I just started to plant my fall vegetables. I planted broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts. In a couple of weeks I will be planting peas, carrots, lettuce, and spinach. Where I live, and this applies to most climates, Fall is the best time to harvest these cool season vegetables. By maturing in the cool Fall temperatures, the vegetables taste better, in my opinion, and the plant will not bolt or go to seed and ruin any further harvest. Most of the people I talk to don’t realize that you can plant for Fall harvest let alone that they actually can do better than the Spring.

So what is the secret to Fall planting? In my opinion it is the timing. You want to direct seed into the garden early enough to take advantage of the warm summer to grow the vegetable quickly, yet you want it to mature right before the first frosts come. Therefore, take the days to maturity from your seed packet and subtract back from your first frost date in the Fall to establish your plant date. I always add about 2 additional weeks for a buffer. Therefore, if you have a 80 day broccoli then you would add 14 days for a total of 94 days. My first frost date is about Oct 15th so I would go back 94 days and then plant, so about July 10th.

Remember that the maturity dates are calculated from germination or transplant, therefore, you need to give yourself the additional days to germinate the seed to properly calculate the days. Since this doesn’t have to be exact and I already added a 2 week buffer I didn’t bother to put this in the calculation above, but you should know about it.

A better way to do this is just to get an account at VegeNag.com and it does all the work for you. Just say what you are planting and you will get an email when you are supposed to plant. The dates are also located on the planting guides for each respective vegetable after you have created an account.

Custom Planting guides at VegeNag.com