By the time fall arrives, tomatoes are long gone, and beans are almost done, but this does not mean your fall garden needs to look bare. You can harvest an assortment of fall-friendly vegetables!
Plant cool-weather loving vegetables, such as radish, spinach, cabbage, peas, and broccoli, and enjoy fresh produce throughout fall.
Choose crops that will tolerate a light frost and continue growing even when the temperatures drop. Let’s look at some of these nutritious and easy-to-care fall veggies you can plant and harvest in your garden. Read on to learn more.
Add Color to Your Garden and Salads With Beets
Cooler soil temperatures in the fall produce sweeter beets. These fall root vegetables do not receive deserved accolades in the salad bar, but they have wonderful benefits. Packed with nutrients, beets help calcium absorption and blood clotting.
If you want relief from infections, muscle fatigue, or heart diseases, beets should be a part of your diet. What better way to eat beets every day than planting your own beets? Buy some seeds and sow them 1 inch apart and 1 inch deep in loose, well-drained soil.
Water the seedbed gently and make sure the plants receive a minimum of 8 hours of direct sunlight each day. For best results, sow beet seeds in early spring, a few weeks before the predicted last frost date.
The Sweet Ingredient Every Garden Needs: Carrots
A great source of Vitamin A, carrots improve vision, immunity, and reproductive functioning. In addition to these wonderful health benefits, these veggies are perfect additions to stews, soups, and delicious low-sugar desserts.
Even though carrots take 60 to 80 days to mature, you can plant some seeds directly into the garden. Sow seeds ½ inch apart and ¼ inch deep with 18 inches between rows. Try to ensure your soil is free of clods of clay and stones.
Water every few days to keep the seedbed moist until the seeds germinate. When the carrot seedlings are at least 2 inches tall, spread a layer of compost around them to keep the soil cool and conserve soil moisture.
Pick Salad at Home: Lettuce
This leafy goodness is full of the phytochemical lutein and antioxidant beta carotene, which help prevent degenerative disease. Also, lettuce is an easy-care vegetable so you can plant them even if you are new to gardening.
Now that you are convinced of its many benefits, let’s learn how you can grow head lettuces in your fall garden. This cool-weather loving plant grows well in both spring and fall.
Sow head lettuce seeds 2 inches apart and ¼ inch deep with 6 to 8 inches between rows in a spot with full sun. Keep the seedbed evenly moist and gradually thin the seedlings so the plants are 12 inches apart.
Depending on the variety of lettuce (i.e. butterhead, iceberg, crisphead, romaine, etc.), the vegetable can go from seed to salad in a month.
Grow Your Own Jack-O-Lantern and Other Pumpkins
You’ll find pumpkins almost everywhere in the fall. Rich in vitamins, minerals, and various antioxidants, such as beta-carotene. This low-calorie content food will help boost your immune system, cleanse your liver, improve eyesight, and even lower the risk of cancer.
If not for the health benefits, plant pumpkins in your fall garden for all the mouthwatering pumpkin recipes you can try out. Choose a full-sun spot and sow seeds 6 to 12 inches apart directly on the ground a day after the last frost. Keep in mind to maintain 6 to 10 feet distance between rows.
Give a deep yet gentle soaking - approximately 1 inch of water at a time - to the crop once every week. All-purpose vegetable garden fertilizers will provide the right nutrition to these heavy feeding vegetables.
The Bottom Line
You can start with one or all of these aforementioned vegetables to accessorize your garden. Of course, there is an expansive list of other vegetables you can choose from.
While some take time to grow and must be planted by mid-summer, there are tons of fast-growing fall vegetables you can plant. So, do not settle for a dull bedraggled garden this fall!