Fall garden vegetables are the hardy types that can withstand frosts and cold

For fall garden vegetables plant around midsummer or a little later and hopefully you’ll have vegetables for winter. If you are really into winter vegetables kale and kohlrabi seem to survive the cold weather quite well. Most winter weather vegetables are root crops, leafy greens and anything

related to a cabbage. That usually means you’ll be planting broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts as well as root crops like onions, parsnip and carrots. And you can throw in peas, radish and my favorite spinach.

Some of these crops will grow anytime but they also do well in winter.

Anything growing in autumn gets attacked by every pest that comes alive during the summer. So try and attract as many birds to your garden as you can. If you have chickens let them lose in your garden as they will clean up anything that moves. Praying mantis are also good predators so drop a few casts around and see what happens. Also if you can have a little pool somewhere you could attract frogs and toads and they just love insects.

Keep the mulch on the ground and any old plants just lay them on top of the soil to decompose naturally.

Don’t take any plant material off the garden unless it is an obnoxious weed or a diseased plant. To keep the soil alive your need a constant supply of organic matter added to the soil. And you need a mulch to cover your root crops so they will last longer in the soil as the weather gets colder. Fall gardening is just an extension of your garden into the winter and it provides many good greens for the table over the winter.

Check out our Vegetable Gardening page and see what you think, but now is the time to stop thinking and just throw a few seeds around the house to see what happens.