Fall Planting Guide for the Garden, Lawn and Orchard

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Once cleared, the garden gets a rough, once-through rototilling. Then I let it rest a while. Birds attracted to the fresh-turned soil will scratch around after exposed insects and weed seeds that had planned to over-winter in the soil. If we have rain followed by a few warm days, some weeds will germinate as well—but will be eliminated when I fine-till the surface again in a week. I continue with a fast, shallow tilling every week or two—each gleaned by birds—till the cold is settled in firmly enough that the animal's water bowls are rimmed with ice most mornings. I don't want my fall-planted seeds to think that spring has arrived, so they'll germinate—only to be killed with the onset of deep winter.

Indications will be different where you live, but it's time to do the fall planting on my place when a thin crystalline rind forms on the garden loam in the morning that makes a crunching sound as I walk over it. I prefer to do my fall planting early in the day while the garden surface is still crunchy, as the soil turns to slippery mud when it thaws.

Varieties For Fall Planting

First I round up half-used seed packets where I've absentmindedly left them on window sills in the barn, under the bench in the tool shed, and in odd jars and boxes in the pantry. I winnow out seeds of the subtropical nightshades: tomato and eggplant; the cucurbits including squash, melons and cucumbers; plus corn, beans, and other warmth-loving plants. Planted into winter-dry soil, such seeds might winter over all right (otherwise, how would we get one or two "volunteer" tomato or squash plants in the compost every year?). However, all but a very few lucky or super-hardy seeds would rot, fail to germinate, or die from damping-off fungus in the wet, chilly spring soil.

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