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Thursday, October 21, 2010

The Fall Garden - A worthwhile venture

A fall garden is a wonderful thing.  I'm surprised it's not more common.  There are several vegetables that can be planted in late August or early September, and you'll be harvesting great crops come mid to late October.  I am growing lettuce, spinach, radishes, turnips, kale, arugula, broccoli, and cauliflower.  We've been eating our own fresh greens from this plot for a few weeks now.

I'll discuss the white row cover in the above photo in a future post.  (It's extremely valuable.)

Peruse the garden catalogues and you'll see many vegetables that take less than 50 days to mature.  All of those are potential fall garden crops.

Of course planting in the late summer requires one to be much more attentive to watering.  New seedbeds should be wet constantly.  And even after the plants are up, it's good to keep the bed drenched for optimal growth. 

Fall is the only time of the year I can get a complete salad out of my own garden.  The tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and carrots are still flourishing from the spring garden.  By the time they're ripe in the summer, the lettuce has usually bolted (turned bitter) from the heat.  Now I have it all!

1 comment:

  1. The bed looks really nice, Laura with the rows and green growth. A complete salad sounds wonderful. I'd love to see a photo of it.

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