The deal with growing fall and cool weather crops

This end-of-summer time is sort of confusing when it comes to timing the next season's crops and that's because you're usually thinking about two separate crop seasons at the same time: Fall and Winter (or cool weather).

It starts to get tricky because there are long-winded summer crops like tomatoes that you're likely to let linger on in the garden until the first frost hits (MUST HAVE EVERY LAST TOMATO BEFORE WINTER) and that keeps garden space occupied where you could be growing new stuff and also because fall and winter/cool weather crops have specific temperature and light needs that don't necessarily mesh with the weather outside.

Anyway, so that we don't confuse you further - here's a quick and dirty guide for how we get the most out of both our fall and winter/cool weather crop seasons while also letting our tomatoes linger on waaaaaaaaay too long...

Fall crops
Timing: Sow direct in the garden with enough time to mature and harvest before the first frost (usually around 12/1). For us in Silicon Valley, this planting time falls between August and September.
Location: Wherever you have empty spaces left from summer crops you've already pulled or those that desperately need pulling. Hello, tomatillos - we're looking at you. 
Treatment: Since these are seeds and young plants, it's also a good idea to plant them where they'll get afternoon shade so that they don't fry in the late summer heat. Please - for the plant's sake - dig in some nice well-rotted compost before sowing these seeds and then keep them constantly moist by watering 1-3 times a day, or whenever you see the soil's surface turn a light brown.
Type: Fast growing crops work best here, since you have just enough time from August/September - October/November to go from seed to harvest (about 45 days).

Beets - Baby leaf greens in 35 days and beet roots in 55 days

Carrots - Sow these guys with radishes (to mark where you sowed your carrots, which are slow germinators) for a harvest in 56 days

Cilantro -  You'll have your first leaves in a month and full harvest in about 50 days

Fennel - Sow non-bulbing fennel seeds for flavorful fresh salads and coleslaw in 50 days

Lettuce - This mix is pelleted (tiny lettuce seeds are made manageable by a pellet coating) and diverse, giving you profesh looking salads in 55 days

Winter/Cool weather crops 

Timing: Sow into flats now for transplanting out in the garden once your summer and fall crops are out of the way and the warm weather has passed, with temps below 70 during the day. For us in Silicon Valley, this is usually around the end of October/beginning of November.
Location: In flats/pots placed either under lights indoors or in an outdoor spot that gets afternoon shade.
Treatment: Rather than sowing these direct in the garden right now while the soil's super warm, sow them into flats or pots and either start them indoors under lights or outdoors where they'll get afternoon shade.  Please - for the plant's sake - use new potting soil rather than reusing old spent stuff, and when you go to plant them in the garden, dig in some nice well-rotted compost first. Keep them constantly moist, so water 1-3 times a day, or whenever you see the soil's surface turn a light brown.
Type: Crops that prefer cool weather and will take a frost without keeling over.
Broccoli - Crunchy sweet broccoli with abundant side shoots (bonus!) in about 90 days
Cauliflower -This fast producing variety hates heat, so transplant when it's cool (below 60 degrees) and has 4-5 true leaves for harvests in about 65 days
Onions - Bunching onions in 60+ days and medium bulb onions in 115+
Kale - 25 days from sowing these seeds you'll have baby greens to eat fresh in salads or wait another 25 days for big bunchy harvests
Spinach - Spinach just like you're used to seeing, but fresh from your garden in 40 days. Plant in a spot that gets afternoon shade since they're sensitive to heat.

And if you're curious what should be planted where or you want to build a crop rotation plan, we have some examples and suggestions on the subject. Because, well, when don't we?

So - what are you going to be growing this fall and winter? 

Eat your summer

You ready to knock back that encroaching garden for dinner tonight?

Good. Here we go.

Go out to that garden/farmers' market/neighbor's yard/whathaveyou with a big basket or bucket (shallow and wide is better than tall and deep) and gather up:

A handful of tomatoes
A few zucchini, crookneck or other summer squash that desperately needs a talking to
A bunch of basil
Some oregano

Return to your kitchen with yellowish green fingernails and a better lease on life to rinse your vegetables and get on with this whole dinner thing.

Before you start chopping away, gather up the other non-vegetable gardeny things like GOOD olive oil, Parmesan cheese (finely shredded), mozzarella (sliced into rounds) and some good salt. I'll let you decide what constitutes "good" salt in your house, but I like grey salt, sea salt, pink salt, black lava salt - even kosher salt. Pretty much anything that's not just straight table salt because, well, I don't have that in my house.

My poor table.

Anyway - let's make dinner.

Slice the tomatoes into 1/2" rounds, the squash into long 1/2" thin strips, pluck the basil leaves from their stems and strip the oregano from its stem and finely chop. Ooh la la!

Happiest cutting board in the west.

Go grab a nice oven safe dish. Glass works nicely, but whatever you've got will do fine. Crank that oven to 400 degrees and set up your dish to start loading in the summer garden.

First, give the bottom of the dish a good dose of olive oil and a bit of salt. This will keep the whole glorious thing from sticking to the bottom, which is a total drag.

Then start the layering just like you would lasagna, but instead of noodles, you have squash strips. I'm sure you've seen/done this before, so it's not like I'm telling you anything new here BUT OH every time I make this from the crazy busty garden I feel like a hero.

Mostly because I no longer have a weight advantage over the zucchini and it scares me so this is my way of reminding it who's boss, but still. Whatever it takes to feel like a hero, am I right?

Anyway, layer thusly:

Olive oil > Zucchini strips > Tomato rounds > Basil leaves bottoms up

Then some Parmesan. See how the basil holds on to the cheese in its upturned cups? Yeah. You see.

Cupping!

Then add your sliced mozzarella right on there.

The cupping is still in effect

Then give it all a splash of the olive oil, salt and the Ooh la la stripped oregano.

Then do the layering all over again, finishing with a shingled basil layer, tops up this time.

Mmm...basil shingles. That's gooooooooooooood shingling.

And don't forget the rest of the cheese and whatever oregano's still lying around for the tippy top.

That's a tower of I WIN right there.

Cover with foil and bake the whole deal in your 400 degree oven for about 30 minutes or until the juices are abubblin' (this is where it helps to use a glass dish, so you can just look in there and see the abubblin' without having to take off the foil and maybe burn your face/hand off - just saying) and then remove the foil altogether and let it bake for another 10 minutes or until the cheese is browned a bit on top.

Let it cool for a few minutes if you can and then slice into it and serve it with a fresh basil leaf on top because that just screams FRESH GARDEN GOODNESS right in your face, does it not?

IN THE FACE

A garden take down never tasted so good.

The deal with crop rotation

Oh crop rotation - it is the magical mystical "Maybe I'll Do That Someday If I Have Some Free Time And Want To Torture Myself" concept that actually does more for your vegetable garden than almost any other single gardeny activity out there.

For reals. I'm not just trying to give you something else to do. Honestly, if you only do one thing for your garden - do this. 

Light feeder rotation with leafies. Plus, isn't it just fun to say, "leafies"? I think so.

It's one of the pieces of the organic gardening puzzle that, once you get the piece to fit, your ALL GO NO QUIT garden starts to really fall together.

Though these cucumbers didn't just *fall* into this basket. There was plucking involved. But that's it! Still easy.

It's also the #1 thing that organic farms and gardens have in common because it's a rule that can't be broken or ignored - unless, of course, you're OK with risking the summer's tomato harvest due to verticillium in the soil.

No risky business here.

You know - verticillium - that soil pathogen (it's actually a fungus) that turns your vulnerable heirloom tomato plants from vigorous fruit producing machines to wilted crispy noodle versions of their previously glorious selves.

Yeah, sad.

But you can avoid verticillium and so many other pathogens and insect pests by simply moving your crops around in an organized fashion. An organized fashion handily called, crop rotation.

It's OK - they don't mind moving around because they don't have to pack a bag or anything.

But it's so confusing! 
But I want to grow tomatoes every year and I only have one place that I can grow them so I don't have anywhere to rotate them!
But I really like spraying chemicals all over the garden in the hopes that it'll stop whatever awful thing from happening that's totally happening just like last year!
But I like going into the gardening season without a clue about where to plant stuff so that it'll grow well!
But I tried it before and it totally didn't do anything!

Yeah, we know.

We hear it a lot. Coming up with a plan for a garden that most folks see as Fun Leisure Play Time isn't really at the top of your Fun Times list. Understood.

Still though...

Why crop rotation is YES!
Making a crop rotation plan gives you a map for planting in every season so when you sit down with your stack of seed catalog porn in the winter, you're not just randomly flipping pages feeling all overwhelmed by WHAT SHOULD I GROW OOH THAT LOOKS GOOD I'LL HAVE ONE OF EACH!

You don't have room for one of each. You know this. I know this. The catalogs know this. And yet still...

1. It keeps cootie insects away
Rotating your crops keeps host-specific pests (say, insects that really like one of your crops better than the others) from setting up camp in your garden and waiting for you to put out the buffet in the springtime.

Why, hello jerk Cucumber Beetle. Glad to see you NOT on the cucumbers.

2. It makes for yummy soil
When you rotate your crops, you have the chance to rebuild nutrients in the soil so that you don't have one plant after the other sucking the life out of your garden without replenishing it. Instead, you can rotate in a crop that actually puts nutrients back IN to the soil for the following crop.

Corn. Sweet delicious corn. The great nutrient-sucker of the vegetable world.

3. Your favorite crops can grow better
You can plant crops this winter that counteract negative effects of this summer's crop for the benefit of next summer's crop.

Love you, Pacific Gold Mustard :)

Let's try an example so that you can see that I'm not just spinning craziness:

You like to grow heirloom tomatoes but you know that they are not verticillium resistant (that's what the "V" means on plant tags and hardly any heirloom varieties have resistances), so during the winter prior to your tomato-growing summer, you plant a brassica (mustard, broccoli, etc) since that family produces a gas in the soil that "biofumigates" verticillium. Then you plan to keep that area free of nightshade plants (of which the tomato is a member) for as many seasons as possible.

Your tomato rotation might look something like:

Winter 1: Brassica > Summer 1: Tomatoes
Winter 2: A verticillium resistant crop > Summer 2: Anything other than Solanaceae/nightshades

And if you're in the situation where you can ONLY grow your precious tomatoes in one spot year after year because of sun conditions or whathaveyou, there are other things you can do to stave off disaster like skipping a year altogether (gasp! I know.) and choosing varieties with resistance to your garden's known pathogens (this is where you look for the "V" on your tomato's plant tags), in addition to a winter rotation with a type of brassica.

Build your crop rotation plan like a pro
Keep in mind what kind of a feeders your plants are and rotate them so that the soil is replenished before planting another heavy feeder type. First, bucket your plants into into categories like Heavy Feeders (corn, tomatoes, squash), Light Feeders (root crops, herbs, lettuce) and Feeders (legumes, alfalfa). Then organize your rotation so that Heavy Feeders are followed by Feeders and then followed by Light Feeders.

I always have seconds.

Know the diseases that plague your plants and then match them with plants and strategies that counteract their nasty effects. Like that whole "tomatoes with brassicas" thing I was talking about before.

Figure out which families your plants belong to so that you can put them in the right place in the rotation. Like your tomatoes belong to the same family as potatoes, peppers and eggplant, so these guys shouldn't follow one another in a rotation.

Get help with your crop rotation
If you want to do this so badly but just can't wrap your brains around all of the details or don't have the time to work it all out - there's salvation!

Kitchen Gardeners International has a great garden planning tool that keeps track of crop families so that you don't have to. Plus - it's super fun to see your future garden come to life and you can move stuff around and design the whole garden space. Which, if you're garden dorks like we are, is pretty effing fun. It won't work out the issues with plant diseases and feeding types, but it's definitely helpful for visualization.

Georgia Organics has a list of tools and software for helping you plan your rotation - everything from seed calculators to downloadable software.

And if you'd rather get your own customized crop rotation plan built for you, we can help you out there. In our Crop Rotation Plan session we'll build a crop rotation plan with you that gives you the freedom to choose the varieties of plants you love to grow each season and a map of where to plant them for great yields, soil health and pest resistance in future seasons.

Then you can eat all of these tomatoes in one sitting. If you so desire. Though it might be messy. GLORIOUSLY MESSY.

Like a cleaning lady for the garden.

It's definitely getting to be that time of year when walking out to the test garden after dark becomes an iffy endeavor.

Mostly because the last thing I want is a big spider web wrapped around my face.

Not a nourishing facial.

BLECH. 

Sorry if I just freaked you out.

In an effort to keep this BLECH EEK EW ACK experience from happening, I keep a close eye on where my resident garden spiders set up shop every fall. They have some favorite haunts, you might say, and I commit these to memory once they've staked their claim around the property.

This guy is conveniently out of the way attached to the cherry tree.

This guy is precariously hovering over the lime tree, so, less convenient for the cocktail makers around here.

Even if I were to take down their webs (which NO WAY - I'll tell you why in just a sec), they'd just put them right back in the same spot in no time at all, so it's better for everyone if they're just left alone to do what they do best.

Unfortunately, sometimes I get so involved in what I'm doing that I forget to work around their webs, thus ending up with one, say, wrapped around the end of the shovel handle I'm wielding, but they do rebuild them pretty fast, so I just try to be careful not to bust up the spider along with his/her web.

Must I rebuild this thing every five minutes? Really, woman.

And that best is eating all the pests that fly into their big face-wrapping webs.

I just prefer that they wrap their webs around pests' faces rather than mine, is all.

Assume the face wrapping position.

See, our friendly neighborhood garden spiders are experts at organic pest management.  They eat flies, aphids, mosquitoes, wasps, cabbage moths and anything else that goes near their webs. They aren't picky, just hungry, and they do a really good job of keeping nasties out of the garden.

I'M BUSY.

Sure, sometimes they'll pick up one of our honeybees, but it's a small price to pay for all the cabbage moths that they put down.

OK, I'll let this one go as long as the next thing I see in there is a cabbage moth.

No promises.

And, hey, sometimes they get theirs since we also get a lot of spider-hungry birds out there, so we just let the whole circle of life thing play out and try not to get in the way.

We don't spray, smush or otherwise harm these big beauties and instead just let them clean up the garden for us while we move about carefully and with our arms outstretched in front of our faces, remembering to pick limes from the BACK of the plant rather than the front because HELLO that's a web around your face.