Extend the growing and harvest season by covering cool-season plants with row covers or heavy-duty plastic. The cover also can be used to get a jump-start on the growing season in spring. Photo courtesy Gardener’s Supply/gardeners.com
If you’re considering planting a fall crop of lettuce, spinach, broccoli and other cool-season vegetables, now is the time.
Some plants already growing in the garden, such as onions and cabbage, tolerate cold and might keep producing for several more weeks with just a little protection. Chard, lettuce, cauliflower and carrots can take a frost or two. Others, such as tomatoes, melon and pumpkins, will be damaged by light frosts.
Some garden centers will have transplants, but I’ve always had a hard time finding them. Call around to see who might have them.
Northern Indiana gardeners can sow seeds now for beets, carrots, leaf lettuce, turnips, spinach, chard, radish, peas and bush beans. Try to find transplants of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, Chinese cabbage, cabbage and cauliflower. Gardeners in the middle and southern part of the state have a few more weeks to sow and transplant.
When planting fall season vegetables, mix a little compost or other organic matter to the soil. A lot of times, the soil is crusted over from the summer, so a little compost can work wonders in helping the new seeds and roots develop roots. The soil is a lot warmer now, too, than it was in spring, so you might need to water more frequently until plants get established.
There are several ways to protect these veggies as we move into cold weather.
Row covers are made out of spun plastic material and can protect plants to about 28 degrees. To increase protection even more, cover the row cover with a 6-mil plastic, which will get you protection to about 15 degrees. For even more, add several gallon jugs of water among the plants. The sun heats up the water during the day and the jugs slowly release the heat at night.
For quick protection when frost threatens, toss sheets, blankets or paper bags over tender crops, such as tomatoes and peppers. Do not use plastic unless you tent it so that it does not touch the plants. Condensation that forms and freezes under the plastic will damage plants.
For more info, download Purdue University’s The Fall Vegetable Garden.
There also are several good books on this topic:
The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener by Niki Jabbour (Storey Publishing)
The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch (Chelsea Green Publishing)
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Year-Round Gardening by Delilah Smittle and Sheri Ann Richerson (Alpha)