Seeding a Fall Vegetable Garden

Self-sown beans

In the United States most of us are well into fall/autumn and I wanted to do a big fall garden this year which means lots of direct seeding. It's been in the 90's (32 degrees Celsius) for most of September. But cooler weather is predicted for this weekend, so I've been running around like a crazy person this week preparing the rest of the garden beds.

A few things did get started in containers, but they were visited by one disaster after another. If it wasn't squirrels digging and mangling seedlings, than it was birds pecking off every single spinach seedling in 3 containers. Then there was the torrential rain.

For the month of September I have been direct seeding in the garden:

• peas
• radish
• turnip
• carrot
• beet
• sprouting broccoli
• sprouting turnip
• spinach
• lettuce
• chicory
• endive
• mizuna
• tatsoi
• mibuna
• choy sum
• pak choy
• gailan
• komatsuna
• corn salad
• mustard

Direct seeding is definitely where it's at. Sprinkle a few seeds on the ground and water everyday till they germinate, then watch them grow. I just love watching plants go through their whole lifecycle. So fun.

When the seedlings are little and just starting to germinate, I water by hand everyday with a watering can that has a fine stream. Once the plants get a bit bigger, I'll start thinning/harvesting.

With it being so hot most everything is germinating in 3-4 days. Although, I had to replant one of the pea beds a couple times, either due to old seed or planting them too early in the day and they ended up cooking in the ground.

Plans for October:

• Dig and plant the bed for fava beans or broad beans.
• Dig and plant the greenhouse with spinach, lettuce, and peas.
• Direct seed even more turnips and radishes

I hand dug the beds, broke up the top crust with a rake, broadcast sowed the tiny seeds, and then tamped down the soil with the top of a rake. For beets, carrots, turnips, and radishes I pulled back the soil, broadcast the seeds, and then covered with soil.

It's definitely a little late for planting carrots and beets but we should have two more months of frost free weather, and there's always a chance for a mild winter.

Mingling with self-sown bush beans are rapini/sprouting broccoli, sprouting turnips, and kohlrabi.

Sprouting broccoli or broccoli raab.

Choy sum is a green that is usually allowed to bolt, the flowering stems are supposed to be deliciously sweet and crunchy. I've had them prepared by quick parboiling and then quickly stir-fried with garlic and salt in a very hot pan. So good.

The pea beds are interplanted with turnips and Giant Luo Buo radishes.

Little snap pea seedlings. This bed came up fine, but the peas in the other bed had to be replanted 3 times.

Sprouting turnips or Sessantina cima di rapa

 The pretty serrated leaves of Early mizuna.

Mibuna is such a stately leafy green.

The every pleasant tatsoi.

Tomato cages are being used as supports for the peas, and then turnips and radishes are planted in-between. You can also see the self-sown squash and okra in these beds.

Radishes and turnips taste better when grown in cooler weather, so I try to do a second planting of them in October. Just in case the September planting sees some hot weather, which can make the turnips and radishes a bit too spicy.

Fall Vegetables Garden versus Spring Gardening in Western Kentucky

It is very difficult to put a spring garden in Western Kentucky. The ground is usually too wet to rototill until April and by then it's already 80 degrees. And this year we had snow on the ground until the end of March.

Most people go straight to summer vegetables when they start planting. I've tried planting lettuce, radishes, peas, and potatoes in the spring with my first garden here. It got so hot so fast that the radishes were fiery hot, the peas didn't produce nary a thing, and the potato plants were huge and lush with not a single potato in the whole bed which can happen when there are periods of unrelenting heat. The only thing that was edible was the lettuce, and the White Icicle radish seed pods which I found to be interesting and delicious cooked. I do have friends who grow early spring lettuce, but they are windowsill or greenhouse grown.

Fall gardening is where it's at. The heat of summer dissipates in September leaving mild glorious weather till the first frost in November. But I am usually so exhausted from the hubbub of summer, all the cooking and preserving, that a big fall garden can seem daunting.

This year we didn't do any big preserving sprees. Just a lot of fresh eating and cooking from the garden, a little pickling and I made tons of baby food using garden produce. It was a really nice kind of casual summer gardening. Mostly due to the fact my tomatoes and peppers did so poorly this year. But that being said, it makes a fall garden seem fun and exciting.

So I've been spending what little free time I have cleaning out some of the garden beds. Yesterday I dug and raked and got the carrot bed planted out. A couple of the seed packets were ancient from 2009, carrot seeds are only good for 4 years and after that you're lucky if a single seed germinates, so it was good to get all those seeded out. I also planted radish, turnip, and beet seeds in the garden.

Then some more Brussels sprouts got started indoors because the plants planted out in June don't look too great, along with broccoli, kale, mustard, collard greens, Chinese celery, garland chrysanthemum, fennel, lettuce, and a whole bunch of Asian greens. Hopefully it's not too late to start Brussels sprouts or broccoli.

Clearing out the beds to get ready for fall planting:

Broccoli bed and summer squash bed have been completely cleared, and the bush beans have been cleaned out of the Brussels sprout bed. At the very bottom are artichoke plants.

The asparagus keep on putting out new ferns and they have 2 months to gain some size. Only 2 small artichoke plants remain, perhaps they didn't appreciate the exceptionally wet year we had and rotted out.

The pepper plants are starting to set some peppers. High heat can sterilize the pollen, keeping peppers from forming.