The hardest part of a fall garden is that you plant it in the worst possible weather. It is July, the soil is hot enough to cook a seed rather than sprout it, and you are trying to start the cool-season crops that will feed you in October and November.

The challenge is getting those seeds to even germinate, let alone grow and look and taste good, in conditions that stress them out. Here is what works for me on carrots, which are the fussiest of the lot.

Wide farm rows under black plastic, young greens coming up in the beds alongside — Tarped ground beside a bed already up. The tarp is doing two jobs: holding moisture and keeping the soil off a temperature that cooks a seed instead of sprouting it.

After prepping the beds and seeding the carrots, I water heavily and put a tarp down over the bed. White side up. That reflects the sunlight and keeps the soil temperature significantly lower than the black side would. It creates near perfect conditions for germination, and the weed seeds are the first to take advantage of that: they always come up before the carrots do.

So after a few days with the tarp on, I pull it and flame-weed. A propane torch, quickly and evenly over the surface, killing the flush of young weeds and giving the slower carrot seeds a clear bed to come up into. You are not burning anything to ash, just passing heat over it.

Then 50 percent shade netting goes over the rows, and I water frequently for short durations rather than deeply and rarely. The frequent light watering is doing two jobs: keeping the seedbed damp, and cooling the soil with evaporative cooling.

Two carrots pulled and held up over the row they came out of — Eight weeks from seeding, give or take the variety. This is what the tarp, the flame weeding and the shade netting were all for.

The first few weeks are the crucial ones. That is when a cool-season seedling decides whether it is going to make it, and it is also the window where shade and moisture do the most good. From seeding to pulling carrots, expect roughly eight weeks, depending on variety.

Whenever you push the seasonality of a vegetable out of its comfort zone, in the heat of summer or the cold of winter, you increase the risk of the various issues that lead to crop failures. These tricks only help tilt the odds, nature a casino, and the house always wins...

Starting a Fall Garden in the Middle of Summer