Planting a Fall Vegetable Garden
We love fall gardening! The heat is waning but the soil is still warm. There are just three steps to consider to planting a fall garden: when to plant, what to plant, and where to plant a fall garden. Let’s get started!
Why Plant a Fall Garden
Fall gardening is much less stressful for many crops—as well as shrubs, trees, and perennials. There are less weeds, less pests, and it’s often rainier so less need to water as often.
As soon as your spring and summer crops stop producing, pull them and make room for all those delicious fall crops! There are just three steps to consider.
1. When to Plant a Fall Garden
Timing is everything. To plan what to plant in your fall garden, See our Fall Planting Dates Calendar. We’ve calculated your frost dates, backed out vegetable maturity dates (found on your seed packet), some time for harvesting and other fall factors.
Or, you can consult the Frost Dates Calcultor to find the first fall frost date for your area. Where I live, it is around September 20 but often it is another month before we get a killing frost. There is a lot of glorious gardening weather between now and then.
Even though the days are beginning to shorten, the soil is warmer than it was in May so seeds sown now will germinate much faster.
2. Which Vegetables to Grow
Here’s a list of good vegetables to plant in late summer to keep the garden going through autumn! Pay attention to which veggies are frost-tolerant and which are tender.
As the weather cools, plant crops that are cold-tolerant and mature quickly. Salad greens are fast and hardy; leaf lettuces are ready to cut in 45 to 50 days. Looseleaf and butterhead leaves can be harvested at just about any time in their development. Sometime lettuce seeds have difficulty germinating in hot soil, so I start my new baby lettuces in flats that I can keep well-watered and shaded until the plants are large enough to transplant into the garden. Some varieties of lettuce such as ‘Winter Marvel’ and ‘New Red Fire’ are more cold-tolerant than others.
A quick crop of radishes will be ready for the salad bowl in 25 days.
Other root crops, like carrots and beets will take longer, but are worth the wait since they seem to get sweeter as the days get cooler.
Fall-planted spinach does much better than spring planted spinach since it is maturing during the cool weather it loves instead of struggling in the summer heat.
Swiss chard is another hardy green that reaches an edible size in 25 to 30 days. Given some extra protection when frost threatens, spinach and chard can last well into fall. If well-mulched, in many parts of the country spinach will winter over and give you an extra-early spring crop of the best spinach you’ve ever tasted!
Broccoli and kohlrabi mature well in cool weather and will not be bothered by the cabbage moth larvae as much as spring-planted cold crops are.
Kale is a winter staple. Try blue-green ‘Winterbor’ or pretty purple ‘Redbor’. They can be harvested long after other greens have been killed by cold weather.
Bush beans take about 6 to 8 weeks to reach a harvestible size. The only problem with these crops is that they will be killed by frost unless you plan to protect them. If you live in an area with a long growing season, this will not be a problem.
Snap peas and snow peas start to bear in 60 days and peas that mature in cold weather seem especially sweet and crisp. Pea vines can survive temperatures down to 25 degrees.
The real stars of the fall garden are the Asian greens. Quick maturing varieties can be harvested in 45 days. Tatsoi, pac choi, mizuna, and napa are all in the brassica family. They can weather a frost and will last through a hard freeze if given some protection.
Continues:
https://www.almanac.com/how-plant-fall-vegetable-garden
I have to take a closer look at the planting schedule but I will tell you that in this heat I am almost to the "Die Garden Die!" stage!
They have just about finished storm debris pickup in my neighborhood! I have Power and air conditioning...a good thing since it was 102F yesterday! (Lost power 3 times in the last 2 weeks, once in our big storm. I would blame it on "Biden Brownouts" but it was really Neighbors who do not maintain trees in their yards along the power lines. If or when I move the next house has a buried power line.)
Tomatoes are not growing/ripening well in the 90-100 F heat. Cool days I try to go out and shake/brush tomato flowers to get them to set if possible. When it cools down perhaps some of the set tomatoes will grow.
Heirloom and specialty tomatos...small garden, over 50 lbs picked more to come. These sell for about $5 lb at the local grocery so at least $250 equivalent cost! These are appreciated and are great for sharing with family and friends.
June planted Burpee's Long Keeper tomatoes are filled with blossoms and some small green tomatoes so they should be producing at the middle or end of August.
Cucumber beetles spotted and striped and bean beetles are destroying my trellised walls of pole beans. (Sort of expected.)
I bought traps for transparent winged moths (Squash vine borers/maggots) that are working incredibly well! The sticky trap bottoms get filled with moths and I replace the bottom of the trap with a yellow sticky trap. I have multistory stickies! (A possum or someting pulled the stickies out of the trap and ate all the moths off of them. Since I do not have chickens its sort of allright.
Incredibly no zucchini harvested! Cocozelle not doing well in this heat. I am about to replace it. Striata d' Italia variety is vigerous, but It probably needs more room than available in my garden. I was growing both varieties vertically in tomato cages. I have another fast growing variety that takes about 40 days to fruit. They may need more sunlight and water.
I am getting some patty pan squash. Red Kuri is climbing up trellises and crawling along and over the top of the pole beans on my fence. I have several squash growing, hoping for a lot more. I have one butternut squash that is growing on a sad vine on a trellis and I am hoping to nurse it to maturity.
Planted some Hybrid Northern sweet corn for daughter, a bit of a novelty. Fast growing, about 5 feet tall, good taste but I can' grow enough in my small space to get through germination. I have harvested a number of 1/2 full cobs of tasty corn. (I sliced the soft ungerminated ends and used them in a vegetable medley with slightly overgrown romano beans.
Picked an almost perfect 9" "Diva" Cucumber from my protected gardening fabric covered trellis! Beit Alpha variety, no spines, you can grow it under a row cover do not need insects to pollinate!! Recommended! Growing Artist Cucumber too. It produces spiny gerkins which would be very good for pickling!
Eldest Daughter is visiting from her Group Home, need to go off now and do some grooming stuff. (Mani-Pedi) She moves and kicks when nails are being trimmed so I am the one who needs to do this!!
That is quite a list of good, healthy vegetables. Good to know about the green beans and their cold tolerance. My bean plants are looking super great and have beans in all stages of development. I can hardly wait for them to mature so I can eat them straight from the plant!