Growing a fall garden
Fall gardens are easier to manage than summer, once you know what you are doing.
Living in a mild climate, I have understood and appreciated the benefits that come with harvesting year-round. In California, I have always thought that we should take time off from gardening in the summer when the heat makes it unbearable to be outside after 10 AM.
Fall and winter are better seasons spending time in the kitchen cooking too.
More recently, after reading the Four Season Farming books by Eliot Coleman, an experienced and now famous farmer in Maine, and his work gardening year-round in cold climates, I am inspired to advocate for more cold-weather growing. If he can do it in Maine, you probably can grow vegetables in cold climates in the fall and harvest before the ground freezes.
(And once you get started, you might even get excited about growing through the winter with cold frames and high tunnels. These are easier to set up on a small scale in the backyard garden than on a farm.)
What to Grow
These cool-weather crops are what you want to be focused on now.
Semi-hardy vegetables that can survive temperatures in the low 30°F’s:
Lettuce, spinach, cauliflower, Swiss chard, radishes, and beets
Hardy vegetables that will make it into the 20°F’s:
broccoli, kale, collards, cabbage, carrots, and turnips.
Starting your own seeds
We only know what we are exposed to, so when you walk into your garden superstore in the middle of summer and don’t see any plant starts, except a few straggly tomatoes that didn’t get dates to the prom, you wouldn’t know that now is the time to plant.
Even in California, my experience is that very few stores understand or take advantage of selling seedlings to plant in the fall. I was in Lowe’s this week, and couldn’t even find seeds. You will probably need to find online resources if you don’t have an excellent local nursery.
This lack of resources has forced me to start seeds for the fall garden on my own. Fortunately, starting seeds in summer is simpler than winter. You don’t need a grow lamp or heating blankets. You can keep them outside, protect them from inclement weather, and use a shade cloth to protect them from too much sun. Here are some comprehensive seed starting directions.
This week I started Brussels sprouts, kale, broccoli, and lettuce seeds. I am hoping to harvest the kale and lettuce in October and the broccoli by Thanksgiving. The Brussels Sprouts take a very long time to grow. I won’t harvest these until January or February, so that wouldn’t be something that everyone can grow through the winter, but for us, they like the cold, wet winter.
A good frost makes natural sugar enhanced vegetables.
Vegetables have a natural protection system against cold temperatures. They convert starch to sugar to lower their freezing point. This change prevents the cell walls from breaking and for the eater makes the vegetables sweeter.
The plants don’t all come ripe at the same time.
Because the colder weather slows down the growing process, you don’t have the problem you have now, where all of your tomatoes are ready to pick at the same time. You can harvest as you eat one meal at a time because the lettuce or broccoli isn’t growing as fast. Fall gardens are the opposite of summer zucchini, where you go away for the weekend and come back to a baseball bat. The garden doesn’t have the demanding pace of the summer harvest.
Root vegetables can stay in the ground until you are ready to eat, harvest the bigger ones first and let the smaller ones fill in the now empty spaces.
Bugs don’t like the cold.
By growing in the cold, you alleviate many insect issues. You can sit back and let the vegetables grow.
This point emphasizes why seasonal eating is so important. When you grow vegetables at the best time of the year, you don’t use pesticides, because you don’t need them. Pesticides have a bad reputation and rightly so, but farmers don’t want to use them when they aren’t necessary, that’s a waste of money. So by growing during the “right” season, you don’t need them.
Light hours in the winter
If you are growing in a place that doesn’t freeze, in the northern hemisphere, we have diminishing light hours as we get closer to the winter solstice. From the end of November to the beginning of February, there isn’t enough light to make plants happy. If you want to grow, you need to plant now, so that your plants will get big enough before the light diminishes. You can plant late, but you won’t see your harvest until late winter. Last year, the broccoli I planted in November, was harvested in March.
Because of the reduced light, you won’t be able to follow the seed packet suggestions for harvest from the transplant date. (These never seem to work out for me anyway.)
Storage
In the winter, your garage or basement will act as a refrigerator. If you do need to pull and pick your harvest before freezing, you still have the added benefit of not having to preserve it right away. Remove your root vegetable tops and still keep an eye on your harvest every few days. You don’t want one rotten apple to spoil the bunch.
Growing a fall garden isn’t the advertised method. It does take time to learn about what works best in your area. You probably won’t get it right the first time, but it is worth learning. You get to enjoy the autumn weather and the relaxing harvest of your fall vegetables.