What Can You Grow in the Fall?

Believe it or not, October is a great time to be in the garden because it gives you the opportunity to harvest both warm-weather crops, such as melons, and cool-weather crops like lettuces and spinach. It’s also a great time to put your season-extending techniques to work to see how far into the cooler temperatures you can grow—and what you can have waiting for you when days begin to warm.

Planting Brassicas

There are many brassicas we can transplant into our soil in October, including kale, collards, spinach, lettuce, mustards and bok choy. Growing brassicas in the fall has many benefits. My favorites are that the cooler temperatures can sweeten them up while also helping reduce pest issues so that you can have a better harvest than in the warmer weather.  If you’ve ever tried to grow lettuce or bok choy in the late spring, you’re aware of the struggles the warmer weather can give!

One of the most successful techniques is planting the best variety for a cooler-climate harvest. Seek out fast-maturing vegetables such as arugula or Bibb varieties of lettuce. The first frost date for our area is estimated to be October 20th for 2022, and without any protection, some of your crops may not survive beyond that. But then there are collards and kale, which love the cold—and may even become tastier because of it!

Protecting Crops

Here in zone 6, we also have some opportunities to grow quick crops with little to no protection. As we get into late October or early November, we’ll need to apply a barrier to protect our less hardy crops from the frost and freezing temperatures. Row covers or hoop houses with plastic, for instance, can provide a seemingly worry-free environment for our plants, even letting us harvest for Thanksgiving dinner! 

Planting for Spring

Imagine harvesting crops as soon as the snow melts and the spring sun shines because you thought ahead. Sowing carrot seeds, garlic cloves, and onion sets in the fall will give you the opportunity to do just that. Overwintering these seeds and bulbs gives them a head start of a month or longer and can produce spring harvests for you before the soil would even be workable enough to plant seeds. Take advantage of these opportunities!