Grow A Fall Vegetable Garden
By Sara Haller and Tegan Durfee
Certain vegetables need to mature when the weather is cool, after the heat of summer has passed, and so can only be grown in early spring or started in the summer so they mature during the cool fall months. Planting a late season garden is very rewarding because it’s easy to produce a lot of wonderful produce that is quick to grow and very usable in the kitchen. Cool season crops can withstand light frost. Some, like kale and cabbage, can even handle winter snows.
Crops for the fall garden include:
carrots lettuce broccoli kohlrabi
beets peas cabbage kale
turnips cauliflower radishes
Your first step is to identify your first frost date for the up and coming fall and winter. You’ll want to look up online when the first expected frost date is for your area, or in simpler terms, the first day of the autumn season where the temperature drops to 32 degrees (freezing) or lower. If you haven’t planted your crops soon enough for their needs, they could be too young to make it to maturity before consistent frost sets in for the winter.
Once you know the first frost date you will then look at the “Days To Maturity” on your seed packet and count that many days back from your last frost date. So, if your lettuce matures in 65 days and your first frost date is October 10th then you would plant around August 6th.
Once you’ve decided on your crops and figured out when that frost will come, its time to pick a good, sunny spot in your backyard with plenty of room for your garden. You’ll want to make sure the ground is tilled (broken up) and loose so you have no problem planting your seeds. Sprinkling some fertilizer or fresh compost onto this freshly tilled soil is a great way to get the most out of your garden. Something quick and easy from the store is just fine, fertilizers like MiracleGro Plant Food, and Osmocote Smart-Release Plant food work great!
When deciding which crops should go where in your garden, think about the end result of the crop itself and how large it will get. Taller plants should be laid out on the north end of your space so that they won’t shade shorter crops.
Get a paper and pen and draw out where each crop will sit. Look at packets for spacing recommendations. Carrots space 3-4 inches apart and ¼ inch deep with rows 1 foot apart, radishes space 1 inch apart and ½ inches deep, beets space 1-2 inch apart and ½ inch deep, lettuce (depending on the kind you choose whether it be leaf lettuce, cos and loose-head types, or firm headed) plant 4-16 inches apart in the rows and cover the seeds with ½ inch of soil, peas plant 2 inches apart and 1 inch deep, and finally kale needs to be planted 18-24 inches apart and ½ inches deep.
If you’re worried at all about how much spacing to give each crop, in each individual row lay out a measuring tape and sow your seeds matching the spacing for each crop.
Once your garden is sown, use a shower setting on your garden hose and gently water your garden so the soil is nice and saturated but don’t use a heavy stream on your hose setting or it can wash your seeds away. Depending on how hot it is you may overhead water for 5 minutes or so a few times a day until they germinate. Your seeds cannot dry out even once or they will not germinate so keep a close eye on them until they come - usually about 4-5 days. Once seedlings emerge you will begin to water less frequently until you eventually water deep once a week. At that point it’s optimal to water from below using drip irrigation or trenches with a soaker hose.
Watering is a balance. You don’t want to overwater or underwater. If you find your garden is looking a little drenched or dry, dig your index finger into the soil in the middle of your garden patch down to your second knuckle, if the soil down there still feels damp let your garden bask in the sun a little longer and dry out just a bit more. Overwatering plants can be almost as damaging as not watering them enough.
Once your plants are established, keep an eye on weeds and spend a minute each week keeping them down. You don’t want those little veggie seedlings to compete with anything for nutrients from the sun, water, or soil. It’s a great way to stay active and get outside.
Harvesting will begin in September and extend into October and anywhere in-between depending on the crop you’ve planted. Nothing feels better than the heft of a woven basket filled with hard work and fresh food.
In the above paragraphs we mentioned a few crops we’re focusing on, here is a quick view on when to harvest these: Carrots-harvest during a cooler time of the day, and when the carrots reach ½ in size in diameter. Radishes-harvest when they reach 1 inch in diameter. Beets-golf ball size or larger. Lettuce-harvest leaves when they’re full sized but just before maturity for the best tasting harvest, and start from the outside of the head and work your way in. Peas-Use two hands to steady the vine and pluck off the pod without damaging the whole plant and harvest early in the morning. Kale-The leaves will get around the size of your hand when they’re ready to be harvested, start from the lowest part of the plant and harvest fistfuls.
