After all your planning and hard work, you finally start to reap the rewards from your garden. Your Peppers are growing more and more fruit every day, but your lettuce has bolted and all your carrots are harvested. You can't help but feel sad and miss your other vegetables. It's late in the season though, what could you possibly plant?!
What you need to know!
Before you actually get started planting you need to realize planting fall crops is a little different that planting in spring.
Fall planting is a great way to squeeze another harvest into our oh so short growing season.
- Make sure you are using quick to harvest varieties, for instance, carrots range from 55-90 days depending on the variety. You need to be aware of your first frost date and plan 1 week ahead.
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Harvest those summer crops now, the extra size you will sacrifice by harvesting now will MORE than be made up by the additional fall harvest.
- Planting near a thermally conductive material can help retain heat. Paving stones and brick walls are great examples of this, they soak up heat from the sun all day and slowly release it overnight, helping keep your plants healthy and warm.
So get out there and get started!
- Carrots
Carrots are a delicious staple to any garden, because carrots are mainly in the soil they are not as sensitive to the outside temperatures. Planting a fast-growing variety and thinning your carrots will ensure you harvest full-sized carrots before the cold weather sets in.
- Garlic
Garlic is a unique addition to this list, you will plant it in the fall and harvest it next summer. Garlic is in the same family as tulips or lilies, they can survive easily all winter underground.
If you live in the northern United States or Canada like me, you’ll want to use hard neck garlic. You can find organic garlic at your local grocery store. Plant the bulbs 3” deep and 5” apart then cover with soil and a layer of mulch. I prefer to use straw as it’s cheap and easy to clean up.
Planting a few weeks before your last frost, usually mid-October allows you to enjoy a nice harvest late next June
- Swiss Chard
Swiss Chard is a beautiful part of your fall garden. The colder temperature allows the swiss chard to develop sugars within the plant. Creating delicious swiss chard that tastes even better than mid-summer swiss chard!
- Broccoli and Cauliflower
Broccoli and cauliflower are both great fall plants to have. Transplanting broccoli into your garden allows it to develop quickly into a happy plant.
These are some of the many vegetables that must be grown in the fall, as they don’t usually survive the summer heat.
- Arugula and other Lettuce
If you’re a beginner or veteran gardener growing lettuce is usually a key part to any garden. It’s a heavy producer and can be harvested many times. Unfortunately, lettuce tends to bolt and produce seeds under the July heat. Once temperatures begin to cool at night in mid to late august its time to think about re-seeding those lettuces.
Arugula especially enjoys these conditions and the cooler weather will allow it to develop fully and with a nice crisp flavour.
- Peas
If you planted these in the spring it’s time to bring them back, and if you didn’t plant them in the spring here’s your chance. Peas are not only delicious, but they are super easy to grow and harvest. Peas do best in early spring or fall. Peas are some of the few plants that thrive in colder weather if you plant peas now you won’t regret it.
- Beets
Beets grow very similar to carrots. Good healthy root vegetables that are easy to grow. Planting near bricks or stone and watering will allow you to easily harvest beet for your thanksgiving meal. Beets are a personal favorite for us, especially in our fall garden as we can guarantee their success.
- Spinach
Spinach is definitely in the same boat as peas. It absolutely loves the cooler weather that fall brings. Spinach is notorious for bolting under high heat. Growing spinach near the end of the season is an excellent way to have a large diversity of plants in your garden. Especially tasty ones.
- Basil
Basil is a great year-round crop, when added to soups or salads. And especially tasty when made into pesto. Although, sometimes basil can suffer in the high summer heat and begin to wilt away or bolt. Planting later in the year allows you to have healthy green basil plants right until the last days of the garden.
- Shallots
Shallots and green onions are really just onions that are not fully ripe. However, the shallots and green onions are both delicious themselves and have unique flavours. When planting from onions sets late in the season you are guaranteeing yourself at least green onion and shallots to harvest by the fall.
An excellent and easy crop to include.
Honourable Mention
Although not technically a “late” crop squash is an excellent plant that can be planted as late as mid-July, well after most plants are in the ground and growing. Squash plants grow incredibly fast and produce fruit very quickly.
So, while they may not be able to be planted in August, July is pretty close.
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Happy Planting!