Let’s Get This Fall Garden Started!
Ready to get your fall garden started? If you are a beginning gardener, the hardest part may not be actually planting the garden. It may be figuring out what to plant, when to plant it, and what on earth you're supposed to do next. There is a lot of gardening information out there. And while that's wonderful, it can also be overwhelming. So, I recently published a Beginner Fall Kitchen Garden Calendar to make things a little easier. Think of it as your first roadmap. You have a place to put the seeds. Maybe you have a raised bed. Maybe you've even bought the seeds. But now you're standing there thinking, Okay...what do I actually do with all of this That's where the calendar comes in.
Your Fall Garden Roadmap
The calendar maps out when to plant, what to plant, and when to harvest. The vegetables I've chosen are ones that are relatively easy to grow and have a higher success rate for a beginning gardener. Because let's be honest, gardening is already an adventure. We don't need to make it harder than it has to be. For example, I left Brussels sprouts off the beginner list. I've never had much luck with Brussels sprouts. I'm sure someone out there grows enormous, beautiful Brussels sprouts and is now questioning my gardening credentials. To that person I say: Congratulations. Please send help.’’ The goal of the calendar is not to teach you everything there is to know about raised-bed gardening. Quite the opposite.
It is intentionally very basic.
There is so much information available about gardening that it can sometimes feel like you need a degree before you can plant a seed. The calendar distills all of that information down into simple, actionable steps:
This week, plant this.
Next week, do this.
Then harvest this.
You can look at the entire fall season at a glance and see where you're going. And sometimes, that's exactly what a beginning gardener needs.
Start With the "What"
Let's use bush beans as an example. If you look at the calendar and see: August: Plant bush beans. That's your actionable item. If nothing else, get those bush bean seeds in the ground in August. But maybe you're curious. Why bush beans instead of pole beans? Why am I planting beans in August instead of September? Why does the calendar tell me to plant them by September 15? That's when you can take the next step and learn the why. You don't have to learn everything before you plant.
Plant first. Learn more as you go.
That's one of the ways we become gardeners. The calendar gives you an easy place to start, and then you can dive deeper into the information at your own pace because planting the right seeds at the right time is more than half the battle.
So, Why Plant Bush Beans in August? If you're gardening in Zone 8, let's talk about the why behind those August bean recommendations. The first thing we need to know when planning a fall garden is our first frost date. This varies by region—and even within the same hardiness zone. A quick search can give you an approximate first frost date for your area. For North Texas, the average first frost date is around November 15–18. Notice I said average. That word is important. Mother Nature did not sign a contract promising to stick to the calendar. There have been years when North Texas has experienced a first hard freeze around Halloween. So we use the average frost date as a guide, but we also keep an eye on the weather.
Let's Read the Seed Packet
Now grab your bush bean seed packet. Seed packets are little treasure troves of information. Seriously. Keep your seed packets! Don't toss them in the recycling bin as soon as you plant. Keep them until harvest—or even longer. They contain information you may need later. One of the most important pieces of information is days to maturity. For bush bean varieties such as 'Contender' and 'Blue Lake 274,' you may be looking at roughly 50–60 days to maturity. That's right. From seed to your first green bean in about two months. Plants are amazing.
Bush beans are annual, warm-season plants, and they will not tolerate frost. So if we want to enjoy those beans before the first frost arrives, we need to count backward. If our first frost is around November 15 and our beans need approximately 60 days to mature, we need to get those seeds planted around September 15.
Cue the drumroll...
September 15 is our deadline.
But if we want a longer harvest window, we don't wait until the deadline. We plant in August. That gives our beans time to grow, flower, produce beans and hopefully give us a nice harvest before cold weather shuts down the party.
Bush Beans vs. Pole Beans
There is another reason I recommend bush beans for a fall beginner garden: how they produce. Bush beans tend to produce their harvest over a relatively short period of time. Pole beans, on the other hand, keep producing over a longer period as long as you keep harvesting them and the weather cooperates. That's wonderful in spring when we're looking forward to months of summer harvesting. But for a fall garden, we have a deadline.
Frost is coming.
With bush beans, you can get one big harvest before that first frost—and sometimes, if Mother Nature gives us a mild fall, you may even get a smaller second harvest. That's a pretty good return on a couple of months of growing.
The August Challenge: Water!
Now comes the tricky part. We're planting beans in August. And August in North Texas and the Sonoran desert can be...
HOT.
As in, Why am I voluntarily standing outside right now? hot.
So watering becomes especially important when you're starting fall seeds. If you're planting a whole row or bed of green beans, make furrows about 6 inches deep and water those furrows before planting. You want the soil to be thoroughly moist when you put your bean seeds in. Then cover the seeds with about 1½–2 inches of soil and keep that soil moist until the beans emerge. Once your seedlings are up and growing, you can begin spacing out your watering as needed. The goal is consistent moisture—not a daily bean-swimming pool. Plants need moisture, but they also benefit from a little drying out between waterings. And here's something important to remember: We're growing more than what we can see. When we look at our garden, we see leaves, stems, flowers and eventually vegetables. But underneath that soil, our plants are busy growing roots. If we can water deeply rather than giving the plant a quick sprinkle, those roots can grow longer and deeper into the soil. And deep, healthy roots are exactly what we want.
Don't Let the Calendar Intimidate You
The purpose of the Beginner Fall Kitchen Garden Calendar isn't to make you a gardening expert overnight. It's to give you a starting point. There will always be more to learn. You can learn about varieties. Soil. Fertilizer. Irrigation. Pests. Companion planting. Succession planting. Mulch. Root development. Weather patterns. And before you know it, you've spent three hours researching beans.
Beans.
This is how gardening happens. You don't need to know all of that before you put your first seed in the ground. Start with the calendar. Plant the beans. Water them. Watch them grow. Then, if you're curious, start asking why. That's when gardening gets really fun. Eventually, you're not just following a calendar anymore. You're learning to read your garden. And that is when you start becoming a gardener.
A GardenWise Thought
You don't have to know everything to start a garden. You just need to know what to do next.
So grab your calendar, grab your seeds, and let's get this fall garden started!
Happy planting!
