Vegetable Gardening Four Season Vegetable Gardening

First fall garden - what to pull? what to keep growing?

5 years ago

last modified: 5 years ago

I've had my first successful fall garden this year. I have kale, swiss chard, a few cabbage plants, arugula and lettuce, but need to clear some space to plant garlic. I'm in zone 5 and daytime temperatures will be in the 40s and nighttime temperatures in the 30s over the next couple of weeks and then colder than that. I have row cover, greenhouse plastic, and/or a cold frame I could put on some of the plants. I know they may stop growing with the colder temperatures and shorter days, but would any of these be worth leaving in the ground for a harvest in a month or so?

The cabbages have been growing from transplants for about 90 days, so I think they probably aren't going to head up. I think they're a purple napa cabbage, but they might be a round cabbage (labels got a bit mixed up).

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Comments (4)

robert567
5 years ago
last modified: 5 years ago
You might have gotten bigger more usable plants if you had spaced them out. Quality over quantity. Winter is coming.

The cabbage and kale will probably keep growing until you get a really cold night. Might as well let them keep growing. Some kale can survive down to about zero F.

Eat some arugula now, you have so much, could leave some it may last for awhile yet, but probably will not get much bigger.

Chard will survive for awhile until some really cold nights.

The lettuce might as well be eaten now. Will grow slower and slower, and be ruined by a hard freeze.
Sarah W. thanked robert567
floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
5 years ago
Of course we can’t see the whole area, but it looks to me as if you have enough space to plant some garlic without getting rid of anything. And, as Robert said, start using what you have growing there rather than waste it by pulling it out. You could use row cover to protect the crops for longer into the winter.
Sarah W. thanked floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK
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kitasei2
5 years ago
May I just add that you did a stupendous job for your first season!
Sarah W. thanked kitasei2
Sarah W.
Original Author
5 years ago
Thanks, everyone! "Pull" definitely meant "pull and eat" - I won't let anything go to waste, just wondering what might continue to grow over the next couple of months and how much/what kind of protection would be most beneficial.

There is plenty of room, but I have about 200 cloves of garlic to plant (this will be my third year of planting garlic) and I'd like to rearrange the rows from 4 narrow rows with wide paths to 3 wider rows (30 inches) with a bit narrower paths, to maximize growing space. So I'm working out how I can redo the rows, have enough space for garlic now, and still have a row left for a summer crop next summer...

All of your advice fits what I thought - I'll leave the kale and chard in and harvest the arugula (for pesto) and the remaining lettuce. If the row configuration and garlic planting allows it, I'll leave the cabbage plants, just to see what happens. If no heads ever form, I'll still eat the cabbage leaves!

I've been gardening over the summer for about five years, so that experience is helping with the fall garden. But for my first attempt at a fall garden last year, I just tried direct seeding everything after I harvested the garlic. Since that resulted in about two tiny swiss chard leaves, this year I started seedlings and transplanted them :)