5 tips for planning your fall vegetable garden

If your vegetable garden ends with your tomatoes, you're missing out on a wonderful opportunity to grow food in the fall!
Growing vegetables in the fall is such a welcome change of pace from the frantic pace of summer. The days are cooler, the disease pressure is low and the pests are subsiding as the days get shorter. The biggest obstacle to starting your fall garden is planning so in this video I discuss 5 tips I use when planning our fall garden.
Tip #1: Choose appropriate plants. Most plants suitable for a spring garden work well. But in more northern latitudes you may need to choose fast maturing varieties as the days will get short quickly.
Tip #2: Know the date you have less than 10 hours of daylight. For these frost hardy plants it is not so much the cold that stops them growing but the lack of daylight. Most plants will stop maturing when daylight dips below 10 hours.
Tip #3: Know your days to maturation for your plants and work backwards from your date of fewer than 10 hours of daylight. If your date of maturation is beyond the date you will have fewer than 10 hours of daylight your plants will not mature properly. This is less important for leafy greens but especially important for plants like cauliflower and broccoli.
Tip #4: Start your seeds / transplants under shade cloth. Initially the days will be hotter than ideal for these plants, so give them some protection.
Tip #5: Remove the shade cloth as soon as is reasonable. Daylight is at a premium in the fall so make sure to remove the shade cloth once daytime temperatures are below 80F.
We garden in SW Ohio, planting zone 6A at approximately 39.5 degrees latitude. Finding other gardeners in your area can definitely be helpful. For example, we have gained invaluable knowledge and ideas for seeds to try etc from ‪@GrowfullywithJenna‬ who is just north of us in a similar growing zone.
As always, if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask in the comments. Happy gardening everyone! -Peter
00:00 Intro
00:45 Tip 1
01:18 Tip 2
02:21 Tip 3
03:34 Tip 4
04:20 Tip 5

[@GrowfullywithJenna]

Great info!! I'm so glad you addressed the daylight hours! So many misconceptions about growing through the late fall and winter and this is the BIG factor.

[@TheGardenFamily]

Thanks Jenna! I feel like we always talk about first frost but we don’t talk about those sub 10 hour daylight days we have mid Nov through the end of January. I’m planting out tomorrow morning despite this heat wave, did you get your plants in the ground?

[@GrowfullywithJenna]

@@TheGardenFamily so true! And yes, I planted yesterday. Wish I would have gotten them in earlier this week, but it didn’t happen. Shade cloth went on immediately!

[@earthnailsandtails]

Totally agree with this common! Great tip 👍🏼🔥

[@theresabanghart9143]

What kind of shade cloth are you using, please? Great video! Ty!

[@TheGardenFamily]

@@theresabanghart9143 we have both a 50% and 30% shade cloths that we just bought on Amazon. For the arches on our 4x12 beds we like 6x12 shade cloths

[@tedpechie6642]

Good morning Peter, love your channel. We are new to gardening due to a new diet to help fight cancer. Your explanation and tips are wonderful, Ted and Dara😊

[@TheGardenFamily]

Good morning! Thank you very much. Wishing you all the best in improving your health and your battle with cancer. You got this!