How do you make an autumn vegetable garden?
The growing and harvesting season can last well into autumn, but many vegetable gardeners do not know this. Find out how to extend your growing season with a beautiful fall garden.
Many beginning gardeners lament the end of summer because they think it is the end of meals produced in their own gardens. However, if you plant a fall garden full of vegetables, you can still enjoy fresh vegetables until the new school season.
Why an autumn vegetable garden?
Aside from the fact that there are so many intriguing cold-weather options to try, such as crisp green lettuce, otherworldly-looking purple kohlrabi and crinkly Chinese cabbage, planting fall crops in your garden allows you to keep fresh and healthy food from your own garden. Although you may miss the peppers of summer, fall vegetables offer distinctive, tasty and nutritious elements for your fall meal recipes. Autumn gardens also offer many benefits:
- Lower temperatures mean you don’t have to water as often and make gardening more fun.
- Like lettuce, arugula and parsley, many vegetables and herbs can tolerate some shade in cold weather.
- Many garden pests are less active in the fall, but you should still be wary of invaders such as cabbage worms, which love leafy vegetables like kale and (of course) white cabbage.
- While the heat of summer causes lettuce to wilt and arugula to become bitter, frost actually improves the flavor of many cold season vegetables such as kale and Brussels sprouts.
What can you plant?
Consider what you buy regularly at the supermarket or market and then try growing it at home, as you would in any garden. Check the expected first frost date for your region to ensure you can harvest delicate crops before hard frosts. Once you are aware of this, you can begin sowing or planting. Most seeds or plants you buy will say how many weeks it needs to mature. Be sure to start that amount of time before the expected severe frost.
This can be a bit tricky to estimate for seeds, but if you are already buying young plants from your local garden center, they can advise you on this as well.
Examples of fall vegetables are:
Other interesting rules of thumb are:
Broccoli, fennel, kohlrabi, onion, carrots and parsley: 8 to 10 weeks before frost
Arugula, Chinese cabbage, kale, lettuce and spinach; 6 to 8 weeks before frost
Planting perennial fruits and vegetables such as asparagus and strawberries, which come back year after year, is also a great idea in the fall. Even though you can’t harvest until spring (and in the case of asparagus, not until the second spring), the milder fall weather gives the plants more time to establish themselves. In addition, perennial herbs such as mint, thyme, oregano, sage, chives, lemon balm, lavender and rosemary can grow strong roots and escape heat stress by being planted in the colder fall months.
How do you plant an autumn vegetable garden?
As in your summer vegetable garden, fall vegetables have 4 basic needs:
- The right amount of sunlight. Although many fall vegetables tolerate some shade, all vegetables still need at least some sun to grow and flourish. Before planting, check your garden to determine how many hours of sunlight it receives, and remember that light will shift and shorten in the fall.
- Quality (potting) soil. Wherever you plant, you want to make sure the plant roots get the very best environment for lots of vigorous growth, in the form of rich, well-drained soil.
- Water with regularity. Make sure you water plants thoroughly. Both when you plant, and after they are settled in the ground. A good rule of thumb is to give your green babies an inch of water per week. An inexpensive rain gauge is a great way to see how much you have to add to what Mother Nature provides.
- Adequate good nutrition.
Think about how you feel when you’re hungry – you’re just not your best self, are you?
It’s the same way with plants.
To bloom and deliver an impressive harvest, they need regular feeding with a high-quality fertilizer such as CANNA Terra Vega during growth, and CANNA Terra Flores furing flowering. Start Vega about a month after planting and Flores as soon as the plant begins to develop flowers. Bomb full of good, natural, nutrients like sugar beet from Dutch soil, and the right NPK values for growth and flowering.
One more thing: In milder climates, many vegetables planted in the fall can overwinter in the spring using a layer of mulch or a low tunnel for protection. Als the days get shorter, you may need a sweater in the garden, but there is still plenty of time to enjoy homegrown delicacies before winter arrives. Enjoy!
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