Planting A Fall Garden

October 13, 2017

One of the things I have never been able to do was plant a fall community garden.  Reasons were usually due to early frosts, schedule, and lack of volunteers.  However, this year with the help of Tracey Nason and Chris Norris, we started a fall garden. For this garden, we planted spinach and lettuce; kept the chard and kale growing; and the dill and tomatoes in the culinary garden are at a limit that we can donate to food pantries. 

The okra plants did amazingly will this year.  They grew to over six feet tall, which is possible but not probable.  We hit the possible this time!  Okra was considered a success this year and we are planning to plant it next year.  I put in an enclosed porch and hope to start seedlings (from our plants this year) in it next year to cut down on the cost of the plants. 

The peas were a success also, and I hope that we can fence/grow them starting in the spring next year and actually have two plantings, early spring and late summer.  The community garden is starting to produce like a community garden should.  After next year, our biggest yearly expense will only be fertilizer and the gardens should continue for hopefully another three-to-four years depending on how long the boxes hold out. 

That's it for now. I will be able to report final produce stats hopefully within a few weeks!

Patti Keller, RD, LD, CDE