With a little planning, you can not only enjoy fresh vegetables before Thanksgiving, but the cooler growing season allows you to grow varieties that you wouldn’t normally grow in the summer.
The key to a great fall harvest is to plan early, select cool season vegetables that take only 60-90 days to reach maturity and sow seeds from August to early September. The fall growing season will allow you to select from great tasting varieties such as Broccoli, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celery, Greens, Kale, Turnips, Winter Squash and Zucchini.
This is the best time of the year for lettuce. It's easy to grow and a great money saver. Plant either from transplants, which will give you faster harvest, or start in weekly batches from seeds, which will give you more lettuce over a longer period of time. Lettuce seeds germinate within a wide range of soil temperatures, but sprout more quickly at cooler temperatures than warm ones, so this is a good time to start them.
These types of vegetable plants will thrive until soil temperatures fall consistently below 55 degrees which usually does not happen until late October to early November at which point, the plants will stop growing and any ripe fruit should be picked off before colder temps damage them.
If you want to extend your season even further consider covering your vegetables garden with a homemade hoop house covered with thick transparent plastic. This will allow the sunlight to heat up the garden during the day and slowly cool down at night, helping to avoid extreme temperature fluctuations which could take place in late fall.
Remember for the best tasting vegetables feed once a month with an organic vegetable food such as Dr. Earth Tomato, Vegetable & Herb Fertilizer or an All Purpose Fertilizer such as Gro Power and only water when the top of the soil dries out. Then sit back, relax and wait until those great tasting home-grown vegetables can be enjoyed at the dinner table!
Remember, transplants may be faster to harvest, but growing from seeds also gives you more interesting varieties to choose from--especially pleasing to the gourmet.