Cool Season Planting: The basics

The cool season is just around the corner, and you can start getting your garden ready with these basics! It is time for lettuces, beets, swiss chard, cabbage, dill, and more!

To prepare you need to prune, clear, prep the soil, and pick your plants. Very soon we plan to release a Free Fall Challenge to walk you step by step through growing a fall garden so in this blog I just want to go over the basics.

Pruning

Your summer garden should be winding down, plants will produce less, and be producing smaller fruit. The plants that are still producing can be pruned back to encourage the plant to put out their last fruit. Any dead or yellowing foliage can be cut away and put in your compost.

Clear

Clear away any dead or dying plants and any debris that may have built up in your garden. You want to clear as much soil space as you can in your beds for the new planting, but leave anything still producing, and give your garden a fresh start. 

Prep the Soil

Between growing seasons, you want to fertilize your soil and prep it for the new plants. I talk more about this in the fall challenge but think about it your summer plants have all been feeding off the soil all season and so now you need to replenish the nutrients. You can also take this time to cultivate, work the soil to remove weeds that might be trying to take root.

Pick your plants!

It is the cool season so most anything you think to grow in the spring you can grow now too. That means leafy greens, like lettuce, spinach, and swiss chard. You can also grow more from the umbelliferous family meaning your carrots, dill, cilantro, fennel, parsnips and parsley. I love that you can grow fresh dill right around the time you need to be pickling if you are interested in that kind of preservation. The most important thing to remember is that cool season plants are unique to the cool season and are cold hardy to withstand a frost. One last thing to consider when choosing your plants in the time you have remaining before the first freeze. This will, for the most part, mark the end of you fall garden unless you are using some additional protection. So, find out the date of your local first freeze then count back to when you plant to plant and that will give you an idea of how many days you have in your cool season. You should always have enough time for small plants like beets and you can even plant them multiple times in one cool season. But you might not have enough time to invest in larger plants depending on when you get your fall garden started. 

If you what more information about the above basics and are ready to take on your fall garden, then be on the lookout for our free Fall Garden Challenge!