Seasons of Growth: Why Fall is the Ideal Time for Your Garden's New Beginning
Seasons of Growth: Why Fall is the Ideal Time for Your Garden's New Beginning
Even though we have cut the last of our flowers for the season until spring, our gardening plans are far from over! In fact, now is the best time to get out there in the dirt and start planting and planning for the new season. Fall is the best time of year to start thinking about how you want your garden to look when the ground thaws and the temps warms up.
In this article, we want
To inspire you
To explain the benefits of a cool season garden
To provide you with tips on how to get started
To offer advice on the best plants to put into the ground right now (October and November).
We garden in Memphis, TN which is considered Zone 8A, so a lot of the types of plants we recommend planting are for Zone 7 and up (which are considered more temperate climates). If you don’t know your Zone, you can look up your zipcode on the USDA website or follow the link here: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
Let's get started then!
Why Start Now?
Cooler weather
There are many different reasons to start putting your plants in the ground, but the most important (for me at least) and maybe the most obvious is that the weather is cooler! When you are working in 90 degrees and up plus humidity in the summer months, any cool breeze is a welcome and keeps me more motivated to work throughout the day instead of just in the early mornings and evenings to beat the heat.
Less pests
This point is pretty self explanatory, but in the fall, there are less biting pests which means less mosquito bites for you and less damage to your plants
Less weeds
This is another point that needs little explanation, but as the days cool down, there will be far less weed pressure in your flower and vegetable beds.
Seasonal growing
What is seasonal growing? It’s honestly just as it sounds, where you are choosing to grow with the seasons. As you go into the cooler months, you are choosing flowers and vegetables that can tolerate the cold, and you are preparing them during this cooler time for a spring harvest. Where each season has a purpose, and, by planting now, you aren't scrambling to put seed in the ground late winter and early spring and you can enjoy what is being planted now until your first frost.
Establishing strong root system
By planting now, you are helping your hardy annuals germinate in the ground and establish a solid roots system so that when the winter frost comes, your leaves and everything above the soil might seem dead or slow growing, but come spring, they will "jump" out of the soil.
This is where knowing your zone comes in handy, and why we are so fortunate to be planting and gardening in a temperate climate in Zone 8A. The soil temperature is perfect this time of year for germinating many types of seeds.
You can directly put seeds into the ground in these fall temperatures. In soil temperatures of 60 to 70 degrees, the plants will germinate and develop a root system that becomes strong and viable in about 60 days or less (at least before the frost and harsher winter temperatures). Plants will be strong underground for the hard freezes of winter and give the plants a jumpstart before it gets cold and the plants will sit in dormancy.
Note: One thing we do to protect our plants is use a floating row cover of Agribon 19. This cover protects those young seedlings from the wind.
Grow within your zone
So what is a zone? What difference does your zone make and what does it tell me? Long story short - it tells you what will thrive in your climate. It lets you know what you can plant earlier, and it will give you approximately what the first and last frost will be in your area. Also, if you are curious as to what temperature ranges the soil needs to be for seeds to germinate, seed packets will provide this information as well.
Wow! Ok, that was a lot of information! So now that you know why you should start planting in the fall, the next step is an action plan…so where does one start?
How to Start
This is where we come in! We can teach you what to grow, how to grow it, and when to begin! If you are at a loss of where to start or nothing seemed to work for you in the past and you feel overwhelmed, schedule a complimentary discovery call and we can help point you in the right direction :)
We also recommend that you start with direct seeding cool season vegetables and flowers that don’t require any fuss - the varieties you can plant outside without any protection in milder zones. This is the easiest way to start seeds. All the seed sources we’ve listed can provide a comprehensive list for your zones. There are some plants that like to be started inside under controlled conditions with heat mats for germination and LED lights for growing seedlings. We will be offering a seed starting class this winter that will take a deep dive into this topic.
What to Grow Now
As stated throughout this article, the types of plants that you should grow in the garden right now vary based on your zone, but for our fellow Tennesseans, you can start planting dark green leafy plants such as kale, spinach, lettuce, Swiss chard and arugula, and as soon as you see the leaves, you can harvest them until the first frost. Some of these plants survive all winter. Fall planted garlic is wonderful because that means you get scapes in late spring early summer and you get a garlic harvest late summer early fall. Remember garlic is a great pest deterrent, so you can scatter the bulbs throughout your garden.
Fall is also a great time to plant fruit trees (or any trees, including ornamental), any type of berries, woody perennials, and root vegetables such as radishes, carrots, and turnips.
Top 10 Seed Sources
If you think you are up for the challenge and ready to start, these are our top ten favorite seed companies. We love them for their educational information, seed information and their products:
Johnny's Seed
Baker's Creek
Select Seeds
Hudson Valley Seed Company
Botanical Interest
The Gardener's Workshop
Gardenary
Ferry-Morse
Burpee
3 Porch Farm
If you have any questions, please schedule some time to connect with us for a complimentary discovery call on our website, and we are happy to see how we can help from there!
Happy Gardening!
