You may not necessarily think of October or November as months for gardening, but there are several vegetables that can still be grown at this time of the year (especially in the South!).
One of the easiest ways to still get produce from your garden is to plan for succession planting.
Succession planting is where you can replant vegetables from earlier in the spring or summer to grow in the fall or even the winter, getting another growing season out of them each year. It maximizes the yields of your garden because you can plant small amounts of a single crop at different times throughout the year, ensuring a consistent supply spread throughout the year. It is probably wise to rotate the location of each crop. To learn more about succession planting, check out this article here.
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| sweet onion sets ready for planting |
The fall months are also a good time for planting a variety of cold-weather or cold-tolerant plants, like collards, kale, swiss chard, some lettuces, broccoli, onions, garlic, peas, beets, and even radishes.
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| this bed is prepped for winter and planted with garlic, sweet onion, and red onion |
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| onions are already sprouting from the soil |
So far this fall we have planted more lettuce, garlic, onions, broccoli, snap peas, radishes, carrots, and a few other things. We also plan to plant kale, collards, and some other greens, which we may have to transplant to the cold frame if the temperatures drop to freezing. Unfortunately, the bed in which we planted the broccoli we neglected to protect with chicken wire, and ALL of the plants got eaten by the chickens!!! I was so mad at them.
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| a small bed planted with lettuce is finally getting closer to harvesting |
My bean plants are still going strong and we are still getting a few peppers and southern peas!
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| pole beans |
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| a couple day's worth of pole beans harvested, lots more pods still on the plants |
For some reason root vegetables don't seem to grow well in our raised beds, so I'm not expecting them to produce much. It makes me sad, because I LOVE beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, radishes and potatoes. We will try these again perhaps somewhere else in the garden and see if they do better. Do you have problems growing root vegetables? I can't figure out what our deal is-- but they do not like us!
A new activity we are trying with the garden this year is planting a cover crop of hairy vetch. I have no clue what this is but apparently it will help the soil throughout the winter in preparing for spring planting.
What does your fall garden look like? Do you plant a cover crop or allow you garden to go fallow?
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