Gardening, Round Two: Fall Seed Starting

It’s time to plant seeds for your next round of gardening. Yes, you can have a fresh garden salad in the fall!

Top your fall garden salad with fresh-picked radishes.

Photograph © Sylvia Ferry Smith, excerpted from
The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible.

Admittedly, I am a little late in sending this, and a little late in starting some of these for my own garden. But as the saying goes, “Better late than never.”

A few weeks ago I pulled my garlic, and this weekend I will pull the no-longer-productive pea vines. This should give me some space to direct-sow a few fall crops. I could also harvest some of my onions and clear a little more space for seed planting.

“What can I plant now that will be ready for fall?” you ask.

Well, thanks to the Johnny’s Selected Seeds eNewsletter that I receive, I know what I should be planting now (see below). However, if you are not a Western Massachusetts resident, click here to download Johnny’s Fall-Planting Calculator, and you too can find out what you should be planting in your area. Your average first frost date is needed to make this work.

• Beets: 7/20/2012
• Greens, Asian, full size: 7/25/2012
• Lettuce, heads: 7/25/2012
• Radish, Daikon: 7/28/2012
• Swiss chard, bunching: 7/29/2012
• Turnip, purple top: 7/29/2012
• Kohlrabi: 8/2/2012
• Lettuce, baby: 8/4/2012
• Spinach: 8/8/2012
• Turnips, salad: 8/9/2012
• Radish, round: 8/26/2012

Note: Downloading Johnny’s Fall-Planting Calculator is still quite useful even if you do live in the same area as I do. There is much more information about transplanting, additional crops for fall, dates to maturity, harvest period, and so on.

Gardeners, get out your seed packets, and get planting for round two!