How to Extend Your Gardening Season with Successful Fall Crops - Ep. 259

Karin Velez [00:00:00]:
It is not just my opinion. There is real science behind why fall gardens rock. If we take one example, it's because brassicas like kale and broccoli aren't just hearty, they pack a nutritional punch. A 2023 review calls them a nutritional goldmine, citing their boosts in vitamins and minerals. And as we go into the winter months, we tend to eat fewer fresh vegetable options in a lot of areas. So so this nutrition can be important. Plus, cooler temperatures slow the sugar breakdown and enhance the sweetness in a lot of these cooler season veggies, which means vitamin rich produce plus flavor. And we're talking fewer bugs and fewer diseases that hit in the cool season.

Karin Velez [00:00:45]:
So your garden and the gardener both get a break. So today on Just Grow Something we are talking about how to plan out a fall garden, how to know when to plant, what to plant, and how to extend the season a little bit further into the winter so that you can continue to harvest as much fresh produce as possible. As the day length wanes and the days turn colder, even my southern gardeners can learn a thing or two about how to continue the garden beyond fall. Let's dig in.

Karin Velez [00:01:41]:
So before we continue with this, if you want to jumpstart your fall garden plan, I have my annual Fall Garden Challenge. It is a fall free challenge. Do not underestimate how much you can do in the garden in the fall. You can regrow your favorites from the spring, you can try new crops. You can get redemption for the ones that failed earlier in the year. So go to justgrowsomethingpodcast.com fall and you can sign up today and get started right away. It is five days of emails for observation and crop selection, learning how to time those fall crops and helping you to create a very easy to follow plan. Plan.

Karin Velez [00:02:23]:
This is going to work for you if you are brand new to gardening in the fall or if maybe you haven't been as successful before that you you think you should have been. It's justgrowsomethingpodcast.com fall and that will take you right to the signup. So the first thing about a fall garden is kind of your timing, right? So the first thing that we want to do is check our local first frost date out here. That's typically mid October. It might be a little bit later, sometimes it might be a little bit earlier. Just remember when you look at these frost dates, it's only about 30% accurate. So keep that in mind as you're trying to plan these things out. Set yourself a reminder.

Karin Velez [00:03:03]:
Okay? Just put your date on the calendar for when it's time to plant or to plan a succession. There are apps out there that will help you do this, like Veg Plotter I think is one of them. You can also just set yourself a phone reminder. I, I just go old school. I use my calendar. I write the dates on my calendar as to when things need to go in the ground so that I get them in on time based on my first frost date. But also remember that episode that we did a couple weeks ago which talked about extending the days to maturity based on what it is that you are planting. So go back and listen to that episode.

Karin Velez [00:03:43]:
There's a chart in the show notes that's going to tell you how much, how many days you need to add to the days to maturity. Okay. We need to remember that volatile weather fluctuations can make it even more important for us to have a garden planner, a journal to keep track of how everything goes every season. It seems like the spring and the fall are the two that leave most to chance when, when it comes to what we plant and how we plant it. The timing of these things in the spring, specifically when the insects start less so in the fall. Like I said, it's one of the reasons why I really, truly enjoy fall gardening. Because most of the insect pests are done, but we have to get to that point. And, and it's important for us to keep track of when we're planting things and how they fare based on our weather conditions.

Karin Velez [00:04:37]:
I know I kind of harp on this a lot, and it can seem like a bit too much for somebody who is just a casual gardener, and if you really aren't concerned about the yield, then that's fine. You don't have to take these notes. But if you are a gardener who either gets frustrated because things aren't necessarily repeatable every single year, like you feel like you're doing the same thing over and over again, and one year you'll have a great year and one year you won't. There are reasons for that. It's not just chance. It has a lot to do with the weather fluctuations and when your first frost was, or how much rain you got, or what the sun conditions were, or the humidity or whatever it was, not to mention the insect pests and the critters and stuff that might, you know, cause some havoc. So I always encourage everybody, keep a journal and keep track of how things go every season. The other thing too, with the timing on giving getting these plants into the ground, is that you can absolutely extend your season based on using some season extension.

Karin Velez [00:05:42]:
And it is not super expensive to do this. A floating row cover of some sort can add 6 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit of warmth under there. And that can really extend your season, not just for those frost sensitive crops. So if we're talking things like lettuces that don't really like to have an actual freeze hit them, they they get damaged very quickly. Covering those is going to give you a little bit of an insurance policy. So if it's getting pretty close to freezing, well, you've just added 6 to 10 degrees. So that's perfect. That's going to save you and that's going to give you some extra time, especially if you were somewhere like where I live, that we might get a frost.

Karin Velez [00:06:28]:
But then for the next two weeks, the daytime highs are up like in the mid-70s and it's like a frost never happened. So if I can cover those plants and get them to go beyond that first frost, then I have another full two weeks that I can harvest off of those without a problem and then maybe use the row covers again as it starts to get cool. But this also extends to those crops that actually enjoy the cold. So those Brassicas that we talked about in the intro, you know, kale definitely tastes better once it has had a frost. Broccoli can intensify its flavor once it has had a light frost. Now, broccoli does not like a really hard deep freeze. So this might be a time where you use those row covers as it starts to get colder and colder, you're going to protect those crops so you have a longer harvest period. The thing about a lot of these crops that we plant for the fall is that we have to get them to maturity before our daylight hours dip.

Karin Velez [00:07:29]:
And we already talked once before about the fact that it's going to take them longer to get to maturity as those daylight hours are reducing and as the temperatures are dropping. So we have to give ourselves that cushion. But then we also can need to understand that that means that if those crops get to maturity before the daylight hours dip, that we can continue to harvest off of them or an extended period of time, so long as they haven't frozen solid and gotten severely damaged. We can continue to harvest into the winter as long as they were mature. This is good for kale, spinach, all of your brassicas. You can do this with carrots, all these things. We'll talk about these things here in a minute. But it's just another one of the advantages of being able to kind of pick up some season extensions.

Karin Velez [00:08:18]:
So you want to just kind of drape these over. If you can do some hoops of some sort and then anchor the edges really well and then vent them during the day, that's probably your best bet because if you're using fabric, which you should be, you should not be using plastic, you should be using fabric, then you don't necessarily want them draped over top because if they get wet, they can freeze. And there's all kinds of a mess here. I don't worry about it as much in the spring as I do like in the fall. So I think we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves here. So let's, let's talk first about the crops that we can grow. What are sort of the classics and what are maybe the newcomers to the, the whole game here as far as fall, fall gardening is concerned. If you have taken my Plan Like a Pro course, you're going to recognize the phrases that I'm about to use in terms of succession crops.

Karin Velez [00:09:09]:
Okay? If you haven't taken Plan Like a Pro, now is a really good time. You can go ahead and do that from the courses page on my website. It will totally prepare you for next season. And if you're doing the fall garden and you have time to get and really get planned, if you are in a warmer season or a warmer area, you have time to do that. But you know, just justgrowsomething.com courses, you can find it. But what we're talking about is like rapid succession and split succession. These are really good for the shoulder seasons. These are usually cool season candidates.

Karin Velez [00:09:42]:
So what I would call rapid succession crops, these are crops that mature in 60 days or less, and they are perfect candidates for being planted very quickly behind one another. Okay? Hence the, the phrase rapid succession. So, for instance, rather than planting your lettuce all at one time, you would stagger the plantings by two or even three weeks. These are usually crops that don't do well in the heat, and they tend to bolt in the spring when that summer heat starts to come in. So we stop planting them. But that makes them a great option for a succession or two or even three, depending on where you live in the fall garden. So really good candidates for these rapid successions are things like leaf lettuces, spinach, baby kale, baby mustard, arugula, radishes, beet greens, if you're growing beets for the greens, baby shard, baby bok choy, and green onions if you're growing them from sets. So sets are the little onions that are basically second year bulbs.

Karin Velez [00:10:51]:
They just little bulbage pop in, but they generally take about 28 to 30 days to actually develop like green onions. And you can sort of succession plant these too to get a continuous harvest of those. When we're talking about split successions, these are the cool season crops that take like 60 to 90 days to reach maturity. So these usually aren't candidates for like multiple successions in one season because they also tend to do poorly in the heat. But they can be planted like twice per year in each shoulder season so that you can increase your overall yield for the entire gardening year. Right. These crops generally reach maturity before the heat of the season begins in the summer. So it's like a one and done, and then you can plant them again to mature during the cooler days of late fall.

Karin Velez [00:11:51]:
So a lot of these are the brassicas we were talking about. So broccoli, cauliflower, fast maturing cabbages, carrots, turnips and beets, these all fall into that category. Getting your full sized kale, full sized chard and mustard head lettuces. So these take longer to mature than the leaf lettuces. Right. And then depending on what climate you live in, you can also do potatoes and peas as a split succession. So you want kind of fast maturing varieties and it's going to depend on what climate you're living in, but you can absolutely attempt these in both the spring and and again in the fall.

Karin Velez [00:13:52]:
Now there are ones that I kind of call mid range successions. These are those crops that take like 60 to 90 days to mature but that can stand the heat. So they are also candidates for the fall garden depending on where you live. So for instance, if you're in a climate where it really gets too hot for tomatoes and beans and some of the squashes like in the mid summer, so think like South Texas and your first frost comes much later in the year or you don't get one at all and we're just concerned about day length. So things like determinate tomatoes, bush beans, summer squashes, these can also be candidates for you in your fall garden. This is all about determining when your cutoff is for your garden and understanding the days to maturity for the crops that you want to grow.

Karin Velez [00:14:52]:
So again, go Back to episode 257 and refer to the chart and in the notes where we added time to the days to maturity based on the waning daylight and the cooling temperatures because there is an adjustment for fall that needs to happen and then use that information, figure out what your cutoff is for your garden and then decide if you have time to grow some of these crops right? A few things that you might not have tried before that would be good for the fall garden would be Asian greens like Mitsuno and Tatsoi. Choy is like a smaller version of that large bok choy. They grow very quickly, they are very tasty and they are shade tolerant. So if your garden light availability changes throughout the season, so say in the spring you have a whole lot of sun, right? You've got full sun in your garden in the spring because the trees haven't leafed out yet, they've all lost their leaves and all that sun is coming through and you can grow a lot of these things with no problem because you have the full sun. But once those leaves Start to fill in in those trees and you get later into the season and the sun has shifted a little bit, then maybe you don't quite have as much sun in your late summer garden. That's not necessarily a bad thing, right? It makes it a little bit easier for you to get some of these crops into the ground if it is. If your garden is shaded during that late afternoon period in the hottest part of the summer, which a lot of the time is when we're having to plant these crops to get them to maturity, then you might have a consideration for shade that might be important to you. So finding things like, you know, mizuna and Tatsoi that are shade tolerant might be a consideration for you.

Karin Velez [00:16:45]:
So as always, as we are planning out the garden, we want to take into consideration everything that is going on out there. So like we just talked about the, the shade. Okay. If the light has changed in your garden from the time that you planted in the early spring and then in the late spring for your summer crops, we need to be cognizant of that. It's a really good idea to kind of sketch the bed layout on a piece of paper. If you like using things digitally, then you can go ahead and recreate that digitally on, you know, veg plotter or on your tablet or, or whatever you want to do. It's just a good idea to, to take account of what is currently in the summer garden and how you can utilize some of those existing plants to help maybe shade some of these things that you're planting in the late summer for the fall, or what is going to be exiting the bed and you are going to have is going to make way for more room for you to be able to plant things for the fall. This is also an opportunity to be able to sketch out what interplantings you might want to do, you know, so if you do some fast growing radishes in between your slower growing brassicas, that's going to maximize your space and your timing.

Karin Velez [00:18:00]:
It makes it easier to kind of visualize this if you have it laid out in front of you and it gives you the opportunity to sort of move things around based on how long it takes them to get to maturity, how much sun they need, etc, before you actually go out there and plant them. Because obviously once you get them planted, it's a little bit harder to get them moved. I also would say don't overlook containers, things that you can grow on the porch, things that you can grow in pots that can be moved around based on the amount of sunlight that is still available. Because remember, we're at that time of the year when the sun is starting to change its, you know, trajectory over our gardens. And so being able to sort of follow the sun if you need to, might be a good way to do that. You can grow salad great on, you know, pour on the porch in pots. You can also possibly look at, you know, extending your season a little bit by being able to bring those things indoors or even just doing microgreens indoors. And we don't talk about microgreens a ton, but they're very nutritious and they're usually pretty easy to grow.

Karin Velez [00:19:00]:
So even if you're not getting into, you know, a large amount of crops that you're growing for the fall, you can still, you know, add microgreens, and that's going to help you. In any case, we don't want to overlook our soil. Right? We always want to. Anytime we're like changing things up in the garden, it's a really good idea for us to do a soil test. You gotta think we have been growing in these beds all season long. This is even more important if you are growing in containers, whether that is raised beds like my planter box direct beds, or if you're doing them in pots and containers, that is a limited volume of soil. Even if you're growing in a raised bed that has opened to the bottom, you have kind of manufactured the soil that is in that bed. And that means that there is a limited amount of nutrients available within that volume of soil.

Karin Velez [00:19:59]:
So we need to be cognizant of the fact that our plants that we've been growing since the spring, or the very intense sort of heavy feeders that we grew in the summer may have depleted that soil a little bit. So it's a good idea to test the soil not just for nutrient needs, but also for the soil ph, because that can change too. This is also important if you're doing in ground beds. I mean, our ground, especially depending on where you live and what soil profiles you have, the nutrients that can be drawn that sort of alleviate from underneath aren't always as much as we might think they are. So you're still going to have to amend your. In ground beds in a lot of places, especially if you're growing pretty intensively, if you're growing a lot of plants in a very small space, you're doing a lot of interplanting, you know, like I recommend, then you might be drawing a lot of those nutrients up. So now is a really good Time to do a soil test and figure out before you start planting whether or not you need to amend those beds. I just picked up probably 20 bags of a garden.

Karin Velez [00:21:04]:
It's not a garden soil, it is a raised bed garden soil. And so it's a nice mix of a bunch of different things. And I'm going to use that to refresh about 10 of the beds that I'm going to be completely sort of turning over and planting anew for, for the fall. And then once the end of the season comes and I have to, you know, everything's done in the other beds and it's spent and I pull them out, then I will end up refreshing the rest of those and then I'm going to cover everything with mulch. With the in ground beds, some of them are going to be refreshed with compost as I turn them over to put the fall brassicas in. So that's going to happen. Compost is always a really good idea if you can mix that in. If you have, you know, biochar or wood ash, if your soil is a bit acidic, that will help.

Karin Velez [00:21:55]:
So again, taking that ph is a good idea. This is not only going to help with the nutrients, it's to going, going to help with the microbial life. And that is really, really important to just the overall health of the plants, but also the nutrition that we get out of those plants.

Karin Velez [00:23:26]:
Winter cover crops or living mulches are also a really good possibility for the fall garden. Even if you don't plan on growing anything to actually eat. If you're kind of just done with the garden at this stage of the game, which I totally understand, you know, especially with the way some of our summers have gone. If you're just burnt out on the garden and you just want to be done with it and okay, summer's over, that's it, I'm dropping my, my shovel and I'm walking away. I encourage you to at least at the end of the season, you know, start to at least clear out those beds a little bit. And if you can, plant some cover crops in your beds, and it doesn't matter if it's a raised bed or if it's an in ground bed, you can use cover crops no matter what, or a living mulch, whatever you want to call it, that is going to help to improve the structure and the fertility of your soil. It's also going to help to feed those soil microbes.

Karin Velez [00:24:25]:
And if you can plant something that sort of comes up and then stays in place throughout the winter time, even if it winter kills, if it winter kills, it's going to act like a natural mulch once it kind of kills over. So you're, you're protecting that soil, but you're also feeding it at the same time. So even if you're not going to plant kale or broccoli or spinach or beets or carrots or whatever, plant something that's still going to benefit your garden and it's going to benefit you come spring because you won't have to add as much in terms of nutrients and you won't have to worry as much about mulch, you can actually plant right into it. So there's a whole different bunch of, of benefits to planting cover crops rather than, you know, planting an actual traditional garden. It's also shown that that cooler soil sustains microbial activity better than the heat dried summer soils. So if you are growing a fall garden, you very well may see that as long as you have, you know, kind of updated the fertility and made sure that you have enough fertility in the soil that you might actually get better crops than what you did through the summertime. Just because that soil is cooler and those microbes are moving around and doing their jobs better. And so you're getting better plants out of it, which is fantastic.

Karin Velez [00:25:45]:
So what about like the cool season pests and diseases? Honestly, in, in my area anyway, we don't have to worry about a whole lot of them. Once we start to get towards the end of the summer and we start to move into fall, the squash bugs are going to be there no matter what, little buggers. But at that point, the majority of the other pests seem to have run their course. I can't speak for other areas, but I would encourage you to kind of pay attention to that too and just kind of see what is going on again. You know, the floating row covers that we use as frost cloth can also help to keep out things like cabbage loopers and aphids and that sort of thing. So that's kind of doing a double whammy there. Of course, I always recommend insect netting anyway, but if you're, if you're looking for something that kind of will do dual purpose, you can get very light fabric floating row covers that will act as a natural, you know, sort of pest control. And then you can continue to double and triple up that layer over top when you need it for frost protection.

Karin Velez [00:26:50]:
So you can, you know, save yourself by just kind of buying one type of a thing and being able to, to use it. In terms of diseases, I think really we're mostly concerned about fungal issues, especially if you are in an area where the winter is actually your rainy season and that's when you get the most of your moisture. That usually is the thing that we watch out for, especially since you're not going to have quite as much in terms of the sun's sort of drying rays in the, the late fall, you know, and as we move into winter. So that's just something to watch for. And again, you can, you can use the row covers is you just want to make sure there's some breathability. So if you can put some sort of a support over top of those rows or in the beds, then that's going to help with that airflow. You just want to check regularly, right? You so check for the fungal diseases. So like downy mildew, it can literally, you know, show up practically overnight.

Karin Velez [00:27:51]:
And part of that is because the nights are longer and so it can just start that blooming period much more quickly, you know, in the, in the dark and you're not checking on it. So just check regularly both for your cool season pests and also for the fungal diseases. Okay, so quick checklist for the, for the Fall garden, right? Find your frost date, figure out what it is that you want to grow. You're going to count backwards, right? We've talked about this before in terms of figuring out what the days to maturity is for, what it is that you want to grow, and then adding that percentage, knowing that we're going into a darker, cooler season. So we need to add some extra time. And you know, at this stage of the game, you may or may not have time to start from seed. So you may need to find some plants somewhere or you're going to sow directly into the soil and just set yourself an alert of some sort as to when that date comes up. I have a calendar I write on there every single one of the days where it is the ideal time for me to plant the crops that I am going to grow.

Karin Velez [00:28:57]:
In fact, we have a bunch of them going on this week and then again next week and then again the week after that. So it can be spaced out depending on what it is that you're growing. I would also say to be a little bit flexible in this too, if your planting conditions are not ideal. We are in a severe heat warning for about six days, I think, this week. And I mean, the heat indices are going to be up over like 107, 108 Fahrenheit. The humidity is just suffocating, which also means that the soil temperatures are really warm right now. Now, yes, I have mulch over top of them and so the plants that are out there are doing fine. But I probably would not go out right now and, you know, clear out a space to be able to either put a transplant into the ground or to direct sow anything.

Karin Velez [00:29:53]:
I don't think it would do very well. So I am okay with waiting until next week to get those plants in. And at the time that I plant them, I'm going to make sure that I soak that soil and I'm going to cool that soil off a little bit if necessary, if it's still holding on to some of that heat. If you have a soil thermometer or a compost thermometer or something, even if you have an a meat thermometer that you're not using anymore, or maybe you are, if you're confident you can clean it, fine, use that. Check the soil depth where you are going to plant, whether it's transplanting at a 4 to 6 inch depth or putting the seed in the ground at, you know, just an eighth of an inch and see how hot it is at different parts of the day so that you know when the optimum time is going to be to plant. If you have to wait a few days, that's okay. But make sure that you have it on a calendar so that you know when it is. Don't be willy nilly and just go, oh, today seems like a good day to plant.

Karin Velez [00:30:49]:
No, check your calendar. Okay? You also want to prep that soil. So take your tests, add your compost, add your amendments, change the P. You know, do something to help with the ph a little bit if that's necessary. Plan that layout, you know, figure out how you're going to mix your, your classics in with your new kind of greens and stuff. Include your inter plantings, include your succession plantings if you're going to do some of those rapid successions. And then if you are going to plan for some season extension, then maybe now is a good time to put in some hoops for those row covers. And then just be prepared to start scouting weekly for pests and diseases.

Karin Velez [00:31:26]:
And if you see them, you need to pull them or you need to treat it very, very quickly. So remember the five day email challenge for my fall gardening challenge. You can go in there at any time. It's justgrowsomethingpodcast.com/fall that will take you right there and you will get that series of emails starting immediately. There's no need to wait. So at least it's going to help you with sort of that planning to be able to get yourself into the fall garden. I really, really hope that, I mean, even if you just try one bed or one corner of the garden that you give it a shot, I think you would be pleasantly surprised. I know the burnout is real, especially for those of us right now who are in these heat warnings and or if you're dealing with smoke from wildfires or whatever it is and you're just feeling burnt out, I totally get that.

Karin Velez [00:32:15]:
But if you can just eek a little bit of energy out of your yourself to be able to get out there into the fall garden or into the summer garden and be able to plant for fall once it starts to cool off. I guarantee you will be so happy that you did because gardening in the fall really is an absolute treat. Until next time, my gardening friends. Keep on cultivating that dream garden and we'll talk again soon.