Blog

The fall garden is our favorite here at Gardenerd. The cooler temperatures lend themselves to growing crops without pests, and with much less stress than summer months. If we ever get any rain, these crops will hardly need help from us to thrive through winter.

So what’s growin’ on? Let’s take a look at all the lush green goodies you have to look forward to if you live in a place where winter gardening is possible:

We planted 3 varieties of potatoes this season, all from organic farmers market seed potatoes (not necessarily certified disease-free). Make sure to ask whether your potatoes have been sprayed to retard sprouting or not. We don’t want those.  As the foliage grows, we’re hilling up soil around the stems to develop more tubers.

Sonora White Wheat is an heirloom wheat that is great for making bread and other baked goods. We grew a small patch of it last year for seed saving, but the birds ate it all. We will be diligent this year to get it first. More on this later…

On a cool weekend, we sneaked in our kale planting at Gardenerd HQ. They’ve done well in the hot weather since, and we’ve managed to keep Bagrada bugs out of the picture (covered in floating row cover for as long as possible). In front is a new purple Vienna kohlrabi we’re trying out this year as well. We’ve already harvested a couple times and fed some stragglers to the chickens. They love kale too!

Our allium bed is taking off. We planted shallots and garlic in early October, and seeded leeks and green onions just recently. In front are some yellow onion sets just taking hold. Now we just have to come up with a good way to store all of these in spring. The laundry room is too humid, and many of last year’s crop rotted. Sigh…

We planted 10 different lettuces, arugula, mache and spinach this weekend. The warmer temperatures will help sprout things more quickly. So hopefully we’ll have a steady supply of salad greens soon.

Alfalfa is a great high-nitrogen food source for the compost bin, so we have a permanent bed growing year round. This batch is ready to harvest and build our next compost pile with it, along with the hedge trimmings and kitchen waste on the property. This will become compost for next spring/summer.

Our other garden is not planted yet (too many Bagrada bugs for our comfort). As we get the population under control, we’ll be planting Swiss chard, cover crops, root veggies and mustard greens along with broccoli, cabbage and Romanesco over there. Stay tuned for more, and in the meanwhile – get out there and plant your fall garden!