Most people think you can only garden in the warms months of Spring and Summer, but you can actually extend your gardening season well into late Fall if you follow some simple guidelines. Its especially helpful to know how to extend your growing season if you live in an area up north- like me- where the growing season is fairly short. A Fall garden can be every bit as plentiful with crops as a Summer garden if you utilize hardy vegetables, soil-building techniques, and cold frames. It all starts by getting the seeds out in mid-Summer so they’ll be sprouting by early Fall while thinking ahead by growing cover crops and planting bulbs deep in the ground.
Plant hardy vegetables like kale, broccoli, spinach, carrots, collards, and lettuce. Most of these thrive best in fertile, well-drained soil thats been thoroughly enriched with organic compost. Broccoli and spinach are easy to start from seed if you sow it under a light covering of soil so the sun can easily penetrate the seedling. You don’t have to worry a lot about pests as the colder temperatures kill off many pests that would otherwise ravage a warm season vegetable garden.
Build a cold frame. You don’t have to spend tons of money or worry about a big set-up project as a cold frame can be easily built from simple materials commonly found at hardware stores. The most basic type of cold frame is a transparent tarp strung over wire (you can use old metal coat hangers) bent into a half circle thats large and tall enough to protect your plants from the chill. Allow a little ventilation on the side so it doesn’t become too overheated inside of the cold frame.
Plant everything in raised beds or mounds. Its much easier for a bed or raised patch of soil to be warmed by the weak Fall sun than level ground. A raised bed or soil also keeps plants from being flooded by heavy rainstorms that are common to northern United States once the leaves start falling.
Use groundcover. Many herbs such as clover, mint, sage, and even prairie grasses make good attractive groundcovers that bloom late into the Fall season. These late-bloomers are important to keeping your Fall garden looking fresh while everything else dies off.
Plant bulbs in the ground now so they’ll be ready to come up by Spring. Garlic, onion, and even flower bulbs like tulips and lilies should be planted in the ground during the Fall so you’ll be graced by their appearance early in the Spring. Bulbs should be planted below the frost line.
Build up your mulch and compost pile. Fall is the best time of the year to pull weeds from the your garden along with old dying plants to put in the compost pile for Winter. Just make sure none of the plants have pests or disease on them. As for mulch, you can grow grasses such as clover or rye and allow them to naturally die-back over the Winter months, which allows them to build up a nice layer of mulch on the ground.
A Fall garden can be every bit as enjoyable and productive as a garden planted in the Spring so get started now.