Garden Success — Sweet Potato Troubleshooting, Fall Vegetable Planting, and a Mystery Lawn Flower

This week on Garden Success, host Stephen Brueggerhoff opens with a cabbage comparison trial underway at the Brazos County demonstration garden — heirloom varieties Early Jersey Wakefield and Early Flat Dutch going head-to-head with hybrid Red Ball and the supersized Sapporo Giant — before digging into a listener's sweet potato harvest puzzle. Listener George, growing sweet potatoes at a Baylor Scott & White community garden, found long healthy vines but small, underdeveloped roots. Stephen walks through the likely culprits one by one: too much nitrogen favoring foliage over root swelling, the benefits of extra phosphorus and potassium (bone meal and muriate of potash get a mention), inconsistent irrigation during root development, and simply digging too early relative to the variety's 90–120 day maturity window — sharing his own at-home sweet potato experience (11 pounds from one slip last year, a less impressive harvest this year) along the way. From there it's a rundown of what's ready to plant now and what to hold off on — broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage transplants; Swiss chard and leek seed now; carrots and garlic in a couple more weeks once it cools down; and turnips as a surprisingly good, forgiving cover crop. A walk-in visitor's unidentified yard plant turns into a profile of slender fall aster (Symphyotrichum subulatum), a native annual with modest flowers, a dormant seed bank triggered at 75°F soil temps, and control options that boil down mostly to hand-pulling before it goes to seed. Caller Ryan gets practical advice on seeding a backyard wildflower meadow — including the extra care bluebonnet seed needs due to its hard, scarified seed coat. Plus: upcoming events including the Native Plant Society of Texas Post Oak Chapter meeting tonight at Lick Creek Park, the Texas A&M Horticulture field day rescheduled to October 9th, and a shrub and root ball preparation workshop at Martha's Bloomers (October 2nd).