By Mike Darcy
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As the calendar continues to progress through August and toward September, home gardeners know what is next for their gardens. The vibrantly colored plants, flowers and vegetables they’ve spent countless hours tending to will eventually begin to fade, leaving behind an empty garden and the hope that next years group of plants will be even better. However, there are still options to prolong this year’s growing season. Home gardeners in the Pacific Northwest can cultivate beautiful, edible fall gardens filled with home-grown vegetables, with unmatched freshness and can do so almost immediately.
The changing season does not mean the end of your garden!
The close of summer is the perfect time for garden maintenance. After clearing the garden of the summer’s weeds and clutter, home gardeners can simply add a general purpose vegetable fertilizer and organic humus and the soil will be primed for vegetable growth. Simply work up the soil and evenly apply the fertilizer and humus throughout. Adding this “plant food” will benefit your vegetables greatly throughout the fall.
Now, with your soil optimized for vegetable growing, you can begin your fall crop, including garden or sugar snap peas, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, lettuce, carrots, radishes and beets. These fall vegetables love full sun and as the weather continues to cool, it is very important that they receive a high dosage of direct sunlight. Gardeners can experiment with pole beans, provided they are accompanied by a small trellis or support for the beans to climb. If not, bush beans can be grown, which do not need any support and also require less space. I generally recommend making use of local garden centers to transplant broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. These four vegetables can be quite challenging to grow from seed, although can be transplanted as seedlings with relative ease.
For home gardeners looking to involve children, growing radishes from seed offers a prime opportunity to teach the concept of planting flowers or vegetables and how they grow underground as well as above the soil. I recommend using radishes for this lesson, as they germinate quickly. This helps keep children’s attention and will provide a vegetable that can be picked, cleaned and added to a meal in a relatively short time period.
The hidden challenge
An often forgotten fact about fall vegetable gardens is the “crowd” they attract. In the Pacific Northwest, slugs provide a significant challenge for gardeners, feasting on newly growing or just-transplanted seedlings in spring and into summer. Fall, however, provides one last opportunity to devour gardens. As vegetable seeds first begin to germinate, it is vital that they are already protected by an application of slug bait, as it protects vegetables during their most critical growth stages.
To protect your budding vegetable garden this fall, I recommend Corry’s® and Deadline® slug and snail baits formulated with Meta® active ingredient. Available in mini-pellet, liquid paste or meal formulations, the baits provide gardeners plenty of application options based on their preferences. When using the baits, always read the directions carefully.
Fall vegetables offer a chance to prolong the life of your garden
Remember, this fall, as the weather slowly cools, you can continue your gardening by growing healthy, luscious vegetables. Just a few steps need to be taken in order to convert your summer garden into a ready-to-thrive vegetable producing locale. By preparing your soil with fertilizer and organic matter, as well as an application of slug bait, you can grow a crop-producing garden that not only looks great, but tastes great too.
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