Fall Gardening Series: Sowing Fall Crops

Well, now's the time to get busy prepping your garden beds and organizing your seeds for all those amazing cool season crops if you want to be harvesting fresh, healthy veggies in October, November, December and beyond!

Come join Marybeth Janerich, Community Education Director, at the Grateful Tomato Garden for Part I of our Fall Gardening Series, and be prepared to get a little dirty in this hands-on workshop in our demonstration garden! In Part I, we'll discuss the when, where and how of planting quick-maturing and cold-tolerant varieties of all your favorite greens and other cool season veggies. We'll take soil temperatures in shaded beds vs. sunny beds to better understand summer germination of cool season crops, and we'll practice calculating days-to-maturity using fun and rare varieties of fall vegetable seeds. Students will also compare regular seeds to pelleted seed and practice using inoculant with fall peas. Each student will plant seeds that will grow and produce food throughout the fall and winter months.

And save the date!

Part II of the Fall Gardening Series is Fall Season Extenders, which will be held in the demonstration garden on October 22nd. We'll be putting up our low-tunnel hoophouse, comparing different types of frost fabric, and learning about different types of cold frames that all help us grow fresh crops late into the fall and even throughout the whole winter.

Part III of the Fall Gardening Series is Putting Your Garden to Bed, which will also be held on October 22nd, and will cover the types of things a savvy vegetable gardener should be doing in late October for a healthier garden this winter and next spring. Students will learn how to reduce habitat for winter pests as well as prevent soil erosion and add organic matter. Come prepared to work in the demo beds and help put these gardens to bed for the winter! We'll be taking down spent summer crops and learning about different options for adding organic matter, including the chop-and-drop method, working in chopped leaves, adding a top-dressing of compost, and examining different types of fall cover crops and the inoculants that help them thrive.

Registration for Part II & III will be available soon.