Plant Successively For Fall

August, the beginning of harvest season, signals an end to planting in the vegetable garden, right? Certainly not! Now is the time to plant cool weather varieties for a fall crop, taking advantage of what is often referred to as succession planting. Many plants thrive in the cool September days and the heat of August provides a boost to germination. Growing these crops under row covers or in a cold frame extends the season further.

One crop I don't recommend for fall planting is peas. In northern New England peas languish in the August heat. Our first frost often occurs at the end of September and fall rains further slow peas down. Eliot Coleman, educator, writer and organic gardener, suggests in his excellent book Four-Season Harvest a succession planting of peas in midsummer. In his Zone 5 area of downeast Maine this may work. I've tried several start dates, but here in Zone 4 I have never had much luck with fall peas.

The supreme vegetables for successful fall harvest are greens. Lettuces, kale, mache, arugula, and spinach mature rapidly in the cooler days of late summer. Try to choose cold hardy varieties of lettuce like Quatre Seasons, Brune D'hiver, and that old standard Black Seeded Simpson. Stick to the leaf types unless you want to grow the headed varieties in a cold frame.

Other vegetables that respond well to midsummer plantings are radishes, beets, carrots, and kohlrabi. Carrots can even be left in the ground over winter and harvested in the spring. My father had a friend who routinely neglected his carrots until April, producing monster roots as sweet and crunchy as rock candy and as big around as a child's forearm. Being handed one of those giants to keep me busy while the men visited is a favorite memory from childhood. According to Coleman, a good variety for overwintering is Napoli.

Beets thrive in nearly neutral soil, with plenty of compost and a dash of greensand or seaweed tea for trace nutrients. Give them plenty of space and water and a late July planting to harvest beets into late October.

Another crop that may be sown in early August for the fall garden is turnip. Now I'm not talking about the big heavy rutabagas we usually think of as turnips; but the small golf-tennis ball-sized Japanese varieties. Choose short season types like Tokyo Cross, White Lady, or Market Express and revel in the sweetness of these babies. Eaten raw they have the bite of radishes, and gently steamed produce a mild buttery flavor.

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