Growing Challenge – Planting a Fall Garden

Posted on | August 9, 2008 | 2 Comments

In the spirit of trying new things (and trying to eat local for a year), I planted a fall garden this weekend. Based on tips by Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest, and on the varieties of vegetables I’m best able to get my family to eat, I assembled the following packets of seeds and planted them around the summer vegetables:

• Early Snowball Cauliflower – OK, Eliot Coleman didn’t have great things to say about cauliflower, but I am strangely addicted to it, especially when roasted with garlic and pine nuts!
• Bloomsdale Spinach – Some of this is getting planted later this fall too for winter and early spring harvest.
• Purple & White Vienna Kohlrabi
• Shogoin Turnip
• French Breakfast and Cherry Belle Radish – These are my insurance policies against fall crop failure. They mature in 20-25 days, so if we get an early frost, I’ll still get to harvest radishes!
• Snow & Sugar Snap Peas – Since my spring ones got crisped in the hot weather, I’m going to try again!
• Trieste Fennel
• Jewel-Toned Beets – OK, I realize no one will eat these but me, but they’re just supposed to be so good for root cellaring that I can’t pass them up.

It’s going to be an interesting experiment to see if my summer vegetables are done and out of the way before these fall interlopers start to get big. That’s part of the reason I waited an extra week or two (some would recommend late July planting for this region because of the unpredictable first frost date), especially since the summer veggies went in late this year.

At any rate, I planted cauliflowers around my basil & tomatoes, peas between the bean rows, radishes in the strawberry patch, kohlrabi between the onion rows, put the turnips, fennel, & beets in where I had to pull some diseased tomatoes, and over-seeded the last of the spring lettuces with spinach and some left-over mixed greens.

I have some other things to plant in September too, including:

• Red Russian & Red Winter Kale – Coleman promises me I can harvest Kale straight out of the snow, so I’m giving this one a try! I should probably plant it now, but I still have a lot of greens in the garden (including Kale I planted in June), so I don’t have room!
• Pak Choi
• Italian Silver Rib Chard
• Leeks – OK, I already have 100 of these delicacies growing in the garden, so I might be sick of leeks by March, but we’ll see!
• Garlic – This won’t get harvested until next summer, but I need to get it ordered, so I’ve got it here as a reminder as much as anything!
• Mache, Arugula, and other mixed leaf lettuce
• Chives & Parsley – These will get covered by a cold frame when the weather turns cold.
• Purple Haze Carrots – Ditto the above

I only have two cold frames (in fact, I only have one, but I do have an old shower door that I’m hoping my darling husband will turn into a cold frame before November), so it will be interesting to see how crowded the quarters are in there come November. People keep recommending row covers, so if I can figure out how to keep them from blowing away, I may try those next year.

What an experiment! I’ll report back here as the fall garden develops. Check out what other folks are doing on The Growing Challenge.

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