Planting Your Fall Garden
I know that many of you probably are still in shock from your summer vegetable garden, but if you are a serious gardener now is the time to start getting ready for cool season crops.
The end of August and early September is an ideal time to get that fall garden started. By the end of this month you will want to start planting or transplanting beets, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, collards, lettuce, mustard, onions (October is better), radishes, spinach and turnips.
As always, an annual soil sample will not only tell you where you stand on soil pH and fertility it will also give you a fertilizer recipe for whatever crops you decide to grow. Most of the cool season crops are heavy feeders. This means that they require much more fertilizer than many of the warm season crops. One exception is beets which require about ½ the nitrogen as most of the other fall crops.
Proper pH is critical to making nutrients available to your crops. If your pH is adequate 6.0 – 6.5 then you should have adequate calcium (Ca) and magnesium (Mg). I like to recommend applying 1/2 pound of sulfur (S) or two pounds of gypsum per 1000 square feet.
The recommendations for nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P), and potassium (K) will vary from garden to garden based on soil test levels. A general rule is about 1 pound of K for every pound of N. P rates are usually around half of the K. prior to planting broadcast about 1/3 to ½ of the total N and K and all of the P. Then throughout the growing season you can apply 34-0-0, or 15-0-15 as needed.
I recommend frequent fertilization with less material especially on our sandier soils. This keeps you from loosing nutrients when we get winter rains.
All the crops mentioned will also benefit from an application of boron (B). You can accomplish this by using 1 tablespoon of borax per 100 feet of row. This can be applied by mixing the borax thoroughly with approximately 1 quart of soil in a container and then applying the mixture along the row; or it can be mixed with a quart of water and applied to the soil in solution. Don’t overdo it with boron. It doesn’t take much to help the crop, but too much can cause severe injury. Don’t be afraid to add a little extra N and K if we get heavy rains. These nutrients can fairly easily leach from the root zone in our sandy soils.
