Hortus in Urbe: Fall Gardening

Hortus in Urbe: Fall Gardening

As a gardener of limited experience, I would like to ask you more experienced gardereners about what, if anything, you plant in the late summer and grow during the fall.

I also have a more specific query: At the moment, the one crop I know I would like to raise -- if it is at all feasible -- is broccoli di rape. On the packs of seeds I have it is indicated that a late summer planting is appropriate but I would like to know if any of you all have experience growing broccoli di rape in the fall and, if so, if you have any particular tips or general advice you'd be willing to share.

TIA,
Antonius

I may be stating the obvious, but as the hot summer days cool down, a second planting of lettuces is a good thing to try.

In this zone, with the first frost usually coming by Halloween, it's a bit too late for planting anything besides really quick stuff like greens and radishes and things that one successively sows all summer, like cilantro. Give cool-season plants some shade, if you're planting them now, and plenty of water. Here's a useful chart.

For fall planting, though, don't forget the garlic, for harvest next year.

LAZ wrote:In this zone, with the first frost usually coming by Halloween, it's a bit too late for planting anything besides really quick stuff like greens and radishes and things that one successively sows all summer, like cilantro. Give cool-season plants some shade, if you're planting them now, and plenty of water. Here's a useful chart.

For fall planting, though, don't forget the garlic, for harvest next year.

LAZ,

Thanks for the information, suggestions and link to the chart. From the chart, I can see it is pretty late for a lot of things but unfortunately broccoli di rape isn't included there. In addition, I wonder too if the dates given assume (the reasonable assumption) that one is looking to grow everything to maturity. With greens, though, I would be happy to get them just to the 'young-and-small-but-worth-harvesting-for-eating stage, if you know what I mean.

Antonius

Antonius,

While I have not grown broccoli di rape at any time, for fall plantings of broccoli keep in mind that the soil needs to still be warm for the plants to germinate, so they should be started about now.

Also, many of the "fall" crops like the heartier greens, will tolerate and are actually improved by, some cold weather. Check the back of your seed packet for days to harvest, and work backwards. I wouldn't be put off too much by average last frost, as these plants can be easily protected from the occasional light frost with some garden cloth or even newspapers. The cold weather sets the sugars, which is what makes them taste better than those grown in hot weather. In the south, for example, the collard greens are not considered to be at their best until around Christmas/New Years and following into early summer.

Even though our average last frost is around Halloween, I can off the top of my head think of a number of years in Chicago where we haven't had a hard freeze until into December.

Fall gardening-well I'm certainly not an expert at this ( and prob. not at anything else either) but I've done it for a really long time. In the fall, I plant mesculin lettuce and pick it when it's very small, so it doesn't become bitter at all. I also plant a new crop of green onions and any fast growing herbs that I may need, and yes- garlic. This year I"m trying a fall crop of sugar snap peas, which did so well this spring and were wonderful. Peas like cooler weather so I'm hoping they will produce. I did plant the seeds a few weeks ago, so I don't know if they will produce if you plant them now. Sugar snaps are so easy, grow so fast and are a really fun plant for a child to see growing. What's better than raw sugar snaps with your fav. dressing or a salad of blanched peas, sesame oil and toasted sesame seeds? Why not try what you think will work, all you have to lose is a pkg. of seeds and maybe we will get lucky and have a long fall and a late frost. Enjoy you gardening!

LAZ wrote:It's a bit too late for planting anything besides really quick stuff like greens....

Antonius wrote:I wonder too if the dates given assume (the reasonable assumption) that one is looking to grow everything to maturity. With greens, though, I would be happy to get them just to the 'young-and-small-but-worth-harvesting-for-eating stage, if you know what I mean.

Yes, greens grow fine if planted now and given a bit of shade on hot days.

I haven't grown broccoli di rape, but I assume it's much like regular broccoli. However, since it doesn't have to come to a "head," it might be fine. It might not. Gardening is not an exact science.

With gardening, I take a Cubs fan's approach: One always hopes. If it doesn't work out, wait till next year!

In the city close to the lake we often go well into November before a killing frost (27-28 degrees F) while McHenry County often gets killing frosts before the end of September. Most of the cold-tolerant vegetables will take a light frost without any problem while a lot of tender plants (basil, tomatoes, pepper, eggplant) suffer major damage in the high thirties. A secondary issue for plants like peas is that the plants are pretty tolerant of cold, but the blossoms freeze. Note that peas can be planted in March if the soil is workable.

Fall plantings often have more light issues than temperature issues. Day length, sun angle and light intensity are similar at the spring and fall solstices even if temperatures aren't. Even though frost risk in late October is similar to around May 1, sun availability is a lot less. Shortening days also trigger attempts by many plants to produce seed while the plants are still small (dill is extreme here). City gardeners often have shade issues that are quite different in spring and fall.

Another consideration is that seeds of some cool-season crops do not germinate well in warm soil. Lettuce and peas are particularly prone to problems. After a cool summer this may not be a problem, but we have not had a cool summer. Peas did well this year because May and June were quite cool and the drought held down powdery mildew.

Most cool-season greens work well for late-summer planting as long as you want tender greens and not the horse feed common in supermarkets. Young mustard grown in cool conditions is delightful and can even be used raw in salads. The Vates type of kale can still be planted with excellent results. Most kale is improved with some frost. I have harvested excellent kale in December when I had to remove a layer of snow. Don't try Red Russian kale now because it has poor frost tolerance.

I have not grown broccoli de rape and so can't speak from experience. Johnny's lists varieties as 35 and 42 days to maturity. Even allowing for somewhat slower growth with lower light levels, it should work fine.

jackie,

Well, if you've harvested a pea in Chicago, my hat is off to you. I tried and tried, and all I got was well-fed starlings.

Antonius,

If, as it seems, you are a homeowner with a garden stake, I would really emphasize what ekreider says about how the light (read: heat) varies from spring to fall but also how it creates microclimates in small city yards.

When I was a child in Virginia, we had a (green) fig tree that flourished because it was in a protected spot between our house and the next door neighbors.

My sister-in-law's Abruzzese grandfather had a black mission fig tree that produced for him, in Detroit, because he kept it small, and at the time of frost he bent it over put burlap and mulch on it. He knew his yard. He wanted a fig tree.

I hate seeing fig trees for sale at farmers markets here, because there is just no way that they can make it. But that said, there are lots of other things that can, especially perennial herbs.

I seem to recall someone mentioned nepitella--the place to get "exotic" herbs is Gethsemane Gardens. Price, yuppie, but they have a better inventory.

annieb wrote:When I was a child in Virginia, we had a (green) fig tree that flourished because it was in a protected spot between our house and the next door neighbors.

My sister-in-law's Abruzzese grandfather had a black mission fig tree that produced for him, in Detroit, because he kept it small, and at the time of frost he bent it over put burlap and mulch on it. He knew his yard. He wanted a fig tree.

I hate seeing fig trees for sale at farmers markets here, because there is just no way that they can make it.

I have a brown turkey fig in my front yard, growing against the south wall of my house. I bought it because the variety was listed as "Hardy Chicago."

I don't do anything special to it. Each winter it dies back to the ground, and in the late spring it leafs out again from the roots. Every year it produces some small figs; if we have a late frost, a few ripen enough to eat. (And every year I wonder if there's something I can do to prolong its season and ripen a few more -- wrap in plastic? -- but never actually get around to trying anything.)

Whether or not it produces figs, this variety makes an attractive shrub. (The photo below is not mine, but representative.)

annieb, if you drive through the neighborhood around Harlem Avenue and Belmont, I bet you'll see some fig trees. I have been the beneficiary of some of those trees and they produce good figs--not the Abruzzo, certainly, but good for local product--but they definitely have to wrap them well for the Chicago winter.

Choey,

At a conference in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains once, I took a dawn walk around the farm/conference center, up a mown path through what had to be a good acre of passion vine, purple and white. At the top of the hill there was a mission fig tree so full of fruit I just stood there and overcame my fear of bees (although you've got to be careful, they crawl up the little fig holes to get the sweetest nectar ) and then ate my fill and took a handful back to have with breakfast.

By the end of the conference, I was like the Pied Piper. The bees were starting to get seriously pissed at the competition.

Now, I don't expect to find bounty like that in Chicago, but there's nothing like a fig warm from the tree. I almost think figs are like tomatos, they are so susceptible to rot/bees/fruit flies that they get refrigerated on the way to market.

And we know what that does to tomatoes

Annieb,
We harvested bags full of sugar snap peas in June. I don't think we had even one starling take a single bite. I live about 50 mi. west and south of the City, so not only is our weather a bit (no cool lake breezes here) different, but our soil is completely different from anywhere else I have ever lived in the Chicagoland area. If your up for a drive, I"ll gladly share some of my garden space with you, so you too can grow peas! (sorry about your pesty birds).

All your talk and tales of figs has me drooling. I've never had a fresh fig, other than in a rest. and have never been able to fine them in any of our grocery stores. Thats a real trade-of for living way out here in the super-boonies.

Jackie,

I follow my Grandma's rule, plant your peas on St. Paddy's Day and your potatoes on Good Friday (only we have no room for potatoes).

I think part of the bird attraction is that they are up early, and the competition just isn't as appetizing. Some perennial sprouts, nah. Some teeny-tiny lettuce shoots, nah.

But a pea sprout, that's got something you can sink your beak into, and I say this having lived with a parrot for several years and watching what it is he likes about corn (the germ in the cob), green beans (unzip it and get that little bean), blueberries (eat those insides and litter the house with those pesky skins), and parsley (well, the leaves are OK, but the stems, you can really hold on and get your beak into).

I think they (the birds) are just as hungry for a change of pace at the end of winter as we are, and for birds that live off the land in Chicago, pea shoots would be mighty attractive.

After all, we pay a premium for them in Chinese restaurants, right?

I have to cover peas with netting from seed leaves to the end because house sparrows will trash them. These sparrows can cling to the vines or trellis and eat the tender tips, which pretty much ends the growth of that vine or branch. Young lettuce, spinach and basil will also be eaten. I have had a later planting of basil completely destroyed when I didn't get the netting on before the first true leaves appeared. The population density of house sparrows tends to be much greater in a city such as Chicago than in rural areas due to more food and cover and less predators (mostly cats allowed to run loose).

I wonder if anyone has experience using a cloche in Chicago. They seemed quite popular with gardeners in the Pacific Northwest and I always wanted to try one (but never got around to it). Seems like a simple, good idea.

Rene,

I had thought of using a cloche but never tried it. I tried a modified version (2 liter pop bottles with the bottom cut off put over tomato seedlings upside down--the bottles, not the seedlings--with the tops left off the bottles).

My experience was that they served as little ovens and I had roasted tomato seedlings.

There is a product called Wall o' Water that you can see at www.gardenerssupply.com, it works on a similar principle.

My guess is that our upper Midwest weather conditions are just too variable in the time of year when cloches would be most useful--very early spring and late fall. When I had a large garden in southern Wisconsin, just on the edge of Zone 4, I would completely miss all of my iris reticulata and crocuses at least every other year because between one weekend and the next, between the last week in March and the second week in April, there would be a day with temperatures in the mid-80s.

Now think about a cloche and what magnifying glasses do to ants.

I've used Wall O' Water to get an early start on veggies in the Spring, but the ones I have are a little too short for anything but fairly new fall plants.

Our fall gardening problems tend to be more related to hours and intensity of sunlight than temperature. A Wall o'Water stores solar energy to smooth temperatures overnight but actually reduces light at the plant. This is useful in spring but not in fall.

The areas where cloches are popular tend to be farther north than Chicago and so have even less intense sunlight. As annieb notes, cloches can make nice compact ovens. Cloches need to have a pretty fair volume relative to plant size. The 42nd parallel runs through Chicago (about 6500 north and not in Lincoln Square in spite of the restaurant name). Northern Spain is comparable latitude. Seattle is about 45 degrees north. The European areas where the original cloches (big, bottomless glass bells) are used are even farther north.

At our latitude even cold frames can overheat easily in the spring. They require continual watching or automatic temperature-sensitve openers. The sort of plastic cloches lined in Rene G's post would require attention several times a day here and would probably work from somebody who has nothing better to do.

Thanks for the reminder about latitude. One of my favorite, most sentimental places to visit is the 45th degree latitude (do I have that right) that is marked by a sign next to a meticulously, geometrically, white pine forest up north in Michigan, where Himself and I spent our honeymoon and a number of other, equally enjoyable vacations.

It is also halfway in between the muddy little lake where you have to use a paddle boat to get out to the float beyond the muck. Sounds nasty, but the lake is so small that there are no motorboats on it, so once you're out on the float the water is clean.

Oh, right, the other end point (once you pass the latitude marker) is town. We're talking northern Michigan here (or as we say in my family, upper lower peninsula). You'd better watch out for stores in that part of Michigan; you might get tempted by a gallon jar of pickled ring bologna.

Apparently, there will be a be downward swing in the overnight temperature tomorrow night, though it's not completely clear from the reports I've heard just exactly how cold it will get. I was wondering if the experienced green-thumbs out there might have some advice regarding what things in the garden need to be protected and when and how.

At this point, we have a beautiful second crop of basil and a nice one of chile peppers. The zucchini plants are winding down but still producing a few flowers and fruits. Eggplants are pretty much exhausted. But the tomatoes made an incredible come-back and we have quite a few green and just turning-red tomatoes too. We also have lots of broccoli di rape in two stages of development and a wide array of herbs are still all going strong (thyme, sage, marjoram, lavander, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, parsley).

So then, any advice in this regard would be most welcome.

TIA,
Antonius

I doubt that temperatures no lower than the low 40s in the Chicago heat island will cause any problems for even tender plants. Basil can be trashed in the high 30s, though, and isn't really practical to protect with covering. Peppers and eggplant don't get along very well with temperatures in the mid 30s. The bigger problem now is that weather conditions have been near optimal for powdery mildew and white flies, which cause major declines in cucurbits.

Tomatoes on the vine run into the same flavor problems as tomatoes off the vine in a refrigerator once outdoor temperatures reach refrigerator temperatures. You can wrap mature but unripe tomatoes in newspaper and lay them out in a single layer in a cool place to finish ripening. They will have all the flavor of supermarket tomatoes, but at least you won't have spent much money for them. We usually do this once real frost threatens and then use the tomatoes for noncritical cooking.

Prompt action is needed for plants that are to be moved indoors for the winter because they can become acclimated to cool temperatures outdoors and then have a tough time adjusting to warm, dry air indoors. A good hosing down will knock a lot of pests off the plants. I really blasted the rosemary with a hose and still had a bunch of dry needles fall off when I brought the plant on the porch. This afternoon I sprayed the bay tree and lemon verbena with Safer's insecticidal soap prior to bringing them in tomorrow. This soap spray helps kill whiteflies, so I also sprayed the tomatoes, eggplant and cucumbers to help them along. There are a lot of white flies in the garden. The insecticidal soap doesn't smell very good but isn't particularly toxic to people (unlike soft-bodied insects and spider mites).

Basil's extremely sensitive to cold; harvest it or transplant to pots to bring inside.

You can keep the tomatoes going awhile by covering them at night. Old sheets will do.

If you still have tomatoes ripening when serious frost threatens, you have a number of choices: Fried green tomatoes and green-tomato salsa are the best bet for the really dark green ones. Tomatoes starting to redden can be picked and brought in to a sunny windowsill to finish ripening.

If you have a lot of pale green fruit, you can often get it to ripen. Pull the plants up by the roots. Bring them indoors and hang them up somewhere root end up. (Put newspapers or a dropcloth underneath to catch leaves and such.) I've kept the fruit ripening till December this way. It won't match late-summer sun-ripened fruit for quality, but it will equal what you can get at the supermarket.

LAZ wrote:Fried green tomatoes

We got a bunch of green tomatoes in our CSA box this past weekend, and fried them up straight away. Absolutely delicious, and a nice treat for you gardeners, since green tomatoes aren't typically found at the grocer.

The plant I've found to be most sensitive to low, non-frosting temps is tomatillos: the plants will shrivel much earlier than even the peppers and tomatoes.

The interesting thing is that the volunteers I get from last year's fruits tend to be more cold-resistant. They also tend to have smaller fruit (obvious, because they are the ones less likely to be picked).

This has been a bumper year for peppers. With only one surviving Thai Hot plant, I have hundreds of fruits on a plant five feet tall. My bells have so many fruits that they're crowding each other out.

I have a brown fig tree (I think it's from Turkey) that I grow in a huge plastic pot on wheels. I keep it in the garage during the winter & just roll it out in early May or when the frosts stop. This summer I fed it extra fertilizer than I usually do & it rewarded me with a bumper crop of figs!!

It's Nov. 9th & I have a big pot of various salad varieties just coming up on my back porch. Sure, it's a gamble, but the weather has been so mild so far. If we're going to get a frost, I'll just cover it at night. I'm determined to get an extra crop out of it!

I appreciate the reminder about planting some garlic for next year. I'll do that. Never can keep enough of that in our house.

This past Wednesday, 16 November, we finally got a hard freeze (and even a little snow). Just before that day I had harvested the last of the various chiles we grew this year, as well as a few other items, including the great celery we had. On the aforementioned cold Wednesday, I harvested most of the rest of the herbs that couldn't be moved, moved those that could be moved, and said 'adieu' to the rest. To my surprise, though, I noticed that the mint outside is still going strong, apparently unaffected by the freeze. The parsley I missed clipping also seems to have survived well.

In mid to late August and then again in mid to late September I planted a fair amount of broccoli di rape and those two plantings throve. In fact, the odd weather we've had encouraged a little too much growth and some individuals of the first planting bolted before we could devour them and the stalks became tough and inedible. On Wednesday, just before heading out in the afternoon, I noticed that the leaves on some of the plants were discolouring in the cold and decided to harvest them all, leaving behind a few individuals planted in odd spots. I noticed yesterday, however, that while some of the broccoli di rabe plants had been killed by the freeze, some had survived. I'll write about these greens as food separately but will say here that they were very good.

Antonius