In the Garden: Vegetables are plentiful in growing a fall garden

Do you have room in your vegetable garden right now? Chances are, your lettuce, spinach and peas stopped growing when our hot temperatures arrived. If you pulled them up and have empty beds, think about growing a fall garden.

It’s natural to yearn for the end of the season when vegetable crops no longer keep you busy, but I can guarantee you’ll miss having those fresh greens. In the Inland Northwest, our first frost usually arrives between mid- and late September. That’s not enough time to grow a second crop of peas, but it’s certainly long enough to grow more lettuce and other leafy vegetables.

The first step is to choose seeds. If you don’t have any lettuce seeds left from sowing them this season, visit your local garden center to see what the options are.

I did some research to see which veggies grow in a very short time. Here are some suggestions:

You can start harvesting baby lettuces in 28 days and mature plants in 40 days. I like the idea of sowing salad mixes because you’ll get to harvest a nice variety of leaves that will look great in salads. I’ve grown Speckled Trout, red romaine and buttercrunch lettuce well into the fall and even had them survive winter by giving them frost protection. More on that in a moment.

I always use the cut-and-come-again method of harvesting salad greens. This involves picking individual leaves so the plants will continue producing new ones.

Spinach is another option. Both Matador and Monstruex de Viroflay have grown well for me through the fall and winter months. You can start harvesting leaves in 25 days.

If you enjoy eating kale, think about planting curly leaved cultivars because they are really hardy. Look for Starbor, Winterbor, Darkibor or Redbor, as they will even grow during the winter. They reach maturity in 55 days.

Pak choi is another tasty suggestion. You can start picking them in just 37 days. Swiss chard grows quickly and provides leaves for harvesting in 28 days. Radishes also are speedy growers you can harvest in a mere 21 to 28 days, depending on the cultivar.

Some of you might recall that I grow cold-tolerant vegetables from fall through winter. We have a small hoop house – a plastic-covered greenhouse also known as a poly tunnel – but you can use a simple setup to get more produce out of your garden at least through the fall if not the winter. Why not take up the challenge and see how long you can grow your fall garden?

Protect your seedlings from the frosts by creating a mini greenhouse. I recommend making hoops with ¾-inch black poly sprinkler pipe – which is inexpensive – and placing a sheet of floating row cover or clear plastic over them.

Floating row cover is a lightweight fabric that lets sunlight and moisture pass through it while providing a few degrees of frost protection. It is available at large garden centers and from online sources.

If you opt for clear plastic, be sure to open the ends of the tunnel on bright, warm days, or you will fry the poor plants growing underneath it. Remember to close it back down at night if the temperatures are going to drop below freezing.

I’d love to hear about your experiences with this, including what you grew and how long you kept them going during the colder weather. This is your chance to push the envelope!

Contact Susan Mulvihill at susan@susansinthegarden.com. Watch this week’s “Everyone Can Grow a Garden” video at youtube.com/susansinthegarden.