What Fall Gardening Actually Looks Like (or Should Look Like)
Sharon July 7th, 2009
Here’s what I’ll be doing this week in July here in zone 4/5 – this information will obviously have to be adapted to your zone, location, microclimate and grip on reality 
, but at least it gives you a sense of things. And maybe writing it down will make me actually do it all.
- Transplanting cabbage and brussels sprouts started at the beginning of June
- Transplanting a mid-season crop of lettuce
- Eyeing my garlic, and looking greedily at its space, so that when it comes out I can immediately replace it with something else.
-Starting the next crop of lettuce from seed indoors (inside, because it is cooler there, to keep it from early bolting).
- Transplanting the next crop of broccoli
- Thinning the broccoli that will produce latest in the season (we eat a lot of broccoli)
- Starting peas from seed in newspaper or coir pots
- Starting Marshmallow, Valerian, Meadowsweet, joe pye weed and other wetland herbs from seed – they will be second year annuals next summer (this may not apply to other people who don’t want large quantities of these crops, but also would work for any perennial flower you might want, as long as it gets settled in before frost.
- Planting a late crop of scallions and lutz winter keeper beets.
- Thinning the rutabagas and keeping the weeds out of the parsnips
- Planting a late crop of cornichon cucumbers and one of bush beans for preserving
- Planting napa cabbage for my fall kimchi
- Building a hay-bale raised bed for my carrots, so they can have the loose, sandy soil they crave, rather than the rocky stuff that came with my property. Carrots will get planted next week.
- Underplanting red and white clover among my crops as a living mulch and cover crop.
- Sowing buckwheat as a cover crop.
- Adding composted chicken manure to the as yet unreadied section of the garden on which I will be planting more stuff next week.
Other stuff will have to wait until next week – the last fall planting will start at the beginning of September, when the last crop of radishes, spinach and arugula go in. But that’s getting ahead of myself.
Sharon
- cool season gardening
- Comments(10)
I’m tired just reading that list. Allow twice as much time for completion.
Fall gardening should look like, for me, having my feet up, sipping a beer and watching someone else doing the chores. Never happens, though.
Sharon, can I start the lettuce indoors and then transplant it? Or do I need to keep it in the same container? (And the same questions for sugar snap peas…) I’m in zone 5.
I am with you on eyeing the garlic space greedily!! Especially because I live on 1/10th of an acre and garden between the shade of 3 80-year old trees. It doesn’t stop me much, but I sure do like the garlic space for my fall crops.
Why peas in pots?
I have some of those seedlings started, but since its basically not stopped raining for a month (and poured tonight) we’ve now got standing water in parts of the garden.
The weeds are growing great though
.
Beth in Massachusetts
Ooooh, so there IS hope of getting some carrots after the Something Mysterious* happened to the ones I planted…uh, way too late to begin with. We are supposed to be zone 4ish in Minneapolis, but there’s that urban heat bubble thing and I’m not really sure what our actual zone is any more. I’ll take your list for inspiration, though, assuming my *summer* garden survives.
(*Seriously, we went on vacation, with someone cat sitting and garden sitting, and I come back to *3* whole little carrot tops waving at me. ??? The first year we planted them the same thing happened. We blamed the rabbits. The tomatoes, although looking a bit *stringy* seem to be doing OK. I was starting to think the soil would never really warm up enough to put them in.)
Hi Beth – I’ve got the same water. I am starting the peas in pots just in case we get our usual July/early Aug heat, which in some years has fried the peas. That way, I can keep them sheltered and cool until the beginning of next month. But, of course, it is 68 degrees today, so maybe I’m wasting my time. Most years, this helps
.
Sharon
Around here, the average high is 90, the average low is 70, for the rest of July. Basically we do put our feet up and rest this month (well, not really … now is when I get to the rest of the yard, and the projects I put off while planting was happening). It’s too hot to grow most of what you planted. Lettuce in July, in Missouri? Ha. A recipe for frustration.
When I do my fall planting is whenever we get a few-day-long stretch of cooler weather after July 15 and before August 15, when it’s cool enough at night to get the seeds germinated and growing. It’ll be all seeds this year. I didn’t start any transplants because I wanted to avoid using the lights in the basement to start the seeds. If I am lucky, we won’t have a several-week-long heat wave in August and September that kills any chances for a fall garden, like we did in 2007.
I’m also curious about the many transplantings/replantings of broccoli (and I second “why peas in pots?”). I plant peas and brassicas in April (MI/zone 5). Peas are just about done for the year, and the broccoli is just starting up. I’ll be eating broccoli constantly until hard frost, and I’ll be eating kale until it runs out (usually Thanksgiving). Why re-plant in the middle of the summer? It’s really just getting going around July 1. Does summer-started kale survive the winter better? Something about being shorter and more out of the wind?
Emily, we’ve already eaten most of our first planting of broccoli – I start it early, since we love brocc, and while I keep some excellent side shooters going, with six of us in the household, I really need some big, dense heads to keep going – so I plant multiple maturities and then do a second sowing and usually a third one, although if we don’t have a long hot stretch, I won’t need the tird one.
The peas are for the fall crop – if I plant them out in normal weather (we are not havingnormal weather) the heat stunts them. But if I start them in the comparative cool of teh house, they can go in as things start to get a little cooler later in the summer, and make a good fall crop. I like peas too much to only eat them once a year
.
Sharon
Believe it or not, I’m envious – it’s way too hot to start anything here during July & August. Zone 8b, and we’ve been having a heatwave of 100+F temps since June!