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Welcome to Integrated Pest Management’s Garden Hour with MU Extension Topic of the Week – 7/16. This week Gwen Funk Field Specialist in Horticulture, discussed planting a fall vegetable garden.
[Music] Sometimes when we get into the last part of July, we’ve come back from vacation and the rain shut off and we’re just done with gardening with weeding and all of that. So sometimes it’s hard to get motivated to start a garden. So my presentation is about starting a fall garden. Maybe I can entice you to maybe start a small one. And so I want to talk about what plants you can grow and harvest in the fall and then do I need to start with seeds or plants and I’ll just kind of talk about some of that a little bit. So there are some things that you can direct seed. So this makes it a very cheap way. Of course you do have to prepare the seedbed and all of that but we can do beans, carrots, karabi, lettuce and so on. Really anything that you planted early in the spring that has more of a shorter time frame. And it also kind of depends on where you are in this part of the state. So if you are down in the southern part of the state, you might have more options than what I do up here in the north part of the state, but there are quite a few that you can look at. So I’m going to kind of look at each one of those individually here. So with beans, there’s really four different types. We have bush beans, wax beans, halfrunner types, and then there are also pole beans. And really any of those we can grow or plant now or with the dates that you see coming up here for a fall harvest. So my beans did not do well at all when I planted them back in April. We were kind of droughty at that point. They just did not germinate. So I’m going to try to restart the beans here in just a couple of weeks and see if I can get maybe a fall crop. I really love the Cherokee wax mainly because I can see the beans easier when I pick them. So, I always tend to favor those purple and yellow colors just so my eyes can see the the fruit and I can pick them easy. The ones that I have here were mentioned in our vegetable planting guide as well as and they correlated with all American selections as well. So, I wanted to kind of give you some options that you could plant and what varieties to look for. And you can see the range down there at the bottom, you know, for me. And then, like I said, in about another couple of weeks, I should be able to start planting some of those. So, your beets, um, we have Ruby Queen is one of the all-American selects that was also listed in our vegetable guide. And you can see again, the end of July, 7:25, right around the end of July, 1 of April. If you’re in South Missouri, you can wait a little bit longer. And then for carrots, we have the Emperator. That was one of the first all-American selections. I think that was like 1933, 1932 and it’s still on the market today. Our vegetable guide also lists bolero and also little fingers that you can plant. So those I would really have to for me I’m really going to have to get on it because that’s 720. So that’s just you know next week really for me. So if I want to try carrots again I need to get going with that and try to look for those seed packet types. Robbie, I’m missed planting the all-American selection, the constants, the F1. I saw Jennifer’s and was incredibly jealous. She got hers in in the spring and it did really well. So, I’m really excited to try this here in our garden. So, I want to try to get that planted again next week. Another variety that you might look for that’s also listed in our vegetable guide is Grand Duke, which is that classic white green karabi. So either one of those would probably do okay. And you can see the dates down there at the bottom. And you can see it’s about a week difference whether you’re from North Missouri to South Missouri or in the central lettucees. So again, I’m was looking at cross references between all American selections and then also ones that we had listed in our publication. So butterc crunch and leaf lettucees. really those bib lettucees and leaf lettucees are the ones that would do well as a fall planting. Head lettucees, romaes probably not so much just because they take a little bit longer to grow. But you can certainly get salad bowl and butterc crunch and the spower is what we had in our packets for the all-American selections for this year. And it grew really well both out in the garden. I grew some hydroponically. It did well for that. It has a really nice flavor. So looking forward to planting that again. And then radishes you can also grow a little bit later in the time, but generally speaking, that’s kind of what we have for radishes. And here’s a good variety that you might look for. And that one has been around for a very long time as well. And here’s spinach. Most of the ones that I found for fall planting needed to be that seavoy type with the crinkly leaves. Bloomstell Longstanding is a old standby. It’s been around for a very long time. It has a heat tolerance. So, planting it now, it can still deal with some of that hot weather that we have coming up in August and September, but it should still go ahead and it’s uh slow to bolt, so you should be able to get another crop of that. And you can see for me, I need to get on that quickly. If you’re in central or south Missouri, you’ve got a little bit more time. So those are the things that we can direct seed, but we also can do some transplant. Now you could start these from seed, but if you wanted to have a plant big enough to transplant, you probably should have started those indoors under climate control probably in June or so to have plants big enough to be ready to plant outside. So all of our coal crops, broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower, we can use as a fall planting. So here are a couple of broccoli. So, I would definitely look and I’ve listed the other varieties down here that are recommended for Missouri in our vegetable guide, but try to find those varieties for the fall planting. I think that you’ll have better luck. The Purple Magic F1 is one of our new ones for this year that I think is going to be pretty cool to do. And then Premium Crop is kind of an old standby. For cabbage, we have the savory ace and which is kind of the crinkly type lettuce head and then also stone head, which is another old standby. But other varieties that you might want to look for, Golden Acre, Bravo, Head Start, Conquest, or Gourmet, those would need to be planted pretty quickly here in North Missouri and even central Missouri. You got a little bit more time to be thinking about that and looking for those plants if you’re wanting to have some cabbages for later in the fall. And these will withstand a little bit of frost. So you can get a little bit longer growing season out of them. They’re not necessarily going to be done once we get a frost depending on how hard it is. Cauliflower kind of the same thing. And we have the new one, the morasi futo is the purple cauliflower and it has kind of the longer inner nodes to make it a little bit more attractive. I guess it’s kind of the trend that’s kind of happening with cauliflower in some areas. And then snow crown is just kind of an old standby. Again, some things that we can look for transplants in our garden centers and see if we can get some of those going. So, in summary, fall is a great time to plant for another harvest opportunity. Generally, we have fewer pests in the fall. We have more consistent and less intense rain. So, weather conditions usually are a little bit better. And if you kind of focus on our coal crops and some of the leafy greens and you should have some good luck with some of those things.
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