Hey everyone this is Shannie from Baker Creek and today we're gonna be talking
about planting for a fall harvest. A lot of people get confused; they think fall
planting maybe happens in the fall. In reality, fall harvest means you're going
to be planting in the middle of the summer. So maybe you've just pulled your
garlic out in July, or you've cleared out some of those spring crops, and you have
some open space in your garden, and you'd like to plant things like carrots or
beets or maybe Brussels sprouts or broccoli and you want them to mature in
the fall so that you can have lots of beautiful meals through the winter and
the fall months. So we're going to teach you today about planting for harvest in
the fall. So as beginner gardeners, sometimes we get a little fatigued by
the middle of the summer, and we don't take advantage of the fall planting
window in the mid summer, so I want to teach you guys some of the most basic
concepts for starting a fall planted garden. I want to see you guys it's a
beautiful bounty through the fall and winter months, and this is how you're
going to do it. So the most crucial factor when planting for a fall harvest
is timing - you're going to want to find out a few different dates and days
before you get to planting. The most important and firstly you're going to
want to figure out your first fall frost date. You may not know what that is at
this point, maybe you're a brand-new gardener and this is your first season
and you don't know when to expect your first frost. So you can actually find
that information online - you can find it on the Farmers Almanac, there are a
number of resources where you can find out depending on your zip code, or your
county or location when to expect your first frost. Here in Missouri, in the
Ozarks, we can usually expect our first for us to be around October 17th, but
that can range. Next you're going to want to pick the crops that you're going to
grow and find out how many days to maturity those crops are going to need.
Days to maturity means how many days from planting the seed until harvest
that plant is going to need to grow. For example, things like brussel sprouts
need ninety to a hundred days, while things like radishes and cilantro only
need about twenty days, sometimes less. There's a huge range so you want to take
into consideration the date of your first frost and how many days to
maturity your crop is going to have and that's going to help you count back on
your calendar to determine the day that you need to plant your crop. Also be sure
to keep in mind that the autumn sun is a lot less strong than the early summer
sun so you're going to actually add about a week to actually two weeks to
your days to maturity to really get an accurate read on how many days your
plant is going to take to harvest. For example if you have brussel sprouts that
are going to take a hundred days you're going to actually add twelve days to
that - twelve to 14 days to that to really get an accurate measure
on how many days it will truly take. Plants grow slower during this time of
the season. So let's go over timing once more. First, it's so important to find out
your first frost date. Second, figure out the days to maturity on each crop that
you plan to grow Third, add two weeks because it's going to be much slower
growing for this latter half of the season and fourth, it's important to
figure out whether your crop can handle cool weather or if it's going to be need
to be pulled out of the ground by the time of that first frost because that's
going to determine when you're going to plant your crops. So one of the most
important considerations for planting midsummer for a fall harvest is to think
about the soil temperature. It's very different than when you're planting in
the spring. When you plant in the spring the soil is cool and it's typically
pretty moist. When you're planting in high summer, that soil is already warmed
up quite a bit and it can be dry very easily. This is sometimes, for some
regions, the driest part of the year, so you want to keep that into consideration.
There are things, tricks that you can implement
to keep your plants cool so that they can survive the early hot part of their
growing stages and then as the season cools off they'll really take off and
grow with ease. So the first thing you can do is establish microclimates in
your garden. This is important for any kind of gardening technique. You want to
take a walk around your garden and figure out where's the coolest part of
your garden - it's probably the north facing side, it's probably an area maybe
under the shade of a shade casting tall plant like a sunflower, or maybe some
corn stalks, maybe you have a wall of corn. But establish a shady zone, a cooler
zone, or maybe a more moist area in your garden and those are going to be places
too that are ideal to set up your fall- your mid summer planting for fall
harvest. For example, putting your lettuce crop right at the base of your corn
plants where they're casting shade is great.
Lettuce does not like to germinate in the super hot mid summer heat, but if it's
in a shaded area or it's kept nicely moist, it's going to do much better.
If you're unable to identify a cooler microclimate in your garden, you can always create one.
Try investing in a little bit of shade cloth. You can get dark shade cloth, you
can get the shade cloth with reflective outer sides, whatever you choose. This is
going to cool down your soil significantly and help your crops that
may be a little bit more on the cool weather loving side to get established
until the weather truly cools off in your area. And some crops just need to be
started indoors and transplanted out when the weather gets a little bit
cooler. And I'm specifically talking about brassicas when I mention this, so
anything in the cabbage family which would be cabbage, kohlrabi, brussel
sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower - anything in that family is going to do much better
if you start it in a cool space indoors. Maybe just a sunny window, maybe your
greenhouse, anywhere you could get the plants established in a tray, in a pot
and in a cooler area maybe out of the direct and intense sun. Get those plants
to get established indoors in a cooler area or a shade house and then
transplant them out when the weather is cooled off just a bit and the plants
are about four inches tall and nice and and established with a good root system.
Be sure once you get them in the ground to get them really well watered and keep
them well watered. That's essential. Irrigation is a really important
consideration for planting for a fall harvest.
You've got the hottest part of the season right now, and your soil is quite
warm now. Irrigating is going to help dramatically - it's going to help cool the
soil and in this drought a time of year it's going to help germination a lot. So
trying things like a drip irrigation system to have consistent moisture
release throughout the day is essential. Overhead watering can help, but a drip
system is ideal. Another way to ensure that your midsummer soil doesn't get too
hot or dry is to apply a good layer of mulch. Mulch is going to help protect
against temperature fluctuations and moisture fluctuations. Its going to lock
the moisture in the soil it's going to keep it cooler and more consistent and
that is means less stress for your plants. So don't pile the mulch up
against directly up against the plants. Give them a bit of space, but a nice
thick layer, a few inches of mulch is going to be so helpful in keeping more
consistent conditions for your plants during that young and really vulnerable
time when they're just getting established.
So just to recap - keep those plants cool. How are you going to do it? Apply mulch,
consistent watering, long deep drinks of water,
find your microclimate, and plant your cool loving crops in the coolest part of
your garden, and if need be bring some shade cloth into the garden and create
your own microclimate. One big factor, probably one of the biggest challenges
of planting in midsummer for a fall harvest, is the pest pressure. Now when
you plant in the early spring, the pests are just waking up and coming into their
lifecycles, but in the midsummer you've got full-blown pest populations. So
you're really going to want to implement some preventative measures with your
plants because you're going to have young vulnerable plants just a few
inches tall and then a pest population that's at its peak.
So when those plants are really young that's going to be the most challenging
time where you really have to stay on top of your pest population. So one of
the first things is to provide a physical barrier. This can be anything
from row cover to netting and you can even use shade cloth but it's a way to
keep physically keep the bugs away from your plants. You just have to be really
vigilant with these physical barriers and not open them to pest exposure
accidentally, because if they get up under that cover, they're going to become
a problem. Don't forget you can do things like companion planting to discourage
pests. So adding a few calendula or marigold plants in between your
vegetable patch is going to help ward off some of those pests. Organic sprays
that you can spray especially preventatively things like capsicum,
which is just derived from hot peppers, that you can start spraying when the
plants are quite young. It's just a foliar spray that you apply and that's
going to really prevent those leaf biting insects. So for protecting against
pests again, remember try a physical barrier like a shade cloth or an agribon
row cover or netting, or try something like a preventative spray you can use
things like kaolin clay, or capsicum hot pepper oil, things like that. Also inter
planting things like marigolds and calendulas will help tremendously and
keeping the pests pressure down. So just a few of my favorite summer planted
fall harvested crops are things like Asian greens. Asian greens are probably
my number one favorite green to plant in the high season for harvest and fall.
They love cool weather they're going to take on a really nice complex sweet
flavor, as the weather cools down. And they're densely nutritious. They're gonna
give you salads all fall. And if you give them a little bit of protection - if you
live in a cooler climate, and you get a hard frost they can even grow through
the winter. Now if you have a more mild climate, they're going to grow right into
the winter. They're a really versatile delicious, nutritious crop. Things like
brassicas taste so much better when you harvest them in the fall and they tend
to have less pests issues when they mature and are harvested in cooler
weather because most of the pests have died off by then. Root crops like carrots
and beets are gonna store nicely right into the winter, and they're gonna
provide beautiful nutrition throughout the winter. And they actually take on a
nice sweet flavor as they get exposed to a little bit of frost, so they're going
to even get better as you harvest them through the fall. So I can't wait to see
you guys plant these beautiful midsummer gardens and have awesome fall harvest
veggies throughout the fall and the winter. It just takes a few steps,
consideration and a little bit of math getting those dates and times correct
and you're going to have an amazing fall harvest.
you