In late summer and early fall there is still time for most of us to get in a second or third planting of vegetables. There are a few tricks to extend your growing season and they aren’t that difficult or expensive.
Choosing the right vegetables to grow is very important. You want to look at two basic things. What is the time to maturity for your selected vegetable and what is the cold tolerance of that vegetable.
Plants like lettuce are not very cold hearty but there are some that mature very quickly. Leaf Lettuce varieties are going to be your best bet because even if they aren’t at full maturity you can still pick the smaller plants to thin the bed and have a continual harvest for as long as possible. For example instead of picking a head lettuce that might take 60 to 80 days to mature you should pick a leaf lettuce that only takes 45 days and can be harvested early.
Other plants are cold hearty like Collards and Kale. They can be harvested up to the first snow let alone the first frost and they are an easy crop to grow if you start them early enough to mature to the point that they can resist the cold. Some people also like to plant Spinach which is one of the first crops of spring but you have to remember that instead of going from cold to warm you are going from warm to cold so you do have to have care with your cold season crops.
Extending Your Harvest With A Green House
Green Houses are wonderful ways to start your plants early in the spring but they should also be used to plant your final crop of late summer and fall. There are two ways to do this. If you have a dedicated green house then you can transplant your outside plants into the green house or you can simply plant them in the green house once the temperatures come down enough to produce good starts. Some people also heat their green houses with natural gas or wood burning stoves. This can extend your growing season significantly but you must monitor your soil temperatures closely. If the Roots are getting cold the plant will die.
The other option is to build a small hoop house over your existing beds. This can be very helpful to extend the life of delicate plants but when it is cold out they will eventually succumb to the cold. Don’t expect to have amazing results like you would with a dedicated green house but it will likely save that last harvest and give you a few extra weeks at the end of the season. If you can raise the temperatures at the end of the growing season when the outside temps are cold then your plants have a chance to mature more in those last couple weeks.
Don’t Neglect Your First Frost Dates
When the weatherman says your first frost is approaching then you really move from a weekly situation to a day to day and maybe a hour to hour monitoring process.
This is the time where you are going to have to make choices about whether you harvest early or if you end up losing your crop. You don’t want to wake up to a bunch of dead plants but its very likely you will so be prepared for it. If you can set up weather alerts on your phone or use a wireless outdoor thermometer that you can monitor it would be helpful.
Planting For Next Spring’s Harvest Is Also Important
There are a number of plants that need to be prepared in the fall for next years harvest such as Garlic, Raspberry, Fruit Trees and even your Flowing Bulbs need to be prepared at the end of the growing season.
It might be a good time to plant that bed of garlic and cover it with a deep layer of straw mulch. Garlic is pretty easy to grow and you can plant it early in the spring when the ground is just able to be worked but many people do plant it in late fall after they have harvested other plants.
Raspberry Plants need to be cut back and if you want to propagate your shoots to make more plants next season this is the time to do it. Normally the shoots that have had berries this year need to be cut to the ground. You should look into the specific variety you have and understand just how aggressive you need to be but its a bit shocking the first time you cut your plant all the way to the ground. Subdividing your plants will allow them to grow quicker next season. Often its best to take the outliers first or divide the whole plant into thirds and separate the bunches so they will grow stronger in the next year. This way you don’t have to buy plants or wait many years for the beds to extend naturally.
Final Note
There are many options that you should consider in the fall to increase your harvest before the end of the season. Setting up a hoop house also means your plants won’t be getting rain so make sure that you can easily remove the plastic to water often.
Healthy plants will survive easier but some plants just can not take the slightest frost and you need to consider that when planting.