by Kate DeMayo, Keith Shaljian and Sarah Vroom of Bountiful Backyards
Swiss chard is a great cold-weather treat that pairs well with beets. Photo by herdaily.com.
The heat is on, and even as you dig into that tomato sandwich and fried okra, we encourage you to start planning for a fall and winter garden. Not to say we don’t love the variety of flavors in the summer garden–but the summer garden just means more work. More water, more infrastructure (who hasn’t cursed a late tomato cage), more damaging pests, and more frustration. Go ahead and imagine the cooler days and nights of fall and the kale, chard, carrots, lettuce and beets that the welcome drop in temperatures brings. If nothing else, it allows for some healthy escapism from summer in the Piedmont.
While summer crops grab all the garden headlines, there are nine other months of production with temperatures generally below 90 degrees in our climate. If you direct-sow salad mixes, leafy greens, and root crops in August, you will have a great diversity of fall vegetables to bring to the kitchen table through early spring. Cool weather crops are much less work! Fall vegetables need less sunlight and space in the garden. One of our favorite combinations at Two Ton Farm is to grow greens like kale or chard in the middle of the bed, and sow beets on the edges, allowing them to work their roots in to the paths along the sides of the bed. There are dozens of other possible combinations.
The morning and early evening hours of the dog days of July and August are an opportune time to get the fall garden bed prepared. Even in our clay, double digging (or similar methods) allows for plenty of rooting depth and a chance to spread mineral amendments deep into the soil. Many fall veggies send down great tap roots that penetrate hard pan clay layers. Double digging also provides more air pore space for the crops that follow them–creating the environment for a healthy soil food web. After the bed is amended and prepared, you can add organic matter in the form of compost, straw, and chopped leaves to break down in the summer heat until you are ready to seed.
Most fall crops can be direct seeded. Seedbeds generally only need enough irrigation to sprout, which normally means 5-10 days of deep watering and then letting plants develop on their own. Direct sowing seeds can save money, as well as having the benefit of healthier and happier plants than more costly transplants.
The fall garden is also one that can be harvested continuously through the growing season. Just two or three healthy chard can provide more than enough greens for a family. We often encourage beginning gardeners we meet during the spring to put their garden in cover crop for the summer while they focus on trips to the beach and reading gardening books in the shade. This time of year is a great one to break out your Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog and prepare for a fall bounty.
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