The Fall/Winter Veggie Garden

Cabbages planted in October will be ready for harvest in February.

We love onions! I have three beds of these, Savannah Sweets and Granex (both Vidalia type sweet onions). These are planted 4" to 6" apart and will form bulbs as the days lengthen. They will be ready to harvest in April.

Dwarf Sugar Snap Peas planted in beds 3" apart. These are good cooked for just a few minutes with butter, but are awesome raw. Sweet and crunchy, great added to salads.

This is my favorite lettuce, Sierra. I plant this variety along with its sister Nevada exclusively now. They are a Batavian type lettuce, a bit of a combination of the the color of leaf lettuce and the crunchiness of head lettuce. The only difference between the two is that Sierra develops a red tinge to its outer leaves as it matures. I originally planted these because the Batavia lettuces are slower to bolt in the heat, but discovered they also tolerate a bit more cold than other lettuce varieties. They have come through 23 degree freezes with no damage. I sow these in 4 or 5 rows to a bed, and thin to 4"-6" apart when they are a few inches high. At the above pictured stage I harvest outer leaves, a few weeks later I start cutting every other plant allowing the remaining lettuce plants to fill in and develop. Planted this way, a small bed 3' x 6', will provide all the lettuce we can eat from November through May.

Unlike the spring/summer garden, the fall garden in this area is a leisurely, ongoing process. The spring garden simplified is plant everything (corn, tomatoes, squash and beans) on or around the middle of March. In reality of course, I always try to get a few things planted in mid to late February to stagger the harvest, but have to frost protect for the inevitable March frost. Anything not planted by mid March is subject to demise from heat and it's accompanying bugs and disease. This results in a time consuming planting frenzy. In contrast this was the fall garden timetable:

October 6-planted carrots, cabbage, lettuce and turnips.

October 20-planted onions, spinach, lettuce and carrots.

October 23-planted carrots, spinach and lettuce.

October 27-planted onions, carrots and broccolli.

November 7-planted onions, peas and potatoes.

November 8-planted strawberries, cauliflower, swiss chard, brussel sprouts, and garlic.

December 6-planted potatoes, carrots, spinach, turnips and parsley.

December 20-planted carrots, potatoes, spinach, peas, and cabbage.

January 8-planted kale.

For the rest of this month and into February I will plant more spinach, greens, carrots, lettuce, peas and chard. Small succesive plantings gives us a variety of fresh vegetables through the winter and into the spring. All of the above can take the occasional frost/freeze except for the peas which show damage at below 26, and the potatoes whose tops must be covered to prevent frost damage.

Not only is there a great variety of vegetables that grow in the cooler months, the weeds and bugs are almost non-existant. While we have a few winter mornings in the 20's, we also have many mild weeks when the vegetable garden thrives and it is so comfortable to work outside.