Plan now for your fall garden!

It's weird to be thinking about fall when it doesn't even feel like summer has hit its stride, but here I am, planning what seeds I need to start to ensure I have cabbages and carrots galore. Gardens in Waitsburg are typically about two weeks ahead of my garden's microclimate; however, I start planning two weeks ahead of folks in town when prepping for fall. Around my garden, there seems to be some sort of cold spot in how the air settles at night coupled with a higher elevation. As such, I need to keep a close eye on our anticipated first frost date and get to planning early to ensure I have a productive fall garden once the tomatoes and peppers have long since disappeared.

Timing your fall garden takes a little fiddling to get it right, and I'm by no means a master. The general process for starting fall seeds has a few key steps. First, determine the date for the average first frost in your area by looking up the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map on the USDA and using the frost dates provided for your area's zone. Waitsburg is in Zone 7A, which lists the first frost date as somewhere around October 15th. Please note this is a rough average and varies year to year and location by location. You've been duly warned.

Once you know your zones estimated first-frost, you can calculate your planting date backward from there. Let's use peas as an example. The seed packet may say, "60 days until harvest". But here's the catch; that date assumes you're planting in spring when the sun is slowly getting stronger, and the weather gets warmer. However, if you're planting for fall, the temperature slowly gets cooler as the sun angle decreases, and if you plant those peas for a 60-day harvest, you'll likely lose them to frost earlier than you'd prefer.

Of course, this all depends on the year. If you get a late frost, you'll likely be fine. Early frost or hard freeze and hopes could be dashed for the year. The advice I've found helpful is to add two or three weeks to the "days to harvest" listed on the seed packet. So, with the peas example, I might plant them 75 days before our first anticipated frost. This helps to account for the reduced growth in response to the waning sun.

What works well for a fall crop? I highly recommend almost everything in the Brassica family- broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and cabbages of all kinds (skip the Brussels Sprouts, they need a very long growing season). I have much better success growing these crops in the fall rather than the spring. Other varieties that can be planted even later in the season or in staggered plantings include radishes, peas, carrots, and leafy greens like spinach and lettuce. Again, it will take some tweaking to get your dates right for your location, but here's the bonus: fall crops that have reached maturity by the first frost will get infinitely sweeter as the starches get converted to sugars during cold weather. If you have hopes of winning over a kale hater in your family, here's your cue! Oh, and if you want garlic next year, don't forget it's a fall-planted crop much like flower bulbs, so order your seed garlic soon.

You might be wondering why I don't just buy some starts and not worry about a fussy seed-starting schedule. Well, here's my big irk with started plants: the garden centers stop carrying them after the big spring gardening push. I can't blame them as I'm sure the sales in late summer aren't great but mark my words, you'll be hard-pressed to find any starts come July. Even more annoying, it's also nearly impossible to find any seed-starting mix. That is why I'm writing this article now. If you have plans for a fall garden, get your seeds and potting mix now before they're gone for the year. I'd recommend setting up a fall planting calendar so you can count backward from that frost date for each crop, so you know when to start each type of seed and when to transplant them into the garden (don't forget to slowly harden them off, so they don't get torched in the sun). Cheers to fall cabbages and the best carrots you'll ever eat.

Writer and art collector Gertrude Stein once said, "A vegetable garden, in the beginning, looks so promising, and then, after all, little by little it grows nothing but vegetables, nothing, nothing but vegetables." It's almost as if that's the whole point.