Having a fall garden is one of the best parts of gardening: You extend the season far past what most gardeners do. You continue to bring in fresh produce.
While it is too late for most areas to start a fall garden, tuck this away for next year. It is also suitable for the earliest spring crops you plant. Come March and April (which is never that far away in my mind), it’s easy to get the itch to plant everything, but the seeds don’t make it. If you plant dwarf greens and peas, you might find you are blessed with growth, especially if you cover wth frost fabric. Dwarf varieties don’t need as long a daylight per day as full-size varieties do. Often, they can handle lower soil temperatures.
By using dwarf plant varieties, you can get crops producing while you wait for the slower “regular” crops to be ready to seed, and then come in.
As I have in past years, I planted various types of plants in late summer to observe the differences in their growth times. We are in grow zone 7a now, and while the weather has cooled, we are still getting daytime temps into the 70s, even in the 3rd week of October. With plenty of sun, the soil has stayed warm in our raised beds.
The Experiment:
I planted bush peas on August 25th:
On September 3rd:
Just coming up.
September 5th:
The growth is quick at that time of year – it was still in the 80s daily.
At the same time, I had planted dwarf Bok Choi in the same bed.
It came up quickly—September 6th.
Around September 8th, I planted two rows of dwarf peas. I had found an older bag and decided to waste it on my experiment. They were planted between the Bok Choi and the other peas.
September 12th. The first peas are growing fast, and the dwarf peas are coming up. Bok Choi is growing.
September 16th. I had added in plugs of kale and Swiss chard on the other side.
We had heat during this period, which helped fuel the growth of all the plants. September 22nd, and fall had started. You want fall crops to have time to grow before we start rapidly losing minutes of daylight every day. In growing zones like eight and up, you would want to start your fall crops no later than August 1st, possibly in July. If you grow them in pots and transplant them into the garden, then your summer crops have time to finish before you move the fall ones in.
October 9th. The Bok Choi is fully grown, and I have been harvesting it. In fact, the warm temperatures had some of it flowering. Bok Choi flowers are a real treat to eat raw as a garden nibble.
The bush peas had reached full height, and I realized this variety still needed trellising. Oh well—next time. Flopping isn’t the worst thing. Underneath it were the dwarf peas, which were fully grown and already producing peas to eat raw. The bush ones had not even flowered yet.
Bok Choi is flowering on October 9th.
October 16th, the dwarf peas keep producing.
October 20th, Bok Choi flowers. The plants were completely grown (weeks ago) and, with gentle harvesting, continue to regrow lushly. The flowers are the best part, so sweet in the fall.
The bush peas are grown, but not a single flower is to be seen on October 20th.
Thoughts On Grow Time:
As we approach 2 months in the bush, peas are grown but not producing any peas, much less flowers. This week, the temperatures will fall into the low 60s, and we will dip under 11 hours of light. The chances now of getting peas are very low.
The dwarf peas, planted over two weeks after the bush ones, have fully grown and are producing a good number of peas. They have been producing for the past three weeks (since the first week of October). They only took a month of growing to start producing. That is FAST.
The Bok Choi is growing great and will continue producing till we get a hard freeze.
The kale I mentioned we planted will most likely winter over and come back to life in early spring. It tends to be very hardy and is a good crop for early planning. The Swiss chard is also a resilient crop. We will see if it survives.
Are there downsides?
While dwarf varieties grow very fast, they will produce less overall. That is the only real negative.
But what good is it to grow bush or regular types if you never get a crop? The only benefit of long-growing peas is that you get a nitrogen fix in your soil for the next year, which would be seen as green manure/cover crop.
For fall crops, grow the fastest-growing varieties. And in early spring, do the same.
~Sarah