I'm in zone 9 and this is the first time I will be planting fall crops. All of my garden space is being taken up by spring/summer veggies right now.

There is a major overlap between my summer and winter growing seasons. My dilemma now is when to tear out all the summer plants and start the fall crops.

Anyone in zone 9 have advice?
I'm currently growing tomatoes, cucumber and melons.

I want to plant broccoli, spinach and chard.

This is the time to plant fall peas, carrots, beets, etc., in the Great Lakes area. My problem is getting seeds to germinate in the intense heat of mid-late-July. I've been holding off on seeding until this weekend, hoping for temps to drop a bit. You can start lettuce inside now and set them out next month, but carrots and beets don't like to be transplanted.

I have some tulle that I recently pulled off my blueberries, so I'm going to try folding & draping it over the row of beet seeds to see if that helps. I'm also trying peas in containers instead of the ground and am going to keep the containers in the shade until they germinate. Fingers crossed!

uscjusto- I'm guessing you are in SoCa from the usc (university of spoiled children) reference?
I'm in Northern CA and sometimes my "summer " crops will go into November and I've even had tomatoes into January!
I try to keep 2 raised beds JUST for fall/winter crops. I let the carrots and broccholi hang out and go to seed, then clear the beds, add in compost and manure, start the seeds in the shade or indoors in about a week.
I'm just starting to save seeds (just retired 3 weeks ago!), and am getting serious about starting stuff from seed!
Some things such as lettuce can be sprinkled around under some things like tomatoes, utilizing the cooling shade.
I've been gardening about 12 years and I'm still kind of confused about the summer/winter stuff! That's why I decided 2 beds would be "winter only" beds! Nancy

Nancy,

I live in the Sacramento area now after moving to SF. Graduated from USC in 2000 (you get what you pay for).

You must have a lot of space to have dedicated spring and fall beds. Lucky you.

Guess I better harvest the rest of my carrots and start prepping the bed for planting!