Growing The Fall Vegetable Garden Part 1

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I finally started my fall vegetable garden. I planted it in one of my 4’x3′ raised beds by planting lettuce, radishes, onions, broccoli and more summer squash. I know summer squash isn’t a fall vegetable crop but I’m hoping to get one more batch of yellow crookneck squash before the first frost. This raised bed is the first of  4 raised beds that I will convert from summer vegetables to fall vegetables in the coming days.

One of the biggest advantages to fall gardening is the lack of insects to bother the plants or the gardener. Most insects will have completed their life-cycle with the fall vegetables are picking up speed which is great for those plants!

I did a little preparation before planting that should help the fall vegetables along. I leveled the bed and removed any weeds then I did something different as an experiment. I moved the dirt from one side to the other and layered newspaper then moved the dirt back over it. Then I repeated the process with the other side. My thought was that the newspapers would act as a water retention device and keep the water closer to the plants longer. The newspapers will break down eventually and add to the organic matter already in the bed. Then I leveled the bed again and tamped down the surface with my garden rake.

Before planting seeds I made sure that the vegetable bed was well moistened with cool water. Most spring and fall vegetable seeds prefer cooler temperatures for germination and watering with cool water may help to offset some of the summer heat we are still experiencing. Fortunately the nights have been much cooler which should help the seeds. To prevent the rodents from getting into the bed I’ll be putting up a small plastic mesh around each bed. I’ll wait on the mesh until some of the seeds have germinated.

My next raised bed will have spinach, a second round of lettuce and radishes. I may sneak some beets in there too since I love beets! By sequencing the lettuce I can spread out the harvest. The spinach is very cold tolerant and should last much of the winter.

Have you started your fall vegetable garden yet?

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6 thoughts on “Growing The Fall Vegetable Garden Part 1”

  3. Oooh, I'll have to try the newspaper trick! When you say there are less bugs in the fall, does that also mean mosquitos. I wanted to plant more radishes today, but the mosquitos were out in full force so I gave up. I love beets too. Yum.

  4. JUST did so this very day. Took out all the old cukes and cantaloupe vines and put in broccoli, savoy cabbage and lettuce. The onions go in tomorrow hopefully. It is always nice to see the garden cleaned up and ready for a new season. Here's to some rain this week!

  6. Eileen – Try lettuce in a pot if nothing else! Then you can move the pot around as you need to and even bring it inside.

    Lola – I know the feeling. Things haven't slowed down a bit since July 1st!

    Meemsnyc,

    Hopefully the mosquito population will be dying back soon. They've been bad down here this year. The newspaper thing is an experiment to see how well it hold water, it may not work like I want it to but it's worth a shot.

    Tina,

    I need to get some more onions planted. We can easily go through two onions a week when we are cooking. I'll have to take out some yellow pear tomatoes and some cherries to add more space for fall veggies!

    Darla,

    Newspapers do great! I have taken newspapers to the recycling place in a long time – they are all in the garden!

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Growing The Fall Vegetable Garden

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As I mentioned in a previous post about fall vegetable gardening we’re in the window of opportunity for getting those fall veggies going. All those cool season vegetables you planted for spring are eligible for a second go round in the garden. In our garden the radishes are rising, the sugar snap peas are sown, and everything else is will be green and growing soon. It’s all been planted and all that is left to do is to continue the weeding, monitor the watering, and to tolerate the waiting. I did alter my fall vegetable planting layout slightly. I was forced to change my bean area to a 2 foot by 4 foot section rather than the 1 foot by 4 foot section in the layout. Part of the reason was to make more beans for freezing but I do have to admit I forgot my layout when I was planting and accidentally doubled their area! That’s fine by me though since green beans are regulars in our menus. It does mean I have to sacrifice some square footage originally intended for broccoli, but that’s sacrifice my wife was ready to make!

This batch of bush beans is already producing. I planted them a couple weeks before our final batch of bush beans which you can see have sprouted in the next picture. There are a couple pole beans planted in the the bed that I need to stake up mixed with all the remaining seed from a packet about four years old. Seeds are amazing things, they can stay dormant for years then pop up and grow when the conditions are right.

The next batch of bush beans was planted in three irregular rows by my daughter and myself. Crooked rows don’t matter as long as my daughter learned a little more about this gardening thing we love so much. My thought is to get the kids involved as often as I can to introduce that gardening habit. Kids who grow their own food and see where it comes from are more likely to eat it.
The radishes are coming up all over their area. I’ll thin them out soon since I over planted them to ensure adequate coverage. 
I can’t wait to see more sugar snap peas appear this fall. The few we had in the spring were so delicious that they never made it inside the house! I’ll probably have to tape my mouth shut when picking the peas to avoid the same problem this fall. As an added benefit these are legumes which help to add nitrogen to the soil. I have them planted in an area that may house tomatoes next year and the extra nitrogen will help those tomatoes get a good green start.
 
And of course what vegetable is probably the most popular one in the fall for ornamental reasons?
 

It’s the Great Pumpkin of course! Maybe this one will be something more impressive than last year’s little pair of pumpkins. They aren’t Atlantic Giants or anything terribly impressive just Jack-O-Lantern pumpkins but that’s exactly what we’re looking for.
I’m still waiting on the lettuce, spinach, cabbage, and beets to show their greenery. Another preview of fall weather is coming up this weekend which might entice the little leafy green veggies to show themselves. Several cucumber seedlings are not pictured in this post but are definitely on their way. We’ll see what they can do before the frost takes them out in October.

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2 thoughts on “Growing The Fall Vegetable Garden”

  1. I've been negligent and need to get out there and plant! The lack of rain is not helping but your radishes are encouraging me.

  2. I like your die hard gardening. When your family begs you to come in – it's snowing, garden season is over. Fall is a great time to garden. But most gardeners are just tired by this time.
    Patsy Bell Hobson

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