Planning The Fall Garden – Now Is the Time! Part II
Filed Under: Do It Yourself, Organic Gardening, Susatainable Living on August 4, 2009
In Part I we talked about knowing when to set up your seeds and how long you can expect before your first Killing Frost. Now we’ll continue with that and talk about soil preparation and dealing with pests. Then we’ll wrap up the two parts with a short summary.
Preparing the Soil for Fall Crops
It’s likely that you’ll have started those seeds for the fall crops right about the time your summer crops are coming in. So it will be busy. Seed starting isn’t difficult, though, so you probably got it done alright. Now that they’re little starters and you’re ready to transplant them into their garden home, you’ll need to make sure that home is ready to receive them.
This is mostly just adding to the soil to beef it up a little and give it one more boost of energy.
Tea from your compost is the best. Sprinkle the tea over the soil before planting or after transplanting. Either way is fine in this case. If you wait until after transplanting, wait at least 2 or 3 days for those plants to begin adjusting before you pour on the tea. Throw the other bits of compost back onto the pile with the freshly-pulled plants you’ve removed from the garden for fall.
If you don’t have any compost to tea, spread manure or compost over the newly-bared soil in a light layer (maybe an inch). Don’t worry about turning the soil or anything, that will actually do more harm than good. Just transplant directly through the new layer of compost/manure.
For more on compost, click here. I’ll be talking about compost tea in an upcoming article as well.
Row Em Up
Like with your summer garden, you can time your planting so that you’ll not be harvesting everything all at once. Make sure you know the grow time for each of them and plant accordingly. Cabbages, rutabagas, etc. take longer than beets or carrots to mature. So start with those longer-growing ones and plant the faster ones later.
Last come the extremely winter-hardy plants like spinach. In many climates, these can even be running strong into the Christmas season.
Of course, the other trick here is to plan out your rows so they’re more densely productive. Where I live, the best way to make good neighbors is to bring them fresh cuts from the garden. It’s easier than pie and much healthier.
The Pests Are Coming! The Pests Are Coming!
While some of the pests I’m talking about have red coats, many do not. This is the time of year when crickets, grasshoppers, and other destructive nasties come through and can seriously wreak havoc on your garden.
There are a lot of ways to combat them, of course. Here are a couple that you may not have heard of. I’ll list many more in a later, more detailed article, but here are the big ones: diatomaceous earth and chickens.
Whatever method you choose, make sure you’re prepared because the insects are coming. Fall is their heyday for plant destruction, so be ready.
The Fall Garden Sum-Up
So here’s what you need to do to make sure your fall garden is as productive as possible. This gives you the most for the least and means you’ll be eatin’ good all winter, if you do it right!
- Know Your Killing Frost Date
- Start Your Seeds In Time
- Prepare the Soil
- Be Ready for the Pests
That pretty much covers it. If you have any favorites for your fall garden, any tips to ad to this, or a question to ask, do so in the comments! I’m happy to help out. If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, of course, that’s fine. Email addresses in the commentary aren’t published or used for anything but verification, so no worries.
Related posts:
- Planning The Fall Garden – Now Is the Time! Part I
- General Rules of Good Soil Maintenance
- Seed Starting Tips: Start Your Sustainable Garden Today
