Seeds for fall cole or brassica crops should be started indoors next week, since the soil is too warm for their germination at this time of year.
We usually count back from the average date of first killing frost (Oct. 9 here), compare that with maturity date of a crop, and plan on a harvest before Oct. 9, but vegetables grown in a fall garden are not sensitive to frost, so maturity date is flexible.
Start seeds indoors for broccoli, cabbage, collards, Asian greens, cauliflower, Piracicaba (broccoli), and Romanesco broccoli (some seed catalogs call it a cauliflower). You can plant fall crops of carrots, beets, kohlrabi, turnips and rutabagas outdoors. None of these are tender to frost, so you may start a bit later if you prefer.
If you’re growing lettuce, plant heat-tolerant lettuce now, since we may have hot weather through September, and then plant cool weather lettuce and spinach seeds indoors in September for later transplanting.
You’ll be able to tuck seedlings and seeds in spaces left after you remove plants that have already yielded their harvest. This is called “succession” cropping, and it’s a valuable method to get the most out of limited garden space.
Fall gardens see fewer insect problems than summer plantings, but a large gray cabbage aphid appears in autumn, and is difficult to control. Wasps are not eating aphids at that time, and generally hoses have been disconnected. That is the main insect concern, other than squash bugs, controllable by spraying Neem on squash bug eggs.
In the meantime, are you getting the most out of your garden?
Many of us overlook and discard parts of plants that we could eat instead. Leaves of sweet potatoes (NOT regular potatoes) are edible. Foliage of regular potatoes is toxic.
Turnip, radish and beet greens are edible, and cherished by some. Pea shoots and cilantro roots are used in Asian cooking. Some folks enjoy green sauce (pesto) made of carrot greens.
Garden writer Barbara Damrosch fed her chickens parts of spent broccoli plants, and found they went first for the leaves, so she harvested broccoli leaves from other plants, cooked them briefly, and found that her family loved them. Her chickens were not dumb clucks after all.
Some have tried eating corn shoots, but find the shoots from dent corn preferable to the shoots from sweet corn, the latter leaving an unpleasant aftertaste.
SOMETHING TO TRY
Each year I grow something new to me in the vegetable garden, even if it’s a new variety of a common vegetable. This year I’m growing something very new: it’s called Achocha. Nichols Garden Nursery sells seeds for it, and their catalog calls it a “Bolivian cucumber.”
Achocha seeds don’t look like viable seeds, but resemble damaged sunflower seeds. These large fragments do germinate easily, though, and then need something to climb. A friend in Ireland, growing them in a hoophouse, said she plucked one and ate it every time she passed the vines. She said they were irresistible.
COMMUNITY GARDENS ARE GOOD FOR YOU
A new study conducted at the University of Colorado shows that folks who garden in community gardens have better health, weigh less, and feel healthier than non-gardeners or even home-gardeners.
Study results were published in the American Journal of Public Health.
Community gardeners ate more fruit and vegetables daily than home gardeners and non-gardeners, worked longer hours, and weighed less than non-gardeners.
Many of the gardeners in community plots were folks who formerly had gardened in their own yards, but had moved to apartments or assisted living quarters. The study apparently didn’t probe the cause of the differences, but camaraderie while gardening or competition could have been factors.
Margaret Lauterbach: melauter@earthlink.net or write to Gardening, The Idaho Statesman, P.O. Box 40, Boise, ID 83707
