Five reasons not to plant a fall garden
Written by:
Noel Ruiz
I don’t plant a fall garden. This is not lazy gardening. I like to garden smarter, not harder. I love to garden more intuitively, less know-fully. I strive to garden more naturally, less dominatingly.
Well, if you are feeling lazy about planting a fall garden—okay, you’ll definitely get something out of this!
Here are five reasons not to plant a fall garden:
1. Encourage volunteers
Instead of planting a fall garden, I prefer my garden to plant itself. I encourage food plants that reseed easily and reliably.
These plants flower and drop seeds in time for self-sowing a fall crop. I often participate and encourage re-seeding by shaking dry seed heads around my garden, offering well-wishes. Many annual and biennial greens and herbs are adapted to this pattern. Let these plants make seeds, and you’ll likely find some volunteering come fall. Some fall greens and herbs that reseed readily are kale, mustard, Swiss chard, radishes, lettuce, fennel, parsley, dill and celery.
2. Don’t sweat the storage crops
I don’t try to get multiple successions of storage crops like carrots and beets. Instead, I sow one planting of storage crops in late spring or early summer. I don’t sweat sowing time because they have all season to get big.
With plants like carrots, beets, and leeks, I sow extra seeds close together and thin-to-eat the smaller and more damaged plants throughout the summer. We get to eat more come fall, saving the best for winter.
Bonus crops: I allow favored weeds to grow between our storage crops. Most garden weeds are food too. When they start crowding our storage crop seedlings, I harvest the weeds. I like to freeze some for winter eating as well. Those weeds often include mineral-rich summer greens like amaranth, lambsquarters, and purslane.
3. Focus on summer harvests
Late summer is an ideal time to sow many fall crops. This coincides with the time when abundant harvests from spring-planted crops and perennials start rolling in.
Come late summer, I’m less excited about starting and babying new seedlings. I’m already focusing my energy on veggie, A volunteer patch of Swiss chard featuring plants in all stages of life: seedlings, youngsters, mature first-year-olds, and second-year-olds in flower. Photo by Noel Ruiz. berry, fruit, flower, and seed harvests! We’re also processing and putting away food for the winter.
I’m happy not to take on more gardening tasks in late summer. I’m appreciating the abundance from generous perennial foods and what we sowed in the spring.
4. Allow beds to go fallow
Some crops are completely harvested and done by late summer. Peas, fava beans, lettuce, radishes, and overwintered grains come to mind. Their early completion opens up space for new fall crops, should I want to plant them.
Sometimes it’s more satisfying to let a bed go fallow and rest, knowing that it’s okay if the garden is not always super-optimized.
This may result in conserving water if irrigation is no longer needed in that bed. Or if the space continues to be irrigated, a cover crop could be planted for improving soil. Personally, my favorite cover crops are the ones nature plants: weeds and volunteers!
5. Don’t fight the conditions
Our climate is super hot in late summer. Tending delicate seedlings is way more challenging when the soil dries out fast. Sowing time and seedling care have to be spot-on.
I love challenges, but planting fall gardens isn’t one that I choose. I’m already taking on other challenges, like tending a young food forest and helping put up food and herbal medicines.
As mentioned earlier, I also love to see which weeds and volunteers thrive in these challenging conditions!
Full circle
This brings me to the joys of learning from a garden. Gardens always model natural rhythms. I also get to learn about myself as a human. (Wow— so much to learn!)
You might love planting a fall garden and the rewards it can offer. Many gardeners do! But I choose a different path. We always have the option to diverge from other gardeners’ advice.
Just as no two people are the same, I appreciate gardens that look and feel different too. Let’s let our personalities shine through our gardens!
Noel Ruiz
Noel offers seeds and writes about homesteading from the heart at homesteadculture.com.
Image 1: Seed stalks from a mother kale plant were pruned and tossed to the side, and this patch of volunteer kale resulted. Photo by Noel Ruiz.
Image 2: A volunteer patch of Swiss chard featuring plants in all stages of life: seedlings, youngsters, mature first-year-olds, and second-year-olds in flower. Photo by Noel Ruiz.
