< Making Local Food Accessible | Main | There are pesticides here! >

Fall Garden

Posted at 12:23 PM on September 19, 2008 by Autumn Long (3 Comments)

I planted a fall garden a couple of weeks ago in the "kitchen garden plot" next to my house. I didn't get around to starting fall veggie seeds back in August when I should have, so I went to a local nursery and bought seedlings: 18 cabbage plants (three different varieties, two green and one purple), six broccoli plants, six kale plants, and some Romaine lettuce. I direct-seeded spinach, radishes, and several types of lettuce amongst the seedlings. The deer ate the leaves off several of the plants on their first night in the ground, but I had mulched them heavily with hay, so the stupid buggers missed most of the seedlings. After that incident, I covered the entire plot with floating row covers. This makes watering a little more difficult (still no rain in sight...), but the plants seem to be doing well, all things considered. I want to protect these hardy fall veggies from frosts and snow with lots of mulch and row covers, hopefully extending my
growing season as far into the winter as possible. If the cabbages do well, I'll make some sauerkraut when winter really hits hard.

Who else has planted a fall garden, and what are you growing?

Comments (3)

I don't have a fall garden, but I am intrigued by the idea! What are floating row covers? We live right next to a metropark, so there are lots of deer here. When I finally get a garden going, I'll need all the tricks I can find to keep the deer out.

Posted by April | September 19, 2008 2:30 PM

We are enjoying three varieties of lettuce from a second crop planted early in September. I planted the seed in a frame that can be covered on cold nights with old storm windows that I "reuse".

At the same time I planted beets, spinach, and pea pods on a small trellis. The beets and spinach are struggling in the late summer heat, but the peas are showing promise.

My garden surprise this year is a bumper crop of acorn squash, which I did not plant, but which sprouted from the organic garbage that I fed to my garden last winter.

Posted by Pat Brannon | September 24, 2008 4:43 PM

Pat, nice going on the fall garden! It is such a treat to enjoy tender lettuce salads after months of summer squash and tomatoes. I never thought of planting peas in the fall; great idea! I'll be intrigued to learn whether your compost acorn squash is in fact a true acorn squash: Squash varieties readily cross-pollinate with each other, leading to some unusual outcomes in their subsequent generations. Last year my compost pile grew a strange, spiky-looking gourd, and this year there is a dellacotta/pumpkin hybrid (a "dellumpkin," as we affectionately call it) growing in the chicken yard. Hope your second-generation acorn squash is tasty, whatever it turns out to be!
Happy local eating,
Autumn

Posted by Autumn Long | September 25, 2008 12:41 PM