Planting for a Fall Harvest

Here in the midst of Summer’s furnace, It’s hard to imagine a row of cold hardy vegetables like Cabbage, Beets, and Kale swaying in a crisp October breeze. The heat loving varieties you planted this Spring, like tomatoes and okra, may just now be hitting their stride, and  you’ve likely tried every possible way to serve beans and squash this Summer. Leafy greens like spinach, and root vegetables like beets and carrots, prefer the cooler temperatures of early Spring and Autumn, and while it’s still just a bit early to plant most cool weather varieties for a Fall/Winter harvest, now is the time to begin thinking about how you'll arrange them in those newly vacated spaces in your garden. The idea is to get cold hardy plants in the ground about a month or two before the first frost date of Autumn, so that they’ll be nice and strong when really cold weather sets in. The Charlotte area’s first frost date is typically the first week of November, although it sometimes comes much sooner, and I always make sure to put my own  cool weather plants in the ground between late August and the end of September, just in case. So go ahead and recycle those spent squash, green bean and corn plants into the compost pile, and enrich your garden’s depleted soil with amendments like green sand, bone meal,  and bat guano, in preparation for cool season varieties. Not sure what to plant for Fall? Check out the  selection of organically grown cool weather heirloom seedlings we'll have for sale beginning September 1.