About the second week of August, I plant my fall lettuce. I plant two large areas with three heat tolerant varieties of lettuce: Anuenue, Sierra Batavian, and De Morges Braun, and I repeat the planting procedures I followed in June. I also plant in soil where potatoes had been growing, so this soil is double-cropped. It produced a harvest of potatoes in late July and will produce another crop of lettuce from late September through December.

The fall lettuce will not get bitter, and it will not be bolting. It will grow slowly in the fall as the daytime sunlight diminishes and the temperature cools. This lettuce will last a long time, and I'll be harvesting from this planting well into December. I need a lot of plants to satisfy my hunger, so I plant two large areas in lettuce.

I mark off two plots, each 6 X 6 1/2 feet. Later in the fall and early winter, I'll want to manage the growing environment of these plants to protect them from freezing. This dimension of the salad plantings allows me to set up cold frames around them and cover them with two glass doors for protection as fall transitions into winter.

August is also the month when I begin preparing the soil in the fall and winter spinach gardens. I begin by removing the mulch and examining the soil. If troublesome weeds have become established, I spray them with Roundup. If the ground is baked, I water it and begin loosening the soil to prepare it for planting. I may also pull the mulch right back on top of it to help keep it cool and preserve moisture.

The fall spinach garden has a planting date of September 1, so soil preparations for this garden intensify at the end of August. Final preparations include mixing fine compost into the top 5 inches of the soil, mixing in a balanced fertilizer, and watering. My goal is to create a moist, soft, cool seedbed for my fall spinach by the end of August.

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