Fall Vegetable Planting

The beginning of September marks an important time here in the vegetable garden. We are fortunate in the South to be able to plant this late in the year.   I am planting the last of the vegetable seeds for the year this weekend.  If you don't plant a fall vegetable garden here in southern Virginia, you are really missing out.  The temperatures are usually in the 80s in September and October.  Gardening is much more enjoyable now than in our summer heat of 90-100 degree days. We usually get more rain in the fall which means that you don't have to water often either.  What's not to love?

I'm a week or two late in planting for a fall garden.  Perfection would have been planting the seeds around August 20th.  Yesterday, I purchased some mushroom compost from Jamestown Feed and Seed along with 'Buttercrunch', 'Red Sails' and mesclun mix lettuce.  Mesclun mix just means a variety of leafy greens (think arugula or mustard) that have been grouped together in a packet.  It's what you find in the grocery store in prepackaged containers of mixed lettuce.  It's also called baby lettuce greens on the packages at the store. It's ridiculously expensive, especially if you knew how easy it is to grow!  Mesclun mix can be grown in the ground, but you can also sow the seeds in pots of any size and keep them next to your back door. Mesclun will not form a head of lettuce, but instead will grow little leaves that can be picked individually by hand.  Lettuce in general doesn't need as much sun as most vegetables, so even if you have a few hours of shade, you probably will still be successful growing this vegetable.  The trick with the 'Buttercrunch' and 'Red Sails' lettuce (which does grow a head on it) is to grow the seeds in succession, meaning plant a row now and then plant another row in a week  and then plant another row in a week.  This way you don't have twenty heads of lettuce ready to be picked all at one time. 

I am also planting radishes and beets.  Radishes are another easy vegetable to grow and even if you don't love to eat them, you should grow them anyway.  We always grew them in the school garden because they don't take long to grow and the kids loved the beautiful red color of the radish when we harvested them. 

It's been a while since I tried growing beets, but they are all the rage in winter salads at fancy restaurants these days, so why not?  When recipes abound for a certain vegetable, it's worth it to grow it yourself rather than pay a fortune for it at a restaurant.

I planted another row of 'Blue Lake' green beans a week ago.  The ground is very warm from summer temperatures and the beans have already sprouted. I also planted a 'Cherokee Purple' tomato in July for fall harvesting.  It is getting big now and looking very healthy.  The other tomatoes that were planted at the beginning of May are on their last legs with leaves turning brown and not many blooms to speak of.