Unlock the Secret to a Thriving Fall Garden - Learn Now!

if you're not growing a fall Garden you are missing out on a plethora of fresh vegetables and it can almost double the amount of vegetables that you can grow in the same square footage by doing a fall Garden but one of the trickier Parts about fall gardening is for most people you are planting your fall garden plants in July and August so that they are at almost harvestable size by the time your first frosts come and fall really hits so when timing is key but the other tricky part about that is it can be hard to grow cool weather crops in the middle of summer so there's a couple of key things that you can do though to give you success when you are growing your fall garden and really truly the the most important thing with fall gardening is getting your timing down so depending upon the crop that you're growing be it something like this which is brussels sprouts or carrots any of those cool weather crops that will survive a frost those you're going to want to make sure that you are planting them and going backwards from what your first average frost date is in the fall so for example my first average frost date in the fall is usually around the end of September or the beginning of October and of course any average frost date every year you're going to have a variance usually of a week or two just depending on if you have it early it's a cooler or warmer fall season but it's critical that you know what that is so for me knowing that mine is the end of September I have to count backwards for how many days it takes on average for whatever crop I want to grow to reach almost full maturity or harvesting stage so that means a lot of the crops that I want in my fall Garden I'm having to start growing if I'm growing them from seed in the mid or end of July now a few things that have a faster growing season I can get away with by planting them in August but a vast majority of them means I'm planting them in July and can be one of our warmest months out of the year not only that but you've got these cool weather crops that you're trying to grow when it is really warm and they're more prone to bolt so there's a couple of ways that we can help to mitigate that one of them is to Simply seed start because when you're seed starting it's the reason that we do seed starting in the sometimes winter or early spring right for our summer crops because you can control the moisture content when your seed's starting and it's a small thing of seed and you can put a lid on it to create that Greenhouse environment as far as moisture is concerned and also control the temperature it's much easier to control a little tiny seed starting cell temperature wise both in the winter but also In The Heat Of Summer because you can start those indoors because the vast majority of vegetable seeds don't actually need light in order to germinate they need light once they have started to grow but they don't need it during the germination phase so you don't have to set up any grow lights you can simply put your seed starts in your little soil container make sure that soil stays moist and you can start them in your house which usually are houses are a cooler temperature during mid-summer than the outside or at least hopefully or you can do that and also set them in a shady area as well so that's helping you control both moisture because once seeds dry out they do not germinate so if they start to germinate but you dry out too fast that will stop the germination process and they're not ever going to grow again from that same seed so seed starting in the middle of summer for your fall crops can be a great way to go but you can also direct so as well and have success with that so a few things is I have found in my experience that most of my cool weather crops they tend to bolt more as they get closer to maturity so spring crops if they got planted a little late or we happen to have an earlier warmer summer than normal like my broccoli almost half of my broccoli ended up going from a little tiny head crown of broccoli like this and instead of maturing into that nice big large head of broccoli because we were so warm so early they just bolted but I have found that when the plants are young like you can see these little brussels sprouts here these are quite little when they're young and exposed to heat on the young side and then as they get closer to maturity like they do in Fall it starts to drop cooler I don't have the bolting issues that I do vice versa in the spring so even just the timing of that by planting them and fall they're young when it's hot then they start to move to cooler as they mature that helps to stop the bolting process as well well but some of the other things that you can do and what we're going to do here is I'm going to be sewing some carrot seeds and I've already done that by putting my brussels sprouts you can see I've got some brussels sprouts here brussels sprouts are one of the few cool weather crops that actually have a longer day to harvest than almost anything else most brussels sprouts are about 120 days to harvest from planting and with brussels sprouts I've got a whole video on growing brussels sprouts so you can make sure and go and check that out if you want more detailed info but with brussels sprouts you want them to be at Harvest size right at your first Frost because once they start to go through those first Frost the flavor development is just incredible I won't even eat brussels sprouts until they go through a frost because they're that much better they're sweeter just everything is improved so these went in earlier because I need those to grow longer because it's 120 day Harvest whereas with carrots carrots don't need 120 days so I'm safe by putting these in the ground direct sewing them right now which at the time of this recording is mid-july because I want these to be almost harvestable size by October so one of the reasons that I have put these inside here is look for a shaded area specifically summer crops that will be dying back and done by the end of summer this can work really well because right now these cucumbers are relatively small but these are going to continue to grow and to come up on both sides so and this is already lightly dapple shaded so you can see that this Dill here is casting a little bit of Shadow here so this is like dapple shaded so this is going to help keep this area of soil cooler during these hot summer months but as these start to grow and then are going to need a little bit more sunlight these crops will begin to be dying back and they'll be ready to be ripped out by the time we hit September and then that will give these crops a month of full sun approximately before our first Frost even hits so by finding an area that's kind of dapple shade and using some of these other crops this is the perfect area for me to put put in fall crops because it's going to help keep them a little bit cooler during these hot summer months so I'm going to go ahead these are carrot seeds that we grow and save our own carrot seed and if you are interested in learning how to say seed save carrots I've got another video that you can watch that because as you look at these you're gonna be like those don't look like carrot seeds that's because when you seed save at home they have like these little almost velcro like little coating on them but these will grow just fine there's no need to get them out of this little protective hole they germinate just just great but they do look they're not smooth like you're used to seeing when you buy seed from the store or in packets so I'm just going to go ahead and again I don't really mind sewing my carrot seed a little on the heavy side because one if they don't all germinate then I don't have to replant because I've seeded a little heavy and then two I will come through and just thin these once they have started to grow so I'm going to go ahead and do that one and then we are going to cover these back up and then you can also use the board trick if you don't know what I'm talking about with the board trick go and watch that video you are going to be amazed at how it increases your germination and super easy to do but I'm going to just lightly cover back up this soil and then we will get a good soaking on these and then I'll bring a board and throw over them just because you don't have any rain in the forecast here um I don't even know when we'll have rain again maybe not till September we typically don't get much rain in July and August here now some of the other things that you can do with your fall plants in order to help them because we do want to keep them cooler right if possible and that is a mulch so you'll see here this is a compost mulch that has quite a bit of almost like bark it's almost wood chippy to a degree right well this helps to absorb the moisture when I do water which is great but it also helps to keep the soil cooler because wood will absorb moisture it's kind of like a sponge so it will help to absorb the moisture but then it slowly releases it so you don't have to water as often it protects the top of the soil and mulch helps to keep the roots cooler on Plants not only extra water retention which is great but it does help to keep the roots cooler so even though you still have the air hot air temperatures soil that has Mulch on it it's going to be cooler as well as the roots and that can really help mitigate bolting issues as well because it's not just the air temperature it's actually the soil temperature where the plant's roots are too that will help tell it if it needs to bolt or encourage it to bolt or discourage it as we're trying to do right now now if you want a list of cool weather crops and growing for all gardening make sure that you check out the blog post in the video description beneath this video and you can go and see that we've got a whole list written out for you to help you plan your fall gardening

Channel: Melissa K. Norris - Modern Homesteading

Views: 19,119

Keywords: Melissa K Norris, fall garden, autumn garden, fall gardening, seeds to plant in july, what to plant for fall, fall garden varieties, fall planting, fall vegetables, what to plant in august, vegetable gardening, best seeds to plant in july, vegetable seeds to plant in july, top crops for july planting, summer planting, what can i plant in july?, july garden planting, how to plan a fall garden, late summer garden, july gardening, fall garden planting, fall garden planning

Id: L6NzZ4myMAQ

Length: 9min 50sec (590 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 26 2023