Cool weather crops to plant for a great fall garden

Learn how to grow cool weather crops to plant for a great fall garden. Extend your farm to table food supply with these tips and tricks!

This post is written in collaboration with my friend Nikki from The Faithful Farmer Momma. You’ll love what she’s sharing about her fall garden here.

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

Choosing the right cool weather crops to plant for a great fall garden

The key to choosing the right cool weather crops for a great fall garden is to know what USDA growing zone you’re in, and to know how long each plant will take to reach maturity. Here is a link to the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. Beans, for example, are always a very fast growing plant which makes them excellent as a late starter for fall. On the contrary, some pumpkins take nearly the full growing season to reach full maturity, so they would freeze before producing pumpkins if planted in fall depending on what zone you live in.

We live in New England, in USDA Hardiness zone 6. Here, we experience cold winters with temperatures below freezing. When choosing cool weather crops, we need to be mindful of the length of the growing season, and how cold tolerant the crops are that we are planting.

When to plant a fall garden

Here are some tips to consider if you’re starting a fall garden from seed:

1. How long should it take for these seeds to germinate? Some folks recommend soaking seeds for up to 24 hours before planting. Seed soaking is done to shorten germination time, however I did not soak the seeds that I planted for this garden.
2. After germination, how long should my seedlings grow before my plants are large enough to transplant into my garden? If you are directly sowing seeds, this question won’t apply to you. We started some seeds indoors, and direct sowed the faster growing plants. For us, it was more of an issue of space in our garden. Our 2020 summer garden was still going strong and producing plenty of produce when I started our fall seeds. A few weeks later, it was time to remove some of our summer plants as they were done for the season and make room to plant our fall crops. A good way to tell if your seedling is ready to be transplanted, is by it’s root system. If you carefully lift a seedling out of it’s tray, if there is a large enough root system to hold the soil in place then the seedling is likely ready to be transplanted.
3. How long does it typically take for this plant to produce? This information can be found on the back of your seed package, or of course online! Having a general idea of how much longer your growing season is will help you to know if this plant will produce in time.

How to plant a great fall garden when starter plants aren’t available

During springtime, it’s very easy to purchase starter plants from almost anywhere. When starting a fall garden, this can get a little more complicated, especially if you live somewhere with cold winters.

Our 2020 summer garden was planted with starter plants (rather than seeds) from a local farm. So, when Nikki and I decided to plant fall gardens, I realized that I faced a problem. It was too late in the season to order seeds and have them arrive in time to plant. Also, our local stores don’t sell seeds this time of year. What on earth do we do now?!

It’s a good thing our family keeps a stockpile of heirloom seeds. As mentioned earlier, I did not pre-soak any seeds and most of the seeds that I planted grew without any issues. Some of the heirloom seeds I used to plant this fall garden are nearly 10 years old. To learn more about what heirloom seeds are, and why you should store them check out this post.

What cool weather crops are we growing?

2020 is the third year we have lived in our farmhouse, and is actually the first year that we are growing a fall garden. Phew, I’m so thankful that we have a stockpile of dried heirloom seeds to make it possible for us to plant again this year.

Here’s what we decided to plant in our 2020 fall garden:

1. Purple beans: These seeds were dried in 2019, and sprouted within three days. Massive bean plants emerged and quickly towered over all the rest of the seedlings. These, along with our snow peas, were the first to be transplanted into the garden with support for climbing.
2. Spinach (bloomsdale long standing from Baker Creek): We decided to direct sow our spinach because of how quickly it will grow.
3. Buttercrunch lettuce: Direct sow
4. Romaine (parr’s island lettuce from Baker Creek): Direct sow
5. Organic Kale (Johnny’s Seeds): Direct sow
6. Leafy Asian Greens (Johnny’s Seeds): Direct Sow
7. Bull’s Blood Beets (Johnny’s Seeds): We chose to direct sow these beets into the same spots where our summer beets were harvested from.
8. Purple top white globe turnips (Baker Creek): We planted about a dozen of these seeds, but so far have not had any luck with seedlings.
9. Snow Peas (Baker Creek): Right along with the purple beans, snow peas were the second fastest seeds to germinate and plant into the garden!
10. Purple cosmic carrot (Baker Creek): These seedlings took a little extra time to grow before transplanting into the outdoor garden. These should have been directly sowed into the garden, but our summer plants were in the way!
11. Antigua Eggplant (Baker Creek): These seedlings are doing great, but aren’t ready to be transplanted just yet.

Tools to start seeds

This post contains affiliate links, which means I make a small commission at no extra cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

For seed starting soil, we typically use this ProMix HP or Miracle-Gro seed starting potting mix. We have had great luck using both of these types of soil. If seed trays are needed, I recommend using a 72 cell size as that is the perfect size for each seedling!

Check out Nikki’s Fall Garden

Are you ready for more fall garden inspiration? I encourage you to check out this post written by Nikki at The Faithful Farmer Momma. She has such a beautiful garden, you’ll love seeing what she planted.

Pin it for later

You may also like…

• Our 2020 Summer Garden Tour
• How to Store Heirloom Seeds (and why you should)
• If you’re interested in indoor gardening, check out Houseplant Care: A Beginner’s Guide!
• Some of our favorite farm-to-table recipes using garden produce: Plant-based pasta salad, Red potato salad, Zucchini bread and how to make pumpkin puree.

Are any of you planting a fall garden this year? If so, I’d love to hear what you’re growing in the comments below.

Thanks again for visiting our farmhouse, and touring our fall garden. See you again soon!

Linked to: 15 Acre Homestead Farm Fresh Blog Hop, Modern on Monticello: Home Matters Linky Party, Tuesday Turn About: My Wee Abode