Late Season Planting

Friday, September 12, 2008 by Jeremy Dore - Categories: gardening fall autumn salad
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Here at GrowVeg.com we have recently had several enquiries from people just taking on a new vegetable garden or allotment. For many of them the big question on their mind is ‘What can I sow now to still get a harvest?’  As days get shorter towards the end of the growing season many plants respond by maturing the crop and then dying down.  There are only a few that will actively start growing as the nights get colder so I thought I would round up a list of the best contenders.

If your vegetable plot is well established then you will probably have many winter crops already in place.  Carrots, leeks, beetroot, brussels sprouts, chard and many others can be left to mature well into winter and harvested as required (although it’s important to watch out for damage from slugs and I’ve lost carrots to rabbits as their food sources become less plentiful later in the year).  But if you are starting a garden from scratch then you won’t have the luxury of these established plants and quick-maturing alternatives are required.

The easiest crops to get going are lettuces, salad leaves and spinach.  Many of these actually do much better sown later in the season as they are then less prone to ‘bolting’ (shooting up central stems to produce flowers and seeds, becoming much more bitter and less productive in the process).  Here are my favourites plants for late-season leaves:

• Winter lettuces: I usually start these off in a tray of seed compost with a bit of protection and at the same time prepare the ground where they are going to end up. Raking over the ground will often bring up weed seeds which then sprout and can be removed before the lettuce seedlings are ready. After about 3-4 weeks the lettuce will be a few centimetres high (about an inch or so) and can be gently eased out of the tray, retaining as much soil around the roots as possible, and transferred to their growing position. If it gets very cold then they may need protecting with a cloche or row-cover. Endive also does well if raised in this way. 
• Oriental salad leaves: These can be sown directly outside and are usually quick-maturing with a hot or spicy flavour.  They are great supplements to salads adding plenty of interest to the mix.  Rocket, mizuna, mibuna and chinese cabbage (actually part of the mustard family) are all good.  Alternatively pick a mixed seed packet up, like Thompson and Morgan’s Oriental Salad Leaves mix which I have grown for several years.  Although it’s not related, corn salad (otherwise known as lamb’s lettuce or mache) can also be sown in this way.
• Radish: worth growing because it springs up so quickly.  It can be sown near to salad leaves as it will have matured and been harvested before they are big enough to need the space.  Extra sowings are required to keep the supply going and there are even some big ‘chinese’ radishes which can be left in the ground for several weeks into winter.
• Spinach: At other times of the year spinach is difficult to grow without it bolting so I find it does best in my garden when sown late.  Leaves can be ready for picking in a few weeks and if you selectively take a few from each plant they can keep producing for a couple of months.
• Chard: From the colourful rainbow chard to the useful ‘perpetual spinach’ variety these plants will endure very cold weather and give a crop right through into spring.
• Spring Onions: slow to grow but they will usually over-winter to produce some early spring pickings.

There are also a few plants that need to go in now, ready for a harvest next year. Strawberries are always best sown into a well-prepared bed at the end of the season and if you followed the advice on my previous article on strawberry runners then you should have a good supply to plant out soon. There are two important considerations when planting out strawberries:

• The plants will probably remain in position for two or three years, so the soil should be well enriched with compost before planting them.
• Strawberries hate competition from weeds so it’s important to either weed them well or plant them through a permeable plastic sheet (available from garden centres) which will also prevent the fruit from touching the ground and rotting next year.

If you are quick and the weather is quite mild then spring cabbages can be sown now for planting out after about a month. Cabbages come in different varieties depending on the season length that they require and spring ones are sown the season before they will be harvested so that they are well established when the warmer weather arrives.  Various onions should then be sown towards mid-autumn, particularly the Japanese types. When the weather gets colder garlic should be planted as it likes a period of frost over winter.

It’s easy to miss the last window of opportunity for these late-season sowings particularly if you are busy harvesting and storing this year’s crop. For me though I find that having fresh produce in winter is even more rewarding than the main harvest earlier in the year because the garden is mostly dormant at that time.  These quick maturing crops can give great pleasure when the colder weather sets in and are definitely worth sowing now.

If you have had success with some late-sown plants then do add your experiences below as it is always useful to learn of new ways to extend the harvest.