Time to Start Thinking About the Fall Garden

The 100-degree days could be behind us for the year. It looks like we’ll see a couple of more weeks in the 90s. By the end of this month, the daytime highs should dip into the 80s with nighttime temperatures in the 60s.

I think it’s probably a good time to at least start thinking about the fall garden.

In my opinion, fall is an even better gardening season than the spring in this part of Texas. Cool weather crops in the brassica family like cabbage, kale, collards, mustard greens, broccoli and cauliflower grow well as fall crops. They sometimes suffer in the spring when the weather starts out cool and then warms. Early hot spells in the spring sometimes ruin these crops just as they reach maturity. The opposite is true in the fall. Sometimes they struggle getting started in the heat. But once established, they cruise to maturity with little trouble.

I particularly enjoy Asian brassicas like bok choy and Chinese cabbage. One of my favorites is a relative of mustard greens called “tatsoi.” It grows quickly – only about 45 days from germination to harvest. You can eat it raw or slightly cooked. It’s an excellent green for soups. It’s also famous for high nutrient levels.

Fall is also probably the best time to plant carrots in Texas. I always grow carrots in the spring. But fall-planted carrots taste sweeter. It hardly ever gets cold enough here to completely kill carrots. Once established, they bounce back easily from even hard frosts. Carrots don’t transplant well, so they must be planted from seed directly in the garden. It’s probably a little too early for that. But by the end of this month or early October, the weather should be just right.

Spinach and lettuce also grow better in the fall than they do in the spring. Hot weather encourages these crops to go to seed before they reach maturity. In the fall, you can practice the “cut and come again” method of harvest. Instead of harvesting the whole plant, just take a few outset leaves. The plants will give you a longer harvest window before they send up seed heads.

In addition, fall is the best time to plant onions from seed for a spring harvest. I’m going to start some onions indoors in a seed tray this week. I’ll probably let them grow under lights for a month or so. When the shoots get a few inches tall, I’ll plant them outdoors in row. If they grow a few leaves and the root system gets established, they should survive the harshest cold Texas can offer.

I wouldn’t try to transplant any fall crops just yet – maybe wait until the end of this month for that. But it’s definitely a good time to get some of these crops started indoors if you’re able.