A Guide To Growing Fall Vegetables Includes Printable Frost Tolerant Chart

Planting vegetables from seeds and young seedlings is the best way to get the most out of your garden and garden beds in the fall.

Whether you’re looking for pumpkin seeds or radish seeds, these plants offer a wide variety of flavors and textures to satisfy any palate this time of year. This is the best time of years for greens.

The Benefits of Growing Fall Vegetables

Vegetable gardens are essential for many reasons, not just for the fresh produce. For instance, fall vegetables and cool-season vegetables are a great way to get in your daily dose of vegetables for you and any little ones. Since fall, vegetables are filled with nutrients like magnesium and fiber.

When prices rise at the grocery store, or shortages occur – it feels so good knowing you can go to your own garden and meet your needs without relying on unstable prices or supplies.

They also provide a refuge from city noise, are aesthetically pleasing, and can help to create a sense of community. Planting a vegetable garden is an excellent way to have fresh produce year-round.

Today, we’ll discuss some of the vegetables that are most resistant to cold and cool weather.

The fall vegetable gardening season is also a great time for gardening enthusiasts to get their hands dirty and reap the soil’s cooling temperature benefits. But the best part is there will be fewer weeds and insect pests to be a bother your fall vegetable garden.

Composting Benefits

One way to help your vegetables thrive in any season is by starting a compost. Composting is a great way to get rid of your kitchen scraps and other organic matter produced around your home.

While also providing natural fertilizer for your garden. Plus, it won’t take long to acquire a good amount of scraps. Trust me, you will have more scraps than you think. My Amazon boxes alone make up a good bit of my compost and also feeds my worms!

If you’re not into an outdoor compost that doesn’t mean you have to abandon the idea altogether. There are other ways to compost such as starting a worm bin, which is a great way to create rich garden fertilizer with all of those kitchen scraps that the worms love.

You might also like: How To Compost In The Winter

What Types of Fall Vegetables Can You Plant?

Fall is the perfect time to think about preparing your garden for the cold weather early winter season and fall harvest. It’s important to know what plants will produce vegetables that are appropriate for this time of year.

One way to do this is by choosing plants that grow well in your climate and selecting seeds harvested during this season in years past. You can also look into vegetables you can grow indoors during the winter.

What types of vegetable seeds can I grow for the fall season?

• Beets 
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts 
• Cabbage
• Carrots
• Cauliflower
• Collards
• Kale
• Leeks
• Mustards
• Radish
• Swiss chard
• Turnips
• Green onions
• Peas
• Parsnips

When To Plant A Fall Garden

When to plant vegetables depends on where you live and what veggies you’d like to grow. If you live in cooler weather or a cold climate, planting in the springtime may be best for you.

But if you live in warmer weather or warmer climates, like California, and want to grow your vegetables organically without relying on pesticides, then planting vegetable hardy plants for the fall is a great option.

Mid to late summer is the best time to start your fall planting for your fall harvested vegetables. There are some hardy vegetables that do just fine in a light frost in more temperate areas.

Always checking your frost and hard frosts dates will help determine the best time to plant anything in your area.

As we said, the frost date is what determines when you need to plant particular young plants or start particular seeds. Once you know the average first frost date of your area, count backward in time the days until maturity for your plant, then go back an additional 2 weeks.

This is because fall has shorter days. Now that you know when to plant your fall crops and vegetables, we can get into how to care for them.

How To Plant & Care For Your Fall Veggies

Importance Of Weed Control

Weeds are your garden’s worst enemy when it comes to growing big and healthy veggies.

They steal water and nutrients from your mature plants as well as your seedlings because weeds often can’t get what they need from the soil, which usually happens because they’re shallow-rooted.

Weeds can also block sunlight from reaching your plants whether they need full sun or partial, which in turn causes them to die. If you want to grow vegetables without weeds, make sure to use a thick layers of mulch to suppress them.

Growing Tips And Avoiding Common Problems

In the last few years, there has been a rise in the popularity of early fall vegetable gardens. The reasons for this are varied, but generally, it is argued that people are looking for an opportunity to reconnect with nature or to try growing their own food.

Below are some reasons why your plants might not be growing and how to resolve them.

Seeds that do not germinate:

One reason is very few seed varieties will have 100% germination. Another could be because the seeds are old or you might have improper soil temperature and moisture, or a combination of the two.

One of the most common reasons is impatience. Not all seeds sprout at the same time. Some seeds take a few days and some a few weeks or more. Make sure to read your seed packets for the time it takes for those seeds to sprout.

Also, planting seeds too deeply or too shallow will cause them not to sprout. Again, read the seed packet to determine how shallow or deep to plant the seeds as well as how far apart they should be planted to give each one a good chance to grow without being crowded out.

Sun:

Your garden needs about five to six hours of sunlight for root vegetables and root crops like carrots, radishes, beets, and onions, four hours for leafy greens and vegetables such as Swiss chard, collards, and kale.

With eight hours, you can grow vine crops like green beans, squash, and pumpkins.

Soil:

Let’s first start with the moist soil temperature. You will need a soil thermometer to get started. You can purchase a simple soil thermometer at your local garden center.

To start seeds, the sowing temperature should be taken between 1 and 3 inches deep. The soil temperature for transplants should be taken at 4 to 6 inches deep. Different varieties of plants need different soil temperatures:

• 40° F or warmer: Lettuce, kale, peas, spinach.
• 50° F or warmer: Onions, leeks, turnips, Swiss chard.
• 60° F or warmer: Broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, beans, beets.
• 70° F or warmer: Tomatoes, squash, corn, cucumbers, melons, peppers.

Now let’s get into soil quality. As we discussed before, the best soil for vegetables includes compost and organic matter such as composted leaves and ground or shredded bark.

Water:

First thing is to find out what type of soil you have. Most soils contain all three particle sizes: sand, silt, and clay in different combinations.

Clay soil tends to hold water longer, so you don’t have to water as much, but you have to water more often in sandy soil since this type of soil doesn’t hold the water well.

Insects & Disease: 

here are some insects to look out for:

• Aphids
• Cabbage Loopers
• Colorado potato beetles
• Corn earworm
• Tomato fruitworm
• Cucumber beetles
• Cutworms
• Stinkbugs
• Squash Vine Borer
• Whiteflies
• Spider Mites
• and more…

Diseases to look out for:

• Sooty mold
• Powdery mildew
• Leaf spot
• Rust

You may also like: Vegetable Gardening Tips And Tricks

Cold Hardy Vegetables

Gardening in the winter is an accessible hobby. You can grow vegetables to survive the cooler climates and cooler temperatures and harvest them for fresh, healthy, and hardy vegetable dishes.

It’s no secret that there are many varieties of vegetables to choose from, as are listed above. But have you ever considered what makes one vegetable “cold hardy” and another not?

Let’s look at the temperature requirements of different types of vegetables and other factors that contribute to a plant’s ability to withstand colder temperatures.

A vegetable is a cold hardy plant if it can withstand a mean temperature that is less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit. The best way to tell if a plant is cold-hardy is by looking at the ground level.

If the top half-inch or so of the soil surface has been frozen for more than two days, the plant will not be cold hardy. If there are no signs of freezing on the soil, it might be safe to say that the plant is cold hardy.

10 Vegetable Plants That Can Survive A Freeze And Thrive

When winter arrives it doesn’t mean you have to go without fresh produce. These vegetables can survive freezing days and are hardy veggies for winter. Vegetables that can survive a freeze are suitable for home gardens, and our plates.

If you’re a gardener, you know that winter can bring cold temperatures. Especially a freeze which typically occurs when temperatures drop below 32 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is an issue for humans as well as individual plants. Knowing which vegetable plants can survive these cold conditions and cool temperatures is crucial.

Let’s look at 10 vegetables that can survive and thrive in a freeze. These vegetables are great options for people who do not have much time because these plants do not need much care or attention.

The vegetables in this list can be eaten fresh when harvested or used as the base for delicious dishes like soups, stews, and pasta sauces. Many people assume that only certain vegetables can be grown in cold climates.

There are light freeze crops from more temperate regions that can withstand temperatures of 28-32°F. And hard freeze crops that can withstand tempters of 24-28°F. These plants are known as “freeze resistant plants”, and there are plenty of them.

Light frost crops:

• Celery
• Beets
• Parsnip 
• Collard greens
• Green onions 
• Chinese cabbage
• Radishes
• Peas
• Swiss chard
• Cauliflower
• Bok Choy

Hard frost crops:

• Cabbage
• Brussels sprouts
• Kale
• Carrots
• Leeks
• Chicory
• Garlic
• Fava beans
• Spinach
• Walla Walla
• Asian greens

We’ve put together a What Vegetables Can Survive A Frost printable chart for you to print out that will help you know what crops can survive what type of cold and frost or freeze:

That’s everything you need to know get started. What tips do you have to share?