The joys of fall gardening

For East Nashville's Whit Hill, the gardening season isn't over when the last tomato is picked, the bean vines have shriveled, and the first cool winds rustle the dry leaves. Rather, the fun is just beginning.

"I live for the fall plantings," she says.

Whit, a musician and dog rescuer who hails from New York state, gardens in the Inglewood neighborhood and is unabashed about her enthusiasm for autumn gardening. “I've had the best luck with turnips and their incredible greens. Once they get going, they're fantastic. HUGE purple top turnips for days.”

And “I’ve fallen in love with Brussels sprouts,” she confesses.

That’s not something everyone is willing to admit.

Having a bountiful fall garden is, in large part, a matter of timing. If you pay attention to the calendar and the weather, align your planting schedule with the conditions, and shift your perspective slightly, you can be reaping the rewards of your efforts well into winter.

Why plant in the fall?

The fall garden is a special place. Cooler temperatures, less potential for damage from insects and disease, reduced weed growth, and an extended harvest of loads of delicious, nutrient-packed crops well into the winter months, all make fall an ideal time to plant. The soil temperature and the weather promote good root growth – an essential part of nurturing plants through their growing cycle.

The main thing you need to look out for is hard freezes. Some, including lettuce, peas, arugula, cauliflower, bok choy, and celery, will be okay following the first light frost, but succumb when the temps dip lower than those.

Others – including hardy greens such as kale, collards, broccoli, cabbage, leeks, parsley, radishes, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts – not only will survive a freeze, but actually taste sweeter after a few frosts.

The key is to time your planting appropriately and learn how to work with the changing garden conditions in the fall. The rewards will be well worth it.

When to plant

Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat. Having a fall garden doesn’t mean planting in the fall. That’s a mistake many novice gardeners (including, once upon a time, yours truly) make, to their regret.

Rather, it means planting in preparation for fall.

When you plan a fall garden, you want to start in midsummer. This allows you to take advantage of temperate days and nights to plant vegetables that you want to have in the garden in the fall. The warm temps allow these plants to develop a root structure and gain some size, the better to allow them to hold their own once the thermometer plunges and the cold weather sets in.

When you plant depends on your planting zone. Also known as hardiness zones, these are geographical areas defined by their average annual minimum temperature. Most seasoned gardeners keep their planting zone in mind when deciding when and what to plant. For a long happy gardening career, it’s a good idea to learn yours.

Planting zone maps are published by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The most current map was published in 2012. Much of the information on this map may not correspond to your geographical area due to the incursions of climate change, which is to say that some zones may be warmer than the map indicates.

To find the best information about recommended local planting times, talk to your gardening neighbors (or even a non-gardening local who has lived in the area for a while). They can provide you with first hand information about last and first frost dates in your neck of the woods, and enable you to plan accordingly for timely planting.

I find local gardening groups on Facebook to be a great resource for a wide variety of garden-related questions. Groups such as Gardening Fun in Zones 3/4 Upper Midwest, Middle Tennessee Gardens, Native New Mexico Gardening, and Vegetable Gardening in the DMV (Maryland, Virginia and DC) Mid Atlantic are just a few of the many pages where you can find a wealth of information and resources from local gardeners. Find your own gardening community and get started!

Use the most current version of this map when considering your planting schedule.

It’s important to note that there are microzones within larger regions that can change the things you can plant within your zone. The presence of water features (such as creeks, rivers and lakes), tree cover (or lack of it), changes in elevation, and proximity to dense urban infrastructure such as roads, sidewalks, buildings, or parking lots can affect your climate zone and push back your last frost date.

Seeds or starts?

“I've never started anything indoors, just clear out some beds and go for it,” Whit shares. She made an exception one year and bought broccoli starts (“that was probably the best broccoli I ever grew,” she recalls), but for the most part she just uses the direct seeding approach.

Planting seeds directly in the ground offers you the advantage of not having to transplant young seedlings, sparing them the stress of transitioning from pot to garden.

Direct planting also means that you will need to thin the plants as they emerge, the better to give them room to get established.

However, this method does mean that you need to hover over your beds like a mother hen, making sure to keep them covered, moist and protected from the punishing sun. If you have a planting area that is partially shaded, that will give your seeds the best chance of getting off to a good start.

If you decide to go with starts, you are far from alone. Whether you buy plants at the farmers market, your local coop or nursery, get them from a gardening neighbor, or start them yourself indoors, it’s a time-honored method popular among fall gardeners. Planting starts – or young starter plants – allows you to start later with seedlings that have made it through the tender early stages of growth and have begun to build robust root systems, the better to see them through the fall and early winter.

What to plant

There’s a wonderful variety of food crops that can be part of a garden planted for the fall. These include root vegetables such as turnips and carrots, tender greens like lettuces, hardy greens such as collards and kale, and winter squash (which includes pumpkins), and greens. And there so much luscious diversity in these categories.

Some of these cross the line between “things you can plant for the fall” and “things that can be planted in the spring but you can store in your house over the winter.”

The common thread between all of these is that, although they are planted in the spring and summer, they will either last through the winter in the garden or can be harvested in the fall for keeping indoors (or other suitable storage) through the winter.

So let’s get to it with a handy planting schedule.

Counting backwards

Once you know your planting zone, look up your average first frost date. Then, armed with this information, you are ready to tackle your first planting project. It’s essentially a matter of counting in reverse order from that target date. (That can be a moving target depending on climate conditions, but you can prepare yourself by talking to your neighbors – as mentioned above – so you have a general idea of what to expect).

Here’s the countdown for planting from early to mid summer and beyond. Note that there’s a lot of flexibility and options for planting certain varieties at different times. You can also choose whether to direct seed outdoors or start indoors. Gardening is more of an art than an exact science.

You’ll notice that there are also opportunities to plant more crops of summer vegetables such as snap beans. Summer ain’t over ‘til it’s over!

14-16 weeks before the average first frost in your area, you can start these veggies indoors or out:

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Savoy cabbage

And plant the seeds of these varieties directly in your garden:

Arugula

Beans (snap)

Carrots

Cilantro

Collards

Lettuce

Lima beans

Mustard

Parsnips

Potatoes

Rutabaga

Spinach

Swiss chard

Turnips

12-14 weeks before average first frost, start these indoors:

Artichokes

Broccoli

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Kale

Transplant these starts into the garden:

Celery

Fennel (bulb)

Parsley

And direct sow these:

Arugula

Beans (snap)

Carrots

Cilantro

Collards

Lettuce

Lima beans

Mustard

Radishes

Rutabaga

Spinach

Swiss chard

Turnips

10 - 12 weeks before first frost…

Start these indoors:

Artichokes

Transplant these into the garden:

Broccoli

Brussels sprouts

Cabbage

Cauliflower

Celery

Fennel (bulb)

Kale

Kohlrabi

Parsley

And direct sow these:

Arugula

Beans (snap)

Cabbage

Carrots

Cilantro

Collards

Lettuce

Lima beans

Mustard

Peas

Radishes

Spinach

Swiss chard

Turnips

First frost minus eight to ten weeks

Transplant:

Kale

Direct sow:

Arugula

Cilantro

Lettuce

Napa cabbage

Radishes

Rapini broccoli

Spinach

Swiss chard

Turnips

Whew. Veggies enough for ya?

This list doesn’t take into account winter squash, which should be started in June or July and is ready for harvest between 90 and 120 days from planting, depending on variety. Since they can be harvested and stored for the winter, they count in my book as winter veggies.

For the squash nerds among you, winter squash falls into 3 main groupings, described by winter squash maven Carol Deppe thusly:

Cucurbita maxima, which includes Hokkaido, Amish Pie Pumpkin, and Buttercup squashes;

Cucurbita pepo, covering Acorn, Delicata, Jack Be Little, and Spaghetti squashes in addition to some summer varieties, and

Cucurbita machata, wrapping Butternut, Cushaw, Tromboncino, Pumpkin, and Buttercup into respective neat bows.

So. Ready to march confidently into your fall garden? Go forth and start planting! Bountiful rewards and the promise of lush veggies await.

Just keep one eye on the calendar and the other eye on the weather, and you should be just fine.

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