How to Carve Out a Fall Garden Now

This post is as much for all of you as it is for me this year. I am still stuck in limbo with the garden, trying to wrangle it, harvest and process, and haven’t found the time (or I’m just procrastinating) to drop seeds into the ground. Yesterday’s excuse was that when I went to the shed for a hand trowel, there were none hanging: all 3 hand trowels are somewhere in the garden. I know I’ve seen one of them this week, so I just have to wander to locate it. We tend to leave them stuck into the beds, as if marking our accomplishment with a kind of physical punctuation mark. It’s completely unhelpful and rather a hindrance for my succession planting.

Alas, if your garden is overrun and you haven’t dropped a single seed in for fall, I’m here to rescue the guilt and assuage the doubt. It’s not too late. So together, this weekend, we will do this!

Greens

Spinach, arugula, and lettuce are all still game. The lettuce won’t be heads, but they will be harvestable in about a month, so toss those older seeds into the garden and lay them on thick. All these seeds can handle being overcrowded. Thinning is a great strategy as you harvest the first, tender round of green in October.

Radish / Turnips

Globe radishes and salad turnips are overdue to be planted. I could have planted them a month ago, but that was the college crunch so it didn’t happen. I know we will still get some nice radishes, as long as I remember to thin them to 1” apart and give them full sunshine. Salad turnips are one of my very favorites (I liken the flavor to a candied horseradish), but I keep forgetting to order the seed in winter so I don’t have any to plant, sadly. They take just a bit longer — 35 days — but store really well in the fridge. I love adding them to salads or a taco bowl.

Asian Greens

Mizuna and mustard greens are also a great very fast crop. They take 40 days to mature, so, if all goes well, they should be mature and hold (assuming we don’t plummet into the teens in late October, which is more than probable) in the garden into November. We will see if I get the motivation to cover — or double cover — a bed of greens this fall. It could happen!

Tatsoi is another super fast Asian green. Think of this like an even faster, miniature bok choy. It has more of a basal form, meaning, it spreads out laterally rather than heading up vertically. It’s really a fun, fast green to grow!

Broccoli Raab

As I said in my video, this is my gardening white whale. I haven’t figured the timing out yet on this. I do think it’s more of a maritime crop than suited for us here. But I’m hoping my very late sowing of it will prove the key to finding the right pocket of late season for this to not completely just go to flower. At 40 days to maturity, and if we have a hot October, it will end up flowering and going to seed, because that’s what it’s meant to do.

Think of this like broccoli-light: Smaller, looser heads. Tender stem and leaves. The few raabs I’ve snacked on in the garden over the years has been a real treat, so I’m hoping I’ve figured it out, finally.

Cilantro

It’s always a good day to sow cilantro. This cilantro sowed now should keep in the garden for a while. I’ll probably add some to the cold frame to give us some extra time with our favorite herb in late fall.

Green Onions

I sow these now like with spinach as an overwintering crop. Some will go into the cold frame and some will be out with the spinach. These, like cilantro, really can be sowed any time of the season.

Hope this gives you some ideas for a quick and successful last hurrah with your seed packets this weekend!