Vegetables that can survive light frosts (in the 30 to 32˚F range) include beets, Chinese cabbage, cauliflower, celery, collards, green onions, potatoes, Bibb and leaf lettuce, mustard, parsnips, radishes, spinach, and Swiss chard.
As fall weather takes hold, you need to change your gardening practices to get your landscape ready for the season ahead. Start your work about six weeks before the first hard freeze.
Dig In, Dig Deep, and Till Your Soil
Start by tilling the soil down 8 to12 inches. You can do this the old-fashioned way with shovel, and a little sweat or cut down on the time and sore muscles by using a garden tiller. Also remember to pull out any rocks, weeds, dirty clumps and debris.
Whether you're new to gardening, or a seasoned pro, building better soil is the single most important thing you can do to improve your gardening success. And fall is the best time to do it! To learn more, read Building Healthy Soil.
The fall is the best time to add compost or manure to your garden soil. There are many forms of nitrogen that can exist in compost or manure. Not all forms of nitrogen are forms that plants can use. Some forms of nitrogen need to be broken down by bacteria or other plants into forms that are usable.
Plant your fall vegetables so that the crops you choose have time to reach maturity before the first frost in your area. Find your first frost date, then count backward based on days to maturity for each type of veggie you want to grow. That's your ideal planting date.
Spading or tilling the soil in the fall allows for the winter conditions of freezing and thawing to naturally break the soil into its particles. This results in crumbly state desirable for spring planting. Soil is often damp or wet in the spring which makes deep spading more difficult.
It's important to cut back foliage in the fall to protect flowering plants from disease and give them a clean start for regrowth as winter starts to turn into spring. However, there are some plants you can keep around through the winter since they benefit wildlife and still offer visual interest for your home.
Quick-growing vegetables perfect for cool spring and fall growing conditions include leafy greens, carrots, beets, radishes, and peas. Started from seed, many are ready for harvest in just four to six weeks.
From early fall through most of November is one of the best times of year to plant spring-blooming bulbs, cool-season annuals and vegetables, as well as many trees, shrubs, and perennials.
Quick-maturing vegetables include beets, bush beans, carrots, cucumbers, kohlrabi, radishes, spinach, Swiss chard, and zucchini. And if some of those quick-maturing crops don't mature fast enough to elude the first frost, you can easily use row cover or garden fabric to protect them from too-cool temperatures.
Best Fall Lawn Fertilizer
While this fall lawn fertilizer dose is important, an application at the end of October or early November is essential. At that time, apply a fertilizer with a formula of 13-25-12. The push of phosphorus will stimulate root growth through November and even into early December.
A complete fertilizer with a high ratio of both nitrogen and potassium is essential for enhanced rooting, cold hardiness, disease resistance, and wear tolerance. An ideal fall fertilizer blend has a nitrogen to phosphorus to potassium (N:P:K) ratio of 24-4-12 with isobutylidene diurea (IBDU).
A constant, fresh supply of organic matter is necessary to keep it growing healthy. While routinely adding an extra layer of topsoil to your lawn can be helpful, fall is the most opportune time to do so. This is because the winter can be a particularly difficult time for the plant life on your property.
You need to be planting seeds and seedlings for your fall and winter garden between 6 to 8 weeks before your average first frost date. Some even as early as 10 weeks.
Adding organic matter in the form of compost and aged manure, or using mulch or growing cover crops (green manures), is the best way to prepare soil for planting. Adding chemical fertilizers will replenish only certain nutrients and do nothing for maintaining good, friable soil.