Leaves are beginning to fall and September is just a couple of days away. The average temperature is not as hot through the day with cooler nights. This change in temperature will allow plants struggling with the summer heat to perk back up. If you planted several times this year you should have a few fairly young plants ready to produce. Older plants may be producing less fruit and creating more foliage. Remove the older plants that are no longer producing and prepare the soil for the next crop. Think about what was planted and what the soil might need. Beans are a great crop following corn to replenish nitrogen. Remember your companion planting, what plants grow best next to surrounding plants. Also remember to feed and water your plants as fall begins; for us it is a drier season.
We use chicken and horse manure, mixing it in our compost through the year to add as a light dressing to our plantings. Too much fertilizer and your plants will be more leaf than fruit so go easy on the mixture. You can also make a tea of these fertilizers. A softball size of compost put in a bucket of water to soak or steep will help plants maintain fruit production and the added minerals from the compost water will give the plants a slower boost of minerals than in the spring of the year while aclimating to temperature changes of the fall. As you begin to gather fall leaves, pile them with a layered mixture of green grass clippings, chicken or horse manure and kitchen scrapes. This will help break down the leaves more quickly and create fresh mounds of compost for the following season. Check your soil PH and if your soil is acidic add a little lime to the compost.
Now is the time to consider how you will care for your garden through the fall and winter. What fall harvest might you plant. Radishes (25 days) do not like heat and enjoy the cooler weather. You could still get a second crop of corn and beans in as well if you planted by the last of July. What about more onions? Fall is the perfect time to plant garlic and horseradish. Turnips, beets, parsnips, carrots, cabbage, kale, cauliflower and broccoli are other suggestions for the fall. With cooler weather you should be planting lettuce and spinach. Your melons, squash and pumpkins should have been in the ground by May and are now producing.
Fall is not the time to shut the garden down, you have plenty of season left. For us frost does not occur until mid October at the earliest. With crop row cover fabric that should not be a problem and crops can continue into November and in some years December depending on the first snow and the average temperature. Tomatoes need an average temperature of 60 degrees, consider planting tomatoes that can handle the frost and cooler temperatures under row cover fabric or a hoop house, for us tomatoes would have been started by the end of July for a fall harvest. A hoop house constructed of 1 inch PVC and clear plastic can easily extend your season by 2 weeks. Add a row cover to the plants inside the hoop house and you can gain an additional 2 weeks or 2 zones in total. It all depends on the climate change each year.
If you need rye seed as a winter cover crop don’t forget to order the seed. A cover crop provides nitrogen for the soil, especially if you were growing corn. If you plant the rye don’t forget in early spring to mow it down before it goes to seed. Growing some in a large flower pot with row cover to catching the seed will provide free seed the following year. Low cost and no cost is always the plan, with gardening you will always have something to spend on so spend wisely.
For us, any time of the year there are always four seasonal phases; the garden, the hoop house, the green house and our starter plants indoors. Consider celery which needs to be planted 10 weeks before the first frost which is mid April for us. In January we are planting inside for late April, while our green house holds fresh cut lettuce through January and December. Where frost can damage a lettuce crop, a row cover keeps it going and a hoop house retains it all winter. Onions and carrots also work well in hoop houses and green houses with minimal heat (retaining 35F minimum).
We have calculated the cost of heating the green house and know what temperature is profitable and what plants will grow at those temperatures. It allows us an extra month with tomatoes growing possibly as late as December. What starter plants you grow in the house sets the stage for the plantings outside. In the winter cold and summer heat what starter plants are needed for the next out door crop. We even use second green house in partial shade to grow crops mid-summer that would otherwise bolt in the heat.