Fall is the best time of the year to grow vegetables in Kansas, and it is not too late to start for the year. This presentation will cover tips and tricks of establishing and caring for a fall vegetable garden, as well as some pointers for fall season extension and putting your garden to rest at the end of the season.
August 5, 2020
Visit our website: https://www.ksre.k-state.edu
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KStateRE
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/KStateRE
Visit the K-State Research and Extension bookstore to find publications on a variety of topics: https://bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu
Welcome and good afternoon we would like to start with our Kate Garden hour series we thank you for joining us today this series is hosted by Kate research and extension my name is Kelsey hatol and I am the Horticulture agent for the river valley District I will be serving
As your host for today but before we get started we do have a couple housekeeping notes that we’d like to let you know about we have switched from a zoom license to a webinar license so we do have a Q&A feature in this webinar for to ask your questions please use the Q&A
Relate for questions our moderator Dennis Patton who is the horiculture agent for Johnson County we’ll be keeping track of those questions that come in and we will do our best to get through all the questions at the end of the presentation in the event that we do
Not answer all of them we will be uploading additional resources for you on our Horticulture and natural resources website this will serve as a great reference after the presentation we will ALS you will also be able to access today’s presentation on on that website this webinar will be recorded
And we will be posting it on the website as well as the previous topics and the upcoming webinars on that website as well the events in this series have been posted on the case State Horticulture and natural right natural resources Facebook page you can stay tuned in
There to what’s going on within our department as well as stay up toate on the upcoming topics within this series be sure to like share and use the hasht kstate garden hour to help us promote this program this webinar Series has allowed us to continue to provide educ extension education related horiculture
And gardening topics given the circumstances we are in today everyone involved in the development of this series is an extension professional for K State most of us have a background in horiculture education or related discipline but most of all we have each we each have a love for gardening in the
Natural environment we have recently added several events to the series and have an exciting month ahead we will continue to do a week two we schedule through the end of September today’s topic is gardening fall vegetables is growing fall vegetables excuse me I am pleased to introduce our speaker today Tom berer he
Is the horiculture agent for Douglas County give us a couple moments while we transition to Tom’s presentation all right um hopefully everybody’s seeing my presentation uh good just barely afternoon everybody my name is Tom Buller I am the horiculture extension agent in Douglas County um so that’s the county surrounding Lawrence
So in northeast Kansas in between Kansas City and Topeka um so today I’m going to talk about growing fall vegetables uh Now is really a great time uh to be doing that uh I started growing vegetables in Kansas about 14 years ago and I did start out in the fall uh and
The gentleman who I consider my gardening Mentor Mark lumpy uh who runs Wakarusa Valley Farm here in Lawrence um told me that the time to start planting fall vegetables was in the first cold snap or cool snap I guess in August so uh sometimes these days it seems like
That comes in July but we are definitely in the midst of a cool snap up here in northeast Kansas um so now is the the perfect time to be getting your vegetables going um I’m going to walk through um some season uh growing season information just talk a real kind of conceptual
Level about what we know we consider sort of the three growing seasons in Kansas I’ll talk about why fall is a different time to grow uh vegetables in Kansas uh highlight some of the differences that will that will uh affect how you grow things and what you
Grow um I’ll talk a little bit about season extension that’s something I could give a whole talk about and be happy to answer as many questions as we have time for at the end about that um but just give a little quick dive into season extension uh both just extending
The season a little bit and also really extending the season trying to grow some stuff for winter um I’ll talk a little bit about Garden preps so what do we need to do so uh to get ready for for fall gardening um and then I’m going to go through kind of a
Planting calendar uh and not day byday but roughly time periods of the fall when to plant what and um talk a little bit about Garden cleanup uh which you know isn’t necessarily directly related to vegetables but it’s something good to do at the end of the year um so with
That that’s kind of an overview of where I’m going to go and in general I like to think of the the course of this talk going from sort of the conceptual theoretical um to to the Hands-On applied so we’ll start and try and give you some understanding about fall and
How it’s Unique as a season um and then we’ll just get down to the the nitty-gritty of when to plant what so Kansas we really like to consider has three growing Seasons uh two cool seasons and a warm season so spring uh is a cool season then comes summer um
And it’s a warm season and then we come into fall which we list as also a cool season um but it does have some very critical differences from Spring and those are that you know the soils coming into the the period are already warm and the temperatures are also warm
And both of those things are kind of cooling down so if you think about the spring growing season um you start off with cool soils that are warming up and generally cool air temperatures that are warming up I mean air temperatures are all over the place but that’s the
General Trend and then in Fall it’s the reverse of that so while we talk about cool season crops and warm season crops so there’s a lot of overlap between what we grow uh in the spring and in the fall those General Dynamics of soil temperature and air temperature are
Going to affect how we grow that um I like to think of the Fall as a bonus season um because in addition to getting those cool season crops which is one I really spend most of the time talking about today um you know what to plant
Now uh for for fall vegetables um you kind of get that bonus and that you still have the warm season crops going um so I have a picture here from a a farmers market here in Lawrence a farmers market stand um and and I like this just because this picture was taken
Um in early October and it really shows you know like I guess the full power of fall gardening uh because here you have fresh lettuce alongside sweet potatoes winter squash regular potatoes peppers tomatoes eggplant you know some baby cut greens some turnips all all kinds of different things uh so fall is really
Great because you can get the full spectrum of garden produce you know early in the spring you get some nice leafy greens but if you want a tomato uh you’re out of luck unless you’re buying it from a grocery store um or a hydroponic producer uh but in the fall
You can have all of those things coming out of your garden at the same time so it’s really a great time um so I would like to to ask a a a quick pull here um just to see uh who’s in the audience um so we’ll wait uh just a couple minutes
Here if you want to click on that uh I like to know who’s gardening and if you’ve gardened in the fall before all right the votes are slowing down to a trickle so I’m going to go ahead and close that um and so it’s some interesting uh Dynamics there so uh over
Half of you have never grown vegetables in the fall before um a good chunk of you 60% of you have more than 10 years gardening experience so uh hopefully I’ll still be able to teach you something but but possibly not um and then we do have a little over 10 10%
Um that are that are 11% there that this is their first year gardening so uh welcome if this is your first year gardening uh fall I think is the best time of year to Garden in Kansas uh maybe have made that abundantly clear but if this is your first year welcome
And hopefully we can get you uh going well all right now there we go so um I talked a little bit about the sort of top level difference of why fall is a little bit of a different season uh to Garden in uh but we’ll go down I’ll run through some
More specific areas so what’s different in the fall uh and I’ll dive into these uh in detail each of them so weed pressure is definitely different in the fall insect pressure can be different in the fall um plant establishment there will be some slightly different techniques or slightly
Modifications to how you would normally establish plants that we’ll do in the fall um different crop selection I I’ll put up some slides on on choosing crops for the fall and that that difference uh takes place on a couple of different levels so we’re not just looking at
Probably any cool season vegetable um and and when we’re thinking about which vegetables to choose we might be choosing different varieties also um you know the fall The Fall season has a different ingame uh so we are not uh moving into warmer periods we are moving into frosts and freezes um so that’s
Definitely going to be a factor in how you do fall gardening I think fall gardening requires a little bit more planning a little bit more forethought um because there are some hard deadlines that are coming up if you have Frost sensitive crops um and we don’t know
Exactly when those are uh but they are definitely coming um and something else that I think is a is a challenge and maybe why a lot of people haven’t grown veget vegetables in the fall is burnout and I’m not going to really talk about that in any detail except to say you
Know if you started growing vegetables in the spring um the weeds got away from you uh or it was really hot in the summer and you’re just you know tired of being outside and it’s hot uh fall is a is a great time uh to to refresh
Yourself um maybe go knock down all those weeds till under the debris um whatever um but you can get a fresh Garden start so I know a lot of people start the spring with a lot of energy and enthusiasm for gardening and for a lot of people uh this time of year that
Enthusiasm is waning uh maybe not so much this year since we’re having such a cool spell it’s nice to get outside um but definitely you know if you can power through it uh fall gardening can be great even if you’re feeling a little tired of dealing with all the weeds and
Everything at this point it’ll get better okay so I’m going to talk about most of those points in a little bit more detail um and so uh talking about weed pressure in the fall um fall is very different Dynamics than the spring and this is
Kind of the tale of two pictures here um so the picture on the left that is not as that you know nice uh baby cut lettuce that I had on my first slide that is actually a solid sea of little pigweed babies um so this was a picture
That I took uh in someone’s Garden um in early August so they had tilled it in preparation for planting um and those warm soils of the Fall we got some rain and um some weeds that they had previously let go to seed uh just took
Over um so you can see early in the fall season you’re going to have pretty intense weed pressure we’ve got warm soils uh some of those aggressive weeds like Pig weed um or maybe Johnson grass any of those real nasty warm season weeds um they can germinate in those
Warm soils so you probably kind of intense weed pressure early in the season so when you’re thinking about planting a fall Garden um you you want to think about how to control those early on uh so one great technique to deal with something like that sea of pig
Weed is what we call stale seed bedding um so that would be preparing your garden as if you were going to plant it let all those little weed seeds germinate like you have a nice sea there and if you go through with a hoe and shallowly cultivate those or some other
Uh way uh you know if you’re using herbicide you can kill all of those weed seedlings and then you plant um and the plants that come up after that will have that many fewer weeds to compete against so stale seed bedding is kind of letting the the the seed bed germinate its first
Flush of weeds then killing those and then planting um so that works well if uh you start a little bit earlier than now for many things uh but there are some things if you went out and set up a stale seed bed now uh there will be
Things you can plant in two or 3 weeks um you still have time so um if you do have garden areas that have had extreme weed pressure in the past you might want to consider that uh just to make a fall gardening a little bit easier and then
On the right side um we have a row there the bigger stuff that’s in that row is spinach uh the smaller little things that have kind of purpley round leaves um that is actually henbit which you probably notice most in the spring when you drive by a field and it’s solidly purple
Uh that is henbit that is taken over uh but this picture was taken in the middle of September in someone’s garden and you know henbit isn’t a terribly aggressive weed in the fall so they planted their spinach and it came up alongside the the henbit there and the spinach will easily
Outc compete that so you know things you plant later in the fall will have a lot less weed pressure to deal with those really aggressive warm season weeds um they won’t be germinating nearly as much so so if you had that spinach and it was growing you know the pig weed that’s on
The left side would would just absolutely hide the spinach um and you wouldn’t get much of a crop without really aggressive weed control um whereas if you wait a little bit the weed pressure will go down so um that’s the the big dynamic as those soils cool
Down um the weed pressure uh changes we get generally less aggressive weeds germinating um another thing to that changes in the fall and this isn’t true for for every insect uh but I feel like in general uh you know insect pressure is a little bit less in the fall and
That’s certainly true for certain specific examples uh so here I have a a picture that’s the life cycle of the Japanese beetle um and there’s little tick marks at the bottom and those tick marks are for each month of the year um and what you see is that the Japanese
Beetle spends much of its life underground uh eating the roots of your grass uh but then in June and July uh it is above ground feeding on almost anything I mean they certainly have things they prefer but I have seen Japanese beetles eat a lot of different
Things so if you’re in a part of the state like me and here here in the Northeast where Japanese beetles are a huge problem um some of the some of the spring crops I grow uh they really like to eat so if I have a Chinese cabbage um
That’s kind of a later season Chinese cabbage I’ve planted and it’s coming into maturity in the middle or end of June right when these Japanese beetles are emerging um I’ve seen them you know turn one of those into lace in two days uh so they can be a huge pest but
They’re not going to be a big pest in our fall Gardens I did go out last night and find one in my garden but they’re on their way out um other pests um sometimes uh flea beetles are a lot of problems on leafy greens uh and I in
General notied that flea beetles are less of a problem in the fall I’m not sure the reason for that but in general uh a lot of insect pressure decreases that’s not true of every insect um I’ve noticed pretty uh uniform amounts of damage from you know cabbage Loopers uh
In Spring and fall uh but a lot of pests have different seasons so you might get away with having less insect pressure in the fall um plant establishments going to be a little bit different process in the fall um not much uh but you know warm soils create this opportunity and some
Challenges so we’ve talked about probably the main challenge that that warm soil provides for us and that is those really aggressive weeds will germinate very quickly uh but the nice opportunity is that a lot of things that you plant will germinate very quickly also um you know things still take
Different amounts of time so a carrot is going to germinate relatively quickly for a carrot this time of year but it’s still going to be a lot slower uh than a bean um another challenge plant establishment is in a normal year uh July is pretty dry in Kansas or in a lot
Of parts of Kansas um so you usually are coming into the fall season with maybe a deficit of moisture in the soil um and that can definitely create challenges uh especially if we get high temperatures soil that’s kind of dry and you’re trying to establish seedlings um that
Can be a real hard thing so the solution is you know maybe put those seeds just a little bit deeper um than you wood so they’re not quite on that top level of soil that’s baking um and make sure you keep your seedlings well watered uh that
Is probably the the primary thing you need to do differently in the fall is just really pay attention to that water um right now it’s really cool our soils are moist here uh in Douglas County um so it’s a little bit less of a concern
Than it would be in in normal years uh but you do have to really pay attention to that so watch the temperature uh watch the amount of precipitation you’ve had um and and act accordingly so it’s been cool uh but if we get temperatures that return up to the
Mid90s um and we don’t get rain for a couple of weeks if you have little seedlings you’re going to need to get out there and water them uh I know some people that do it twice a day maybe daily um maybe every other day it just
Kind of depends but you really have to to keep an eye on those conditions uh because those warm soils um and you know in general dry weather uh is is a lot more stressful for young seedlings in the fall the Spring’s a little bit more forgiving in that
Regard um and so also if you’re starting transplants or purchasing transplants from somewhere um you need to make sure that they’re used to field conditions uh so I’d like to start my own transplants for the fall um in general uh a lot of a lot of places have less availability of
Transplants in the fall uh you can generally find some at local garden centers probably less uh at any of the the big box stores depending on where you’re getting your your gardening transplants in the main season um so I like to start transplants so I have a
Selection of what I want to grow available um but once you’re doing those when I start those usually in July um you know I’ll do it in the shade because a little flat of transplants would cook out in the the full sun of July on most
Days so I started in the shade uh keep them well watered but then as we’re getting ready to plant those out into the field we need to make sure they’re they’re hardened off uh just like we would in the spring um but make sure they’re used to that full sun if you’ve
Had them in a little bit of shade to keep them cooler uh make sure that you know they’re used to the wind in a lot of places in Kansas you know the wind is a constant problem um so making sure that those plants are ready for the
Field before you go stick them out in the field is really important um in the in the fall as well as in the spring because it’s really you know once you get out in the garden um even if it’s really nice like right now it’s about 75
Degrees where I’m at it’d be a beautiful day to put out some transplants if in three or four days we’re at mid 90s um and they’re not used to being out in the full sun they’ll just cook so you really have to to baby your plants in the fall
Make sure they’re they’re really happy when you put them out in the field um and once they’re out there just make sure you keep them well watered so I’ll talk a little bit about fall crop selection um in a in a broad sense I’m not going to really talk about any specific
Varieties um you know a lot of that’s up to you what’s available to you um I will talk about a little bit how to choose some varieties uh but in general uh most of the things you grow in the spring those cool season crops you can also
Grow in the fall um so we’re talking about things like lettuce leafy greens uh radishes you know turnips broccoli cabbage and even beans and squash um so those are those are at the tail end there um and I’ll talk about planting Seasons but they’re kind of you wouldn’t plant them early in the
Spring those beans and squash likewise you won’t plant them late in the fall uh because they’re more of a summer crop but they’re kind of a crossover and they’re relatively quick to grow so you can get a crop if you plant them in the fall often um there are some things that
Are that are generally better in the spring um so planting peas uh they like cool soils um so they don’t germinate quite as well in the in the fall season or when you would be planting them for The Fall season and potatoes are a little bit similar uh some people do
Grow potatoes for the fall I’ll talk a little bit about some techniques for that but they are something that I feel like is just uh pretty dramatically easier to grow in the spring so if it was up to me you know I would much rather grow enough potatoes for the year
In a in a larger spring planting um rather than holding you know holding some and planting them later all right and so beyond just choosing what types of crops you want to grow in your garden um fall crop selection can be really important so here I’ve got uh two different varieties
Of broccoli I stole these uh and the the descriptions of them from Johnny seeds there Johnny seeds.com uh not endorsing them just want to let you know where I’m taking the images from uh but anyway so you decide you want to grow broccoli in
The fall uh which is is a good crop to grow in the fall some people say fall is the best time to grow broccoli in Kansas um but if you look at these two different varieties uh they’re not equally suited for fall produ C so you
Have Imperial on top there uh which in the description from their catalog you know the the top line of that best heat tolerance um and then it describes the heads um and often you know however it’s grown in late fall harvest in California and Arizona um that does not mean it’s
Suited for fall production here in Kansas often especially if you’re ordering seeds from other places uh they’ll have descriptions of the plants that don’t really suit Kansas’s environment um so a heat tolerant broccoli like this would be much better uh for spring production in Kansas because the broccoli plants start out
Small and as they’re in that stage where they’re setting that head or or building up um you know in moving into the floral production stage uh that’s when they need that heat tolerance so growing a variety like Imperial in the in the spring as we’re moving into a hotter time in Kansas
Would be good because um it’s tolerant of that heat uh which you know can make a lot of broccolis turn bitter if we get an early hot snap in in Kansas which is one of the challenges of growing broccoli in the spring here uh versus the second variety
They their Marathon uh which is best for overwinter production um so this late variety is highly tolerant to cold um grown successfully in Northeast for late summer and fall crops and over winter in Florida and California um so you know this uh tolerance to cold is really
Something you’d want uh for more of a fall produced broccoli because we are moving you know if you plant broccoli now it’s going to be maturing in a time period where you know the odds are higher that it will experience some cold um so in addition to choosing what uh
What types of crops to grow um when you’re choosing crops really look for those words so you know things that you want to grow in the spring or late in the spring you you know heat tolerance is going to be more important there whereas cold tolerance will be more
Important for things you’re planting now um you know the the real difference uh in all of this is kind of the endgame of of The Fall season and this isn’t going to be the end of fall vegetable production um but this first fall freeze uh changes everything really um so
Here’s a average date from the the Agronomy on Mesonet uh they took the average data of the first fall freeze across the state so I don’t know what part of the state you’re listening from so you can sort of look at those date ranges and see as they apply to you um
Ours I feel like you know maybe in my memory of gardening I would give it a little bit wider you know I’m in the 14 October 14th to 16th range there um but I think I would probably say you know I’m thinking maybe October 10 through 20
Is kind of the general window of when that fall free is in my mind um so you’re going to want to come up with that for your location and then a lot of fall gardening is kind of counting backwards so what you’re going to be able to plant when um is a
Is a sort of mixture of how sensitive that crop is to cold temperatures Frost and freeze especially um and how long it takes to grow so um we’ll get into those details and talk about those timing Cycles a little bit um but that really is uh you
Know something that you you have to think about a lot in the fall and and the interesting thing is and I’ll talk a little bit about this in season extension but uh here we often will get this first fall freeze um and maybe we have two nights where it gets cold and
Then we’ll have two weeks after that where the weather’s nice um and we don’t get another freeze or a week after that so um it might be something to think about if you’re if you’re feeling uh adventurous you can try and extend the Harvest a little bit with some season
Extension um so uh that’s that’s really the next topic then if you do want to extend the Harvest a little bit um I’ll talk about season extension uh this first slide I’m just going to go into um really trying to to buy maybe those extra few days or those extra couple of
Weeks um and then I’ll talk a little bit about winter production uh on the next slide uh technically we call all of that season extension um in the vegetable production World um but we’ll just talk about this thinking about just extending the season a little bit here um so you
Can add a few weeks to harvest uh like I said here we usually get you know maybe between one and three nights where we’ll have a cold snap and we’ll get temperatures that dip down maybe to 30 degrees um and if you can figure out some way to help your plants survive
That uh or the plants that are are Frost sensitive or freeze sensitive to survive that little dip you often get two more weeks of nice temperatures um so floating row cover like I’ve got in the picture here um usually provides a little bit of protection so depending
On the thickness you get um it’ll provide maybe between two and four degrees of frost protection and it’s basically just trapping that warm air from the ground um trapping your plants with that and not letting that that Frost uh settle down on those plants by kind of insulating insulating them with
The ground um you do want to to use uh ideally some kind of hoop or something to keep it off the leaves a little bit um because if it’s just sitting on the leaves often there’ll be some condensation and it can freeze onto the leaves even if the air space underneath
Is warm enough that your plants would survive um you can get a little bit of leaf burn which isn’t really a a problem maybe if you want to throw some of this over some green beans or something like that um a little bit of leaf burn isn’t
A huge deal on those um but if you are trying to grow greens to eat especially if they’re mature and ready to harvest so you have a bunch of heads of lettuce that are ready to harvest um if you let that row cover uh freeze to those heads
Even though the the lettuce would survive that cold just fine um you can get some tip burn on the the green so keeping that row cover off of leaf contact is really uh ideal um winter Harvest is also possible in Kansas and again this is something that um we could
Dive into uh for a couple hours um but just really briefly to give you an idea of what’s possible I’m standing there I did not grow either of those two heads of lettuce uh but those two heads of lettuce were grown by my neighbor this picture was uh in December 16th I
Believe and the air temperature while I’m standing there holding them is 0 degrees so we had a real cold spell that December uh but my neighbor was growing you know full-size beautiful heads of Romain lettuce right up to there um so if you want to if you want to grow stuff
For winter Harvest um and some things are are winter you know Frost tolerant so lettu uses uh a number of leafy greens kale spinach those kinds of things are are really uh not super sensitive to frost um or freezes you really want to grow those crops to the mature size by the middle
Of November so in the middle of November um we lose enough daylight that plants aren’t really growing very much at any point so if you start with little things even if they say you know this is a 45 day lettuce if you start with little lettuces in the middle of November you
Know by January they might just be a little bit bigger because we just don’t have enough light for them to take off very well um they do better if you have some supplemental heating um but in general if you want to grow without a greenhouse if you just want to grow some
Crops um for winter Harvest you want to grow them to full Harvest size by mid November so you want to start your your clock uh there and you really want to provide substantial cover so I think everyone that’s growing greens um for Harvest in the winter you usually want
To do two layers so maybe a low layer of row cover um and then people will have like a little Greenhouse or something like that on top a high tunnel um to provide a second layer of cover so just one layer of cover uh or even two layers
Of cover closely stacked doesn’t quite Do It um but if you have a space for a small Greenhouse or a little hoop house um and then that cover on that isn’t enough you need another layer of row cover over it and you can grow greens all
Winter um but again you got to keep the cover off the leaves otherwise you’re going to get um you know those leaves sticking uh and getting tip burn on them um two layers is is best and the other thing if you are trying to do this winter Harvest I know uh people that
Have done this in their Gardens you can make little low tunnels and then have row cover Under and Over that um you have to make sure that the temperature is above freezing when you harvest it because if if the crop’s Frozen it will look really nice um then you harvest it
And you go wash your lettuce it’ll just turn to Mush you know it’ll look beautiful as it’s Frozen um but then it’ll turn to Mush but if you let the temperature in that warm up um to a day when it’s above freezing and you harvest
It the crop will be just fine so um so with that is kind of the theoretical overview of you know growing fall vegetables I’ll dive into the more the nitty gritty uh details here um and so Garden prep um you know to start FSE seedlings you really want to create a
Nice planting bed um but you want to avoid tillage if possible I I try and always say avoid tillage if possible uh but especially going into the fall if you have a garden that’s uh reasonably nice to plant that you’ve already grown things in uh a lot of the weed seeds
That are in that germination Zone will have already sprouted and been killed by you um in the spring if you are plant prepping a new bed and you go through and Roto till that you’re bringing up a whole new layer of weed seeds um so if you can avoid that that’s
Really ideal it’s also better for your soil Health um you know if you have compost uh to add that’s a great addition now it helps your soil hold moisture um so some of those uh concerns about you know soils drying out with the warm temperatures compost helps to
Mitigate that um generally in the fall if you’ve had an adequately fertilized garden and you’re planting into that same Garden space generally pretty minimal additional fertilizer needed I would say the the one sort of exception to that if you’re growing something that they often call a heavy feeder um so
Something like broccoli uh it might need a little bit extra nitrogen but in general if you did a good Fertilization in the spring there’s probably enough nutrients still in your garden uh to make it through the fall all right so now we’ll talk about timing um and I realize this shows up
Probably pretty small on your screens um so I’m not you know asking you to read the words here uh but this is a chart that’s available towards the back of the Kansas garden guide uh I’ve got the link there uh on the slide I think Dennis is
Going to put it in the chat also uh but this kind of shows you uh the seasons of when to plant things and when to harvest things in Kansas uh so the the boxes that are just outlined in black as the planting time and then the blocks that
Are solid black with the letters in white uh is the Harvest time so as you can see here um looking at you know early August the things that this would tell us to plant are beets carrots uh broccoli on uh cauliflower uh moving into the time we can plant kale uh
Lettuce looks like we missed potatoes according to this um and I’ll and I’ll talk through these things in a little bit more detail but this gives you a general sense of wind to plant things and these windows are are a little bit uh wider or smaller again depending on
Varieties where you’re at um how long it is until that killing Frost and and what you’re looking at growing so on this uh chart here down towards the bottom you see that the squash planting window is in May and winter squash is in June um actually if you get a short variety of
Squash you could plant that now and you’d be harvesting squash before Frost at least here in northeast Kansas um so you know not everything on this chart is correct uh or you know there’s other options I guess not this chart doesn’t show all the options you could plant
Spinach uh now and you might get away with it uh this shows you planting it at the end of August and into September you could also plant it a little bit later so I’ll talk through some of that but this provides a good backdrop um and so
Uh you can go to the Kansas garden guide It’s actually got a full chapter on Fall gardening that’s really great chapter um and it shows you this if you don’t want to take notes rapidly while I talk here so I’m going to talk a little bit about
What to plant and win from my perspective and we’re going to start a few weeks ago so we’ll think about early to mid July um and this is you know not going to be helpful for this year obviously but for future years if you want to Garden in the fall here’s some
Things you can consider um this is a good time to start transplants of broccoli cabbage brussels sprouts Etc in general transplants in the fall don’t take quite as long to grow so probably you know after four weeks these transplants would be ready to set out in the field um just because they’ll get
Going faster um but you do need to get those going because most of these now would be the right time to start putting those out in the field if you’re doing beans and summer squash you could be doing succession plantings of those um and if you did want to grow potatoes for fall
Production uh July is kind of the time to do it now the problem with potatoes is they don’t like soil that’s that hot and our soils are hot in July um so uh the the person I know that’s grown fall potatoes most successfully his technique um would be to plant potatoes in July
And he would have mulched the beds ahead of time and put them in the mulch to try and keep the soil cool um and then as we move into September when you’re trying to keep the soil warm long enough for those tubers to size up he’d pull the
Mulch off of it um so you’re trying to kind of fight the natural direction of soil temperatures um using mulch uh so it’s a a couple extra steps but it is possible okay so that’s the early season that we’ve moved past so now I’ll talk about the window that we’re in so the
End of July to early August um what can you plant so I think you could still squeeze in a last planting of beans or summer squash um what you really want to do on these though is check the label for days to maturity so if I’m talking
About a frost that’s coming in my area sometime between October 10th and 20th um you need to think that that’s you know maybe what roughly 60 days out from here so there are some varieties that are 50 days um so if you get you know if
I get a frost on the 20th you could have 20 days of harvest if you get a 50-day variety um so it’s not you’re not going to get a full season of production out of the beans or summer squash but if if you really want those and you haven’t
Gotten them out of your garden yet I think you might be able to still squeeze those in especially if you’re in the southern part of the state um and if you haven’t ever grown beans in the fall wow they are super tasty um and it’s really
Just nice to go out and pick them when it’s cool um now is a good time to start field plantings of those cool season direct seated crops um so this is when I was learning how to garden here the my mentor said start planting the first
Cool snap in August this is the stuff was talking about so things like beets and carrots uh turnips you could start planting greens out there um you could plant spinach uh you have to keep these well watered you know just because the seeds will dry out relatively quickly um
But especially with the spinach I just threw in a word of caution there because it’s really sensitive to high soil temperatures and I see a lot of people with uh germination failures on spinach if they plant it in August when it’s still hot so we’ve been cool here for
Almost a week so I think I could easily get some spinach to germinate now but um if I uh was going to plant them and it was 95 degrees and it had been I’d really want to maybe water the area really well uh probably for a couple
Days before planting to try and bring that soil temperature down a little bit um everything else germinates pretty well uh in regardless of the temperature but spinach is uh really sensitive to those temp those uh St temps um if you have those transplants these started if they’re ready to go you
Can go out and plant them um or if you can find some in your garden center you can go out and plant them uh so I have a couple pictures here uh the top right one is uh some lettuce transplants um that my wife started on Sunday actually
And I took that picture this morning so they’re popping pretty fast um there is still time to start some transplants of things like head lettuce uh maybe bok choy or some other greens that have a little bit shorter Seasons so things that are maybe in the 45 day range um
Versus something that’s in 50 or 60 um but now is a good time uh I took the the bottom picture there yesterday that is our Master Garden or demonstration garden and they have some kale transplants that they’ve just put out there um I know folks that have tried to
What we call over summer kale um and the plants survive but they never really bounce back in the fall so if you want good fall kale um I would suggest replanting all right so now moving into the next time window kind of mid August to
Midt um what can you plant uh you can continue those field plantings of Hardy leafy greens and radishes things like that uh so here we have a a picture that’s from a community garden here in Lawrence where you see the the long stuff on the right those are little
Spinach seedlings that are popping up um and then there is uh some really to densely seated radishes um in in the middle there they’ll need to thin those out for sure uh but this picture was taken the middle of September so these things had just been planted um they
Will you know radishes are really pretty short season you know 24 Day 26 days um so they’ll be be good um they’re also not super Frost sensitive um they don’t like really cold weather uh but they’ll survive some frosts uh and spinach is good uh pretty much anytime um so and as
You’re moving you know from I guess now until midt uh you kind of maybe want to scale down your expectations for greens uh so if you want the big leafy kale you know planting a transplant now will’ll get you that um if you’re planting uh like I
Say here leafy Green in midep um you’re probably just going to get the little baby cut kale which is perfectly uh delectable uh but you know if you’re trying to get the big leaves you needed to get an earlier start on that but you can still grow grow greens getting
Things started this late um if you do have unused Garden space uh this time of year mid August to mid-september is a great great time to start cover crops um if you want more information on that feel free to reach out to me um if I was starting gardening and wanted to fill
This space then if it was earlier you know maybe throw in some buckwheat that’d be fun um if it’s a little bit later maybe some oats just to keep that garden soil covered um so as you move to that next time window here what to plant and win moving
Into October into early November uh this is really the time period when you’re looking to plant things like garlic uh shallots um you can plant spinach this late um and what’s going to happen is you’ll probably get the little spinach to germinate um and then it’s just going
To sit there because you’ll reach that November growth window where it’s going to stop growing uh but those little seedlings will sit there and then next spring when it starts to warm up they’ll take off so you’ll have some early season spinach um it’s good if you want
To do that to provide some kind of cover I’ve seen people um sprinkle straw out across it or just lay row cover across it for the for the course of the winter um the leaves that are up probably aren’t going to be the ones you’re going
To eat so there will be a lot of uh burning on those um but they’ll take off and have new growth in the spring and so um you could do some fall gardening that would would get you the kick start on your Spring Garden you’d have the
Earliest greens around um just a note I’m not going to talk about garlic and shallots here um just because uh you didn’t see the the full schedule for the state garden hour you just saw August uh but coming up on September 9th there uh we are going to have Chuck AI do a
Presentation on growing garlic um so if you want more information about growing these sort of late fall things that will be coming on next year um be sure to check in for that because that’ll be a great presentation all right with that I just want to close up with a few thoughts on
Garden cleanup uh and this is one of those you know again I guess a psychological point in gardening but you will really really like yourself a lot next spring if you take some time in the fall to clean up I know sometimes it’s hard to Muster that that energy if you
Put a lot into your garden all year um but if you do it you’ll really appreci appreciate yourself in the spring um so if you want to add organic matter or compost which are generally great uh practices to build up your soil Health fall is a great time to do that um even
Just laying it across the top of the surface the the winter has these freeze thaw cycles that will kind of incorporate that a little bit better or if you mix them in even better um and and it’ll break those down a little bit over the winter so it’s a great time to
Do that um if you are planning on growing vegetables next year um and you know where you want to grow those early spring crops like peas and potatoes uh working the ground in the fall is really good uh because often it comes in the spring and it’s time to plant potatoes
And the soils are soaking wet and that is not a good time to work the ground um so if the ground is ready to go um you’ll appreciate yourself for that rather than either doing a lot of damage to your soil or not getting the crops
Planted in a timely way um and you know cleaning up debris and residue can you know help your garden look good but there are certain pests like squash bugs uh that like to overwinter in some of that residue um it is kind of a fine dance because you do want to leave some
Organic matter but maybe getting rid of you know squash debris and residue and then covering your garden with a different kind of mulch to protect the soil surface or or a cover would be a great thing to do too um so just a quick note here at the end that if you can
Spare some energy to do that at the end of the season you’ll really appreciate it in the spring uh with that here again is the Kansas garden guide it is a great resource for growing fall vegetables a lot of good information in there um the
Chart I had earlier as well as some more you know detailed directions on specific vegetables and with that I will open it up for questions if you don’t get your question answered today on the garden hour feel free to reach out to me I put my email up there
Too Tom we do have a few questions um okay first let’s start with U about using a light layer of straw mulch uh does that keep the soil moist but not shade the plants to delay germination yeah so that certainly can do that it I guess it depends on how
Light the layer is but but a a very light layer of straw mulch would um help protect the soil from drying out really quickly I’ve actually seen people kind of accomplish the same thing using that floating row cover not as Frost protection uh but just like if they
Plant uh something that needs uh you know consistent soil moisture to keep that top level a little bit more moist so it doesn’t evaporate With the Wind quite as readily um that’s really especially important I would say um for things like carrots uh carrots really germinate very slowly um much slower uh
Than a lot of other crops and they are pretty shallow in how shallow you plant them and so that top layer of soil can dry out so if you plant carrots doing something like adding a little straw or a cover would really help otherwise you need to go out there and probably water
Like once a day just to keep that top layer really moist enough for them to germinate okay uh next question was I know this is an extension agents difficult to answer but people are wanting some leads from some good seed companies they may be able to get some interesting new varieties from H
Interesting new varieties um yeah good seed companies in general maybe to order from right so um I’m not sure how directly I can answer that I suppose we’re not supposed to endorse companies but I’ll provide a variety of names of companies I’ve had success with and I guess whether you
Want to take that as endorsement or not um so so I I feel like Johnny seeds which I I put up earlier um they I’ve had a lot of luck with them I I don’t know that they always have uh necessarily the newest varieties they do
Have a good selection I would say um but uh the thing I like about them is I feel like I have pretty good germination success uh with the seeds Dave I’ve purchased from them before if you want stuff that’s new and interesting I always like to look at Baker Creek seeds
Um they have you know really beautiful cataloges uh but they have really interesting and unique stuff I don’t know how much of it’s new but I think they’re actively you know exploring areas around the world um to come up with new to us varieties of things so if you want to
Find some vegetable you’ve grown before but you’ve never seen it purple they might have it at Baker Creek um likewise Seed Savers exchange is pretty good um yeah there’s a lot of good vegetable companies out there there’s just a few I guess that I listed but okay uh next one
Was uh you talked about using a double layer of row cover for frost protection yeah a little bit more in detail about how you do that without uh laying on the plans how you support it how you handle a double double row cover right uh so in
General I think the people that do that if you’re really looking at winter production um you probably want to have uh a couple of different heights of Hoops now often people will do this in a commercial sense they’ll have a a high tunnel then use a like a twoot tall hoop
Underneath that um I’ve also seen people suspend those with wires but if you’re looking at a smaller Garden space you know I’ve seen people make Hoops out of PVC uh that you bend over so you would need some kind of cover over that and then maybe a smaller hoop if you get a
Like a number nine gauge wire you can make a an adequate hoop uh it’ll stay up off your crops um and you could have just two layers of cover uh some people you know really in the in the depths of winter I guess um using a the outer
Layer with a a greenhouse plastic or some sort of yui protected plastic uh would be ideal but in the rest of the the the winter um that’s going to heat up really quickly so you have to watch it and make sure you keep it ventilated
So I guess that’s why I said you know that’s a a whole another talk I can give because that ventilation and all that gets really complicated in Winter production but it’s it is possible in Kansas so uh one of the questions we kind of talked about it offline a little
Bit but rest group might be uh you talked about broccoli and the day links those type of things do you have any really excellent BR broccoli recommendations that do well for fall production um I don’t I I I uh have tried a lot of different types of broccoli I haven’t
Grown a lot of different varieties in the fall um in general I would say my my favorite allaround uh broccoli is probably Gypsy um which isn’t the the maybe the best broccoli head um but I I guess I’m a little bit stingy I suppose so I probably tend to under fertilize
Things and it’s really good at foraging nutrients uh in my experience so in low fertility uh situations it will produce a better head than some other things um but otherwise uh I think the one I put up there I believe it was dip at is a is
A good one I’ve heard people having good luck with too okay uh kind of getting into a current pest problem uh we’ve got a someone on the line who’s having problems with their Bean foliage being chopped on uh chomped on this time of year any idea what that pest might be
Off top of your head um depends on what what kind of chomping they’re seeing I uh we have some little beans that are coming up in my garden and I saw a bunny out there this morning so um you know could be anything from bunnies or deer or if if it’s holes
Um yeah dep I’m not sure if we’re if we’re getting uh if we have any Bean beetles that would be feeding this time of year I don’t believe so but uh yeah I don’t know it need pictures or something for that yeah that’s sometimes hard so question came up earlier about saving
Seeds from the garden uh this one is specifically about gourds but I think that might be a question we see about so how how about saving seeds yeah seed saving is uh is a pretty complicated topic and it’s very uh plant dependent so uh some plants um you can save seeds
Relatively effectively from so I’m thinking the easiest one probably out of the garden um would be if you had an heirloom or open pollinated tomato um you could probably save those seeds um tomatoes are self-pollinating when you get something like gourds or or anything in the curbit family um they will cross
CR pollinate so um they’re fun to save the seeds and plant them and what you get may or may not resemble the gourd you uh grew uh last year uh but often you know see people getting squashed out of their compost pile or something like that that’s some sort of hybrid of of
The different kinds of squash they grew previous years uh so in general I mean there are some kinds of seeds you can save easily uh but there’s usually something to do to to kind of keep that true to form um especially if you’re growing a hybrid then it’s not going to
Be true to form even if it doesn’t cross so okay um first question I think it’s we very hard for the answer but uh for those people that had the the heavy torrential rains last week you get Garden crusting those type of things you have any tips how to handle uh crusting
Gardens after heavy rains those type of things yeah yeah that is definitely a big problem I had that problem here too um so you know planting in Rose is usually good and and uh so if you get a real heavy crust your options are to kind of disturb that crust mechanically um so
Going through and maybe lightly raking the soil surface um but but another thing would be to to sort of uh soften the soil i’ I’ve had it where you know especially if you plant I I’ve had this on a number of occasions uh plant some seedlings you get that hard crust on top
That’s where even if you don’t need the moisture underneath just softening that that soil surface surf uh with with light irrigation I guess um would allow the the seeds to pop through um you know if you don’t have anything planted there just just lightly disturbing it before
Planting um would be good you know using a a rake or a heavy Ed rake or something like that okay next question has to do uh with the beans uh and peas being legumes I think the question is do they need to be fertilized do they need to be
Sid dressed or do they manufacture their own their own nitrogen yeah so in general um so I mean there’s uh I guess different kinds of fertility so if we’re talking about nitrogen specifically uh in general those legumes don’t need um don’t need to be fertilized if if you haven’t
Planted a lot of legumes in your soil sometimes you can purchase an inoculant uh to to se to mix with those seeds and what that is is um you know the the beans or peas have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that fix the nitrogen for them so you’re inoculating
Them with that bacteria if you have a a heavy population in your soil um from years of growing beans you often don’t need that um so in general beans don’t need additional nitrogen um but yeah so they would be one of those things that uh you probably have adequate Nitro
Adequate fertility in your garden if you have enough p and K from the spring okay um this is kind of a flower Cut Flower question uh can you do sunflowers in the fall um I I think you you just have to watch the season length I think a lot of those
Would uh need a longer season than we’ve got time for um you I I know people to plant them in the summer and they’re ready in the fall but uh I don’t think you could get away with them at this point okay La last question that’s up
And I think we’ll be out of time it may be difficult to answer but the person has a greenhouse and um the question is that she had ant colony brought in apids but actually my the aphid came in the ants followed them but she’s just wanting to know if there’s any good
Non-pesticide recommendations for uh for green houses for apid control specifically a lot of uh folks I know um rely on Biologicals it takes a while to build up their populations and it’s not something that kind of works in the open field but you can buy packages of
Ladybugs which love to eat aphids um and so that’s not that’s not a quick fix um so uh often there’s some pretty you know I guess relatively innocuous pesticides that work on aphids and other soft body insects so a insect toyal soap or something like that uh but if you want a
Strictly no spray solution uh you know B buy a bunch of ladybugs and I think Tom the last is that we have just got a whole bunch of thank yous in the chat column about great information uh good knowledge uh people are asking about will the PDF or
What will be available and this is recorded so they can go back and view the recording which we’ll have all your PowerPoint slides on that yep okay with that I think I’ll turn it back over to Kelsey because it’s about one o’clock all right thank you Dennis
And thank you Tom for sharing your knowledge on Fall gardening today once again thank you all for joining us today for the Kate Garden hour series hosted by Kate research and extension we are so glad that you could be here today to learn more about fall gardening vegetables we have several awesome
Webinar series coming up be sure to visit our website for all the upcoming topics next week’s topics is hummingbirds in Kansas this session will be recorded and will be be posted by tomorrow afternoon after the webinar ends today you will should receive a prompt to take an evaluation survey
Please fill this out as we would greatly appreciate your feedback if you have any other questions please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at KSU EMG ksu.edu thank you again and have a great rest of your week