our main sales floor, behind one of the other gardens, and very forgotten. We finally broke ground this week to extend the irrigation, rip out the weeds and start building beds. Of course we started on the day it was over 100 degrees, because July tends to be a quieter month at the nursery. I’m not sure if we start this kind of project during intense heat because we don’t have many customers, or if the intense heat causes us to decide it’s a great idea to build a new garden, but the end result of working in the hottest conditions seems inevitable.

This garden will be 1/3 California natives and 2/3 low water, fire resistant perennials, with some lovely groundcovers, pathways, and a little water feature. It will take us a few months of work, but by October will be finished (is a garden ever REALLY finished??).

Over the last few years we have been thinking about planting a little pumpkin patch to invite customers to visit during October. Twenty varieties of pumpkins in 43 hundred foot rows have been planted, and we are just finishing up the cut flower garden. It is one of those projects that just kept getting bigger and bigger.

The crew worked so hard planting the field, now we are planning all of the great activities for each weekend in October. Really excited about this beautiful space!