Planning a Fall Garden

I know what you’re thinking, “A fall garden? It’s only July!”  But now is exactly when you should be thinking about your fall garden.  What types of crops do you want to harvest into December and January?  What garden beds will be available to you?  Do your local nurseries carry seedlings this time of year, or do you have to start your own seed?

Harvest Season

So many people think of gardening as between Mother’s Day and Columbus Day in our zone, but the reality is we have a much longer growing season.  While spring crops can start going in the ground as early as President’s Day Weekend in February, with a little planning you can still be pulling fresh vegetables from your garden into January!

Lettuce planted in August will give you salads until the first hard frost.  Spinach, kale, collard greens and the like can be harvested into January and February with little-added protection from the weather.  Even a second round of traditionally summer crops, like cucumbers and tomatoes, can give you beautiful veggies until at least Halloween, later if the weather remains mild.

Early August Planting

Direct sow these seeds to have crops through out the fall and early winter.

• beets
• broccoli
• brussels sprouts
• cabbage
• collard greens
• cucumbers
• kale
• leeks
• lima beans
• onions (scallions)
• parsnips
• peas
• pole beans
• summer squash 
• tomatoes
• zucchini

Late August Planting

Direct sow these seeds to have crops through out the fall and early winter.

• arugula
• spring cabbage (some varieties need to over winter)
• carrots
• cauliflower
• fennel
• crisp head lettuce
• leaf lettuce
• miners lettuce
• radishes
• spinach
• turnips

Our Garden Beds

I have two beds that will be ready for fall planting in the next few weeks.  I am getting them ready now by harvesting whatever is left in them, clearing the weeds, and working compost into the soil to give it a burst of nutrients.  Since we have limited space for a fall garden, only two beds that are each 24 square feet, we will be using Square Foot Gardening to get the most bang for our buck.  This means very high-density planting, which will require a little more work for me to set up and get moving and grooving (hence the need for good compost), but the payoff through out the fall will be worth it.

Bed #1 will grow a variety of brassicas – kale, turnips, cauliflower, and broccoli.  I’m not sure if we are going to want 36 turnip plants, so I may adjust that to more broccoli since that is something we eat a lot of through the winter months. 

Bed #2 will have a fall crop of peas, leeks, scallions, lettuce, carrots, and a variety of beets.  We eat both the beet greens in salads as well as the beet roots.  Depending on how I am on seed, we may switch out one square foot of carrots for parsnips instead since I like having them on hand for roasted root vegetables as well as for soups.  

I don’t plan on purchasing any seed and will only use what we have on hand or what I can trade with friends.  That may mean a few tweaks to the plan, but hopefully, it will keep me in check so I don’t blow the budget on things we don’t actually need.  If our garden center has any of the brassicas as seedlings, I may purchase a few 4-packs just to get them coming in in stages instead of all at once in the fall.  I also plan on adding on our other garden beds as they are cleared at the end of summer harvest.  

What do you plan to grow in your fall garden?