Fall Garden Finale
Veggies, Round Two
A couple months ago I asked myself the question, “How do you plant fall veggies when your main season crops are still in the beds?” Well, it turns out time is our friend. Although we were still sweltering in the summer heat and it seemed like autumn was a long way off, the growing season was actually coming to an end. I didn’t have a clear plan for fall, but in hindsight two strategies paid off: clearing beds one crop at a time; and being selective in what we chose to plant. Along the way, we also learned a few things—I’ll get to that in a moment.
In years past procrastination would have ruled the day, with garden cleanup taking place only after everything was well and truly dead. This year, I had to deal with each crop at the moment it stopped yielding veggie goodness, in order to plant the next thing. Freeing up just half of a raised bed was enough to start something new.
Of course, only some crops will grow in late summer and fall. Based on recommendations in the Virginia Cooperative Extension’s Planting Guide, we decided to grow another round of lettuce, beets, carrots, and parsnips, and to try kale for the first time. We sowed lettuce and kale twice, two weeks apart in late August. Beets and carrots followed around the same time, again in stages both to space out the harvest and because half of the space was occupied by shallots at the start. Clearing a bed of spent basil made room for the parsnips. On a lark, we threw some basil seeds into a large container as well.
Germination seemed to occur more slowly than in the spring, leaving me with slight panicky feelings. I tried to busy myself with other things and not worry too much, and after a while there were signs of life in the beds. The beets grew a bit more quickly than in the spring and the carrots appear to be right on schedule.
On the other hand, the lettuce got off to a slow start. The seed mix that matured in 28 days in summer took 54 days; the head lettuce followed on a similar delay. My guess is I sowed too early, and the seeds just waited until conditions were right. The basil failed almost immediately—it was probably way too hot. The kale succumbed to cabbage moths within days, so we headed over to our local Southern States and picked up a few plants. This time we protected them with hoops and netting, and they seem to be coming along; or, at least, they’re not emaciated dead things yet. The parsnips look a bit sad. Several seeds failed to germinate at all, and those that did look pretty meager considering their time in the ground so far. On the other hand, they perked up a bit this week and aren’t supposed to mature until around Christmas. So … well, who knows really. At least we had a good yield on our spring crop.
Fall Cleanup
Meanwhile, the trees are proudly displaying their autumn color and most of the annuals and perennials are past their prime. It’s time to do a bit of tidying in the ornamental beds. Some cleanup is of the basic “dig up and compost” variety. Sometimes we need to find the ideal “cool, dry place”—like for the birdhouse gourds to do their post-harvest drying-out thing. These plants are new to us, but so far we’ve been impressed with their tolerance for benign neglect. Whether we’ll be successful in attracting nesting birds is anybody’s guess.
And then there are the dahlias, another new-to-us plant with a whole protocol to be followed if you want to try and save corms for next year. This year’s blooms came from some sort of “variety pack,” so we don’t know exactly which cultivars we have. But at least they can be labeled by color to guide our planting next spring. I cut back the stalks after our first frost, affixing labels close to the base. Now I’m in a waiting period before carefully digging them up and preparing for storage. Naturally the weather warmed up again. Will this have an effect? This is yet another area of uncertainty.
You know one thing we’re not doing? Raking leaves. Actually, I did use leaves to mulch our first-ever bed of garlic. But for the most part, raking is highly overrated in my book. And I’m not the only one. If you’d like to learn more, check out Dan’s recent newsletter on the subject, over on his excellent gardening Substack, The Earthworm. You’ll learn a bit about the Roman Emperor Caligula, too. What are you waiting for?
NB. With things slowing down in the garden, we’ve decided to shift to a biweekly publication schedule from November until spring when things get lively again. If Monty Don can take a break from Gardener’s World, so can we, right? See you in two weeks!