Fall Vegetable Gardening
While our warm season crops are thriving and loving the summer heat, it’s time for our cool season crops to start winding down for the summer. As quickly as the summer is going it is time to start thinking about starting our fall garden plants and even start planting some of them right now. In Kansas, fall gardening is an excellent but often overlooked gardening season. In some cases, by the time fall arrives we are tired of being in the garden, but late season crops can extend your gardening season and provide fresh veggies all the way to winter depending on the crop. In many cases fall grown vegetables are of higher quality and better for preservation.
Most of our cool season vegetables can easily be grown in the fall except for peas as they require cooler temperatures to germinate than we get in July or August. Some common vegetables grown in the fall include potatoes, green beans, beets, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, kale, lettuce, radish and spinach. Some of those crops can often be overwintered such as kale and spinach by only harvesting the outside leaves and mulching the plant in the garden. Most of the vegetables can be started from seed, however vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower or cabbage should be started in containers or in a shady spot in the garden to be transplanted in mid-August. When seeding fall crops, plant the seeds slightly deeper than you would in the spring and water them consistently to help keep the soil as cool as possible.
The timing of planting fall vegetables can be critical to their success. Because of the warm soil temperatures seedlings will often germinate faster in the summer than they will in the spring. Here is a brief calendar:
- Mid-July- Start planting potatoes. It’s best to use fresh seed potatoes rather than trying to plant the potatoes you just harvested. They have a dormancy requirement and won’t sprout soon enough. It can be hard to find seed potatoes in July so you might have to order them.
- Late-July seed your longer season, heat tolerant crops such as carrots, beets and green beans.
- Late July-Early August- seed spinach and longer season head lettuce. (Leaf lettuce will be started later in the fall.)
- Early August- Transplant broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower seedlings into the garden.
- Mid to Late August- Start radishes and leaf lettuce.
Establishing your fall crops might be the hardest part of gardening in the late summer to early fall. The extra watering or heavy rainfalls can form a crust on the top of the soil. If possible, use a soaker hose to prevent the crust build up. You can also sprinkle compost, peat moss, perlite, or vermiculite over the top of the rows to prevent the crusting from occurring. Gradually reduce your watering as the seedlings grow to encourage a deeper root system. The vegetables will likely require some fertilizer two to four weeks after they have been planted or transplanted. It’s best to wait to fertilizer after the seedlings are growing so you don’t burn them when they are young.
Fall vegetable gardens can be an excellent extension of your gardening season. The cooler weather as the vegetable’s mature leads to tastier and higher quality vegetables versus the ones that ripen in the heat of the summer. With just a little bit of work you can easily enjoy fresh vegetables all through the growing year and even into the early to mid-winter.
