Planting a vegetable garden isn’t just a spring activity. Many of the vegetables we plant at the beginning of the garden season can be planted successfully now for harvest into the late fall. This includes all of the cool weather leaf and root crops such as lettuce, spinach, kale, beets and radishes.
The advantages of planting now include warmer soil temperatures which means seed will sprout faster and there are generally fewer weeds and insects to contend with. Planting your fall vegetable garden isn’t much different than starting your garden in spring. Begin by cleaning up any lingering weeds or vegetation at the planting site, then dig two inches of compost into the site. Locally produced Sheep, Peat and Compost is a good choice to improve your garden soil. Summer vegetable crops will have depleted most of the nutrition in your soil, so adding a granular organic fertilizer at this time will keep your cool weather crops going strong. Certified organic Down to Earth Bio-Fish is a good choice. For an extra boost, add a scoop of humate. Humate will help your crops maximize nutrient uptake.
Follow package directions for seed planting depth and make sure you take time to mark each row as you plant. For even faster results, we have vegetable starts growing in our greenhouses, including broccoli, lettuce and kale. These are ready to take home and plant. Don't have room in the garden? Are your potted petunias and other flowering annuals starting to look tired? Replace them with some Asian greens such as Mizuna or Bok Choy. Asian greens add unusual shapes, textures and spicy flavors to salads. For a longer fall harvest, start seeds every two weeks and keep a frost cloth handy for those October nights when cooler temperatures threaten your crop. This will help extend your "greens" garden well into late fall. There's nothing like a dinner salad picked from your own garden in late summer and early fall. It's fresh and you know exactly what's in it.
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