Fall offers second chances to garden. Here’s 5 tips to get you started

It's nice to get second chances – and that's what a fall garden meant last year for Jerri New.

Her spring-planted green bean crop did poorly because of the summer heat, but a fall planting offered her a bounty for canning and freezing.

Although she has planted vegetable gardens on and off over the past 20 years, New had never planted a fall garden until last year. After the success she had with what she calls last year's experimental fall garden, she has already planted and planned for a fall garden this year.

“I didn't even realize until a couple of years ago that you could do a fall garden in Kansas,” she said.

Some plants prefer the cooler temperatures and shorter days of fall, and generally the first frost doesn't hit this area until late October or even later, which helps to stretch the growing season, according to local gardening experts Rebecca McMahon, the horticultural food crops agent with the Sedgwick County Extension Center, and George Sander, owner of Hillside Feed and Seed.

New consulted her 2017 planting calendar as she ticked off the crops she has planted or will plant in her fall garden. The sweet potato slips went in the ground in mid-July. Toward the end of the month through mid-September, she'll plant broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, carrots and radishes. In the beginning of September, she'll plant lettuces in her garden beds near Conway Springs.

Dennice Craig of rural Derby is giving a fall garden a go this year, too. The radish, carrot and pole bean seeds she planted have already germinated, giving her hope that they'll produce better yields than her spring planting, she said.

Fall gardens are a great way to boost the productivity of a garden plot and get a second crop, said McMahon, who will teach a free fall gardening class on Monday at the Wichita Central Library.

Several leafy green vegetables, such as lettuce, kale, Swiss chard and arugula, and root vegetables, such as beets, carrots and radishes, do well in a fall garden, she said. Garlic and onions also do well.

Sander of Hillside Feed and Seed said he has seen an uptick in recent years in the fall garden customers who come to his shop to buy cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, garlic, kale, lettuce, Swiss chard, bok choy and Chinese cabbage. He expects to have both heirloom and hybrid plants ready by the end of August or beginning of September.

“We've stepped up our production in the last few years,” he said, in part because he now has a larger growing facility and because there's more interest. “Some plants just do better in the fall.”

Here are five tips for planting a fall garden:

Do some planning and research. Consider seed germination and the days to harvest of a plant variety. The K-State Extension Office offers a planting guide chart at https://bookstore.ksre.ksu.edu/pubs/mf315.pdf.

Prepare the soil. If you're planting in an area that had already been planted this year, you'll need to do some soil preparation again. Do a light cultivation of the soil and add some compost or fertilizer to replenish nutrients. Some gardeners make way for fall crops by removing crops that didn't do well over the summer or have finished bearing.

Keep seeds moist to encourage germination. Hillside Feed and Seed recommends drip irrigation and good mulch for moisture retention.

Be prepared. Although the first frost generally tends to hit the area around late October, be prepared to protect fall garden plants with frost blankets or row covers in case of earlier frosts.

‘Absolutely try it.’ “Do an experimental garden first and try a couple of crops to see how you like it,” New said. “If you can only grow one thing, it's worth it. If you don't like it, plow it under.”

This story was originally published August 10, 2017 at 5:13 PM with the headline "Fall offers second chances to garden. Here’s 5 tips to get you started."