Grow your best fall vegetable garden with these tips and grow more food this season!
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How To Grow A Fall Vegetable Garden
The season seems to be a month behind in my garden. We’ve had our first couple of tomatoes, the beans are starting to come in and the peppers are really producing now. With the heat of August, lettuces have bolted or gone to seed and the squashes are starting to ripen.
But, with fall on the way, it doesn’t mean that the time in the garden is over. Here are 12 tips for a successful fall vegetable garden.
Start Early
Now I know I’ve talked about this before on the podcast but when it comes to fall gardening, timing is really important. By the time most people are starting to think about a fall garden, it’s too late.
Many of the crops you might be planting in your fall garden like cabbage or carrots and one of my favorites; purple sprouting broccoli need to be started by mid-July so you are planting out transplants in the heat of August so they have a chance to grow before the days get short and the temperature drops. Before you panic that you have missed the opening there are some fast-growing veggies you can grow that we’ll talk about a little later.
But, don’t be afraid to use transplants from the nursery or garden center. You are not a failure for using transplants! Sure you might not have a great selection of heirloom or open-pollinated varieties available but what’s more important to you?
Growing food free from chemicals to eat or trying to save seeds later? You might be more focused on food, I’m more interested in saving seeds from certain crops and harvesting others for food. Both answers are ok. Our homestead needs are different. Focus on what is important for your fall garden to help steer you in the right direction.
Start Indoors
Midsummer weather isn’t very supportive of seeds germinating with hot, dry weather and more pests roaming around your garden. Give your fall crops the best start by starting them indoors. It is cooler and you can keep an eye on the temperature and moisture. Check out the blog post on seed starting to learn more.
Plants like carrots that need to be sown in the garden bed directly can be coaxed into germinating by keeping the area moist and covered with a wet piece of burlap or hessian sacking over wire hoops. Once they germinate, remove the burlap.
Days To Maturity
This is something I talk about in the Grow Your Own Food Academy and is key to growing your own food like a boss. You want to be using the days to maturity to time your fall garden so that you get to start harvesting mature crops by the time the first killing frosts arrive.
The days to maturity are so important for planning a garden that Academy members get my Planting and Seed Starting Schedule Spreadsheet with over 300 varieties of fruits, herbs and vegetables in there to help figure out your fall seed starting dates. So if you’re serious about getting more from your victory garden you need a plan.
You can use a calendar or a spreadsheet, even a notebook but you need to plan out when things are ready for harvest and when things need to be started and transplanted.
Harvest Summer Crops Quick
Many of you might be standing where I am right now, with my summer crops just starting to produce but one of the big wins you can have in fall gardening is getting them in the ground growing as soon as your summer crops are done. That means pulling out determinate tomatoes, bolting lettuce, and other plants that have finished ASAP.
Energize Your Soil
If you are growing more then you need to add more to the soil. Get 2 inches of compost added to the garden bed before you start transplanting and sowing. Add some mycorrhizal fungi
Plan Plan Plan
Have a list of what’s growing and when the harvest is expected to finish so you know what will be coming out of the garden. Plan your planting in spring and summer to free up space by July for your fall garden. The end of July is usually the end of planting season for heading cabbage crops in Zones 6 and lower. Zones 7 and up is the end of August. Leafy crops like kale, collards, or mustards have a bit more leeway because they don’t form a tight head.
So plan for mid-July or mid-Aug for transplanting. And start seeds for long growing and heading cabbage 4 weeks earlier indoors. This is so you can get those longer growing crops like rutabaga or swedes, turnips, Brussel Sprouts, Kohlrabi, cauliflower, collards, and Chinese cabbage in the ground early to get well established.
If you are short on space, winter salads, spinach, cilantro, radish, small carrots like Chatanney or Parisienne, Swiss chard and beets are good options.
Water
Don’t let your garden dry out! This will stunt the growth of your plants and stop germination of those seeds you have sown in the ground. Keep newly sown and planted beds moist to help your garden grow.
Mulch
Help keep moisture in for your garden by using much. Newspaper and cardboard are great for keeping the weeds out and breaking down slowly. They also will help attract worms to the garden. Make sure you thoroughly wet paper or cardboard before using it to stop it blowing away and to help it break down.
If you want to avoid the ink and glue in your fall vegetable garden then straw, grass clippings from an untreated lawn and fall leaves are good organic mulches you might have available. Watch out for slugs and snails setting up shop in the mulch and eating your veggies. Entice them away from your plants with a beer trap.
Pest Protection
Summer is higher for the pest pressure or pest burden. This means there are more pests around looking for a yummy snack and your wee baby fall garden seedlings look like an all you can eat Vegas buffet in your freshly planted fall vegetable garden!
Cover your crops with some spun polyester floating row cover
Don’t Forget Herbs
Fall is a great time to get perennial herbs planted in a warm, sunny spot in the garden. Herbs like thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, chives and lavender are good options. Planting in fall means they can get their roots established and avoid heat stress. Herbs like mint and lemon balm can also be planted at this time; you can plant them in the ground or in containers if you don’t have space to put them in.
Leave Space For Garlic
Garlic is the easiest plant to grow and we grow lots of it! Leave space to plant garlic and shallots in your fall vegetable garden. You will be looking to plant in September to October somewhere that is well-draining and sunny. Pop the clove of garlic or the shallot bulb in the ground about 2 inches deep with the flat end down and the pointy end up.
Learn more about growing garlic.
Frost Protection
Get building some low tunnels or hoop houses and cold frames to protect from the killing frost.
Using frost protection can extend your fall vegetable garden growing for 6 weeks and beyond! A hoop house kept us in fresh greens throughout winter even with over a foot of snow on the ground.
They can be made relatively inexpensively and if positioned in a south-facing location will happily protect many frost-tolerant veggies to keep them available for harvesting throughout the winter!
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