Get Started: Fall Garden Planting

Everyone knows that you start seeds indoors in late winter, plant your garden in spring, and harvest in summer and fall. But that's not the whole picture. Sure, many plants take 110 days to mature, and others like indeterminate tomatoes will start producing in July and keep going until blight kills them. But what if you want tomatoes in October, cucumbers in November, or Kale in December? Well, with a lot of plants, you can start your seeds in the summer for a late season harvest! Let's take a look.

Many plants that are sold in the spring are very tough to grow in the summer. I don't know how many years I struggled with cilantro, spinach, and lettuce all bolting (flowering to make seeds, this causes the plant to stop growing big tasty leaves) as soon as I got them planted. You could prune the flowers but I swear you had to do it 5 times a day with cilantro.  Well little did I know that these, among other plants, are all cold weather crops. They don't like the heat, they think they're dying so they try to reproduce as quickly as they can. If you plant them early spring, or late summer, their main growth season is when it is cool out and you get a lot more of a harvest!

Other crops don't mind the heat, but because they are so quickly grown, you can practice succession planting, which is sowing seeds a few weeks apart for several months so that when you harvest one batch, another will be ready by the time you are done eating the first batch. Radishes are a great example of this! Some varieties can go from seed to table in just 25 days! For that reason alone, radishes are a great fall crop because you can keep planting successive batches right up until late September and still have a fresh batch by first heavy frost! Peas, Bok Choi, and salad greens fall into this category as well.

Some crops are cold hardy. My kale was still green and giving me harvests in January! And you know what? It tastes a lot better after the snow has flown too! It's a lot sweeter because it's storing sugars for the winter. You can plant kale in July and get good tender leaves from September through the first half of winter. Sometimes it will survive under the snow too and be one if your first crops in the spring! Other brassicas will be a good option for this as well such as kohlrabi and leafy cabbages. You can also do this with certain root crops like turnips, parsnip, potatoes, carrots, and sometimes beets (their tops don't like the frost). A lot of these root crops are actually bi-annual crops meaning year one, they put down their root system, they overwinter, and year two they grow their flower stalk to reproduce. This is what you need to do if you want to collect seeds anyway, so try it out!

Last but not least, fall tomatoes.  For this, you need some very specific things. It's kind of like back in the day when you were trying to work a glitch on a Pokémon game. There are some very specific steps here if you want a shot at getting October tomatoes. Step one. Familiarize yourself with "Determinate" varieties. These produce all of their fruit at once on a smaller, "bushier" plant. Next, find a variety that has a short maturity time. I like Ace 55 tomatoes as they have an 85 day harvest schedule. There are 70 day tomatoes out there! Lastly,  you may want to plant these in a pot so you can control sun and watering. What you're aiming for is a tomato plant that is young during the extreme temps of summer so it isn't stressed and susceptible to blight. Move it into shaded spaces during the most intense days, keep it evenly watered. What you should get is a plant that will produce all of its fruit at once in late fall for a rare treat: fresh-off-the-vine tomatoes for Halloween! (I do not condone growing these just for trick-or-treat tricks!)

Again, here's a list of some fall crops you can start now for back-to-school snacking;

Tomatoes 

Kale

Kohlrabi 

Bok Choi cabbage

Radishes

Cilantro

Lettuce

Spinach

Cucumbers

Green/bunching onions 

Turnips 

Parsnip 

Salsify

Basil

Dill

Bush beans

Peas

Site Plan - June 2022 update

I've said this before, but we have a 3 year plan to complete our transformation from traditional lawn to a permaculture and urban garden. We are off to a good start for year two! The central portion is all in progress.

This week we started the herb and tea gardens. The herb garden is bordered, edged, and mostly planted. Construction of the path between the herbs and the Shrubbery / Food Forest is underway. This is the most labor-intensive part as we have to excavate the turf by hand and lay heavy landscape fabric. We still need to sheet-mulch around the plants and place woodchips to fill it out.

The Tea Garden is roughly laid out, but it still needs to be bordered. We planted a Hibiscus and some clovers. We have 10 other species of plants started in trays and pots out back for this space. 

The reading garden may take the remainder of the timeline to complete. This is the only space that won't be focused on edible or beneficial plants. For this spot, we're focusing on a private reading space with aesthetic plant arrangements, water feature, flowering arbor, and a bench with a Little Free Library.

 

Quick look: Experiments in the Garden

I was just thinking about some new things we're trying this year and how I'd like to document it all. I'm just going to jump in.

- 3 sisters. We posted a quick look on this topic, but this is really a wider test of intercropping in general. One bed is specifically 3 sisters, but every bed I've planted is intercropped. I have radish and cucumbers together, peppers and bunching onions, tomatoes with herbs and greens, sunflowers with beans and peppers. This list goes on! In fact, I started some more greens and beans this week to fit in to open spaces as the beds fill out!

- Rain collection. I've never done this on the scale we are this year, but the most exciting test is how well a drip irrigation system runs on just gravity water. I figure a drip system preserves the most water, which is crucial when you only have 210 gallons of water to work with at any given time.

- chop and drop. I'm doing very little weeding this year. The few I am targeting are ones that are hard to remove once established. I was very excited for all the bitter dock that popped up. Little did I know the roots go down to the core of the planet! So, when I see dock, grass, or volunteer tomatoes and squash popping up in places that they'd cause physical issues, I pull them out. But ,I'm just dropping them around the base of the plants I want to keep to help mulch and feed them all season long.

- potatoes in pots. I don't like how when you plant potatoes in a spot, you will always have potatoes there until the end of time. So this year I'm seeing how well they'll do in planters. I like that I can move them around. Right now they're making a fun little hedgerow along the swing set!

- single stem tomatoes. Not only did I cram 7 plants into a 20 Sq ft box, I also want to try a head-to-head challenge between a single-stemmed opalka and a standard bushy opalka in a cage. 

- climbing cucumbers. I always have an issue with slugs on my cucumbers.  I planted my chompers delights at the base of my trellis to see if they'll fare better while suspended. 

- same year crop rotation. I have a crop of seedling bush beans started in trays waiting for my garlic to be ready. In a couple weeks I'll pull the garlic, drop the bean starts into their spot, and hopefully harvest those in time to plant garlic again. We'll see!

Quick look: Three Sisters Garden

I want to take a minute to talk about the three sisters garden. Not just mine, but in general. The three sisters are probably the most famous companion planting combination, in North America at least.  They consist of a tall variety of cobb corn, a climbing pole beans, and squash. They can vary between different varieties of each based on what you need, but these are the three main crops you will need.

Historically,  these three crops were very important to the indigenous people of North America.  All three crops could be dried to provide food all winter and they create a complete diet with carbs, proteins, and vitamins. But the way they interact with each other is what I was most interested in for my purposes.

The thing I find so interesting is that the plants utilize the space the others don't. The corn grows tall but isn't busy. The beans use the corn to climb so they can get more sun and airflow. The squash fills the space below along the ground. But that's not all!

If you haven't tried fried squash blossoms, you're missing out!

Corn has very shallow roots for such a tall plant, and can easily be knocked over by wind. The additional strength of the beans can help support them like guy-wires on a tower. The squash not only helps block weed growth, but also keeps the soil cool, which allows it to hold more moisture. 

 

As a bonus, I added a few cabbages to the outside of the crops, as well as some mache (also known as corn salad) which is a tender green that grows well under corn.

Why we are Here or: Grass Lawns and why Monoculture can be Less Desireable

Picture the ideal lawn. Not necessarily yours, but what you expect would show up in a Google image search for "lawn." 

You get pictures of perfectly manicured grass yards, either uniformly one shade of green or crisp alternating lines from precision mowing. 

Did you picture dead spots, clover patches, dandelions evenly distributed,  tall and unruly grass, mushrooms, wood sorrel and other small flowers, all in several shades of green from various grass species and broadleaf "weeds?" If you did, then I have one question for you: why are you standing in front of my house?

Not mine, but close.

I want to introduce folks to my thought process when it comes to lawns. It is multi-faceted, but honestly, the biggest reason why Third-Acre Farms exists. We aim to teach, and I think the biggest lesson we will ever share is about why typical monoculture yards are not what we at Third-Acre consider an "ideal lawn." 

Part One: A Brief History of Lawns

I recently heard a quote about how all of our opinions and thought processes have been developed for us by corporations and advertisers all in a 30 year period between the 1920s and the 1950s. At first, I thought, "Naw, that can't be," but the more I look at everything we do, I'm starting to realize it holds some water. One of those things is the American Lawn.

Now, the lawn did not start in this period, it has its roots (ha) way back into the 16th century. Grass lawns came a bit later as a status symbol saying "Look, we are so wealthy, we don't need to use this land to grow our own crops." It however was post-war America where the suburban lawn began to take hold. Developers dreamed of families having their own miniature 'estates' where the single-family home would sit away from the road, have a private driveway, and a lush green lawn all to show status. Each family could now own their own miniature private estate and truly feel wealthy.

So, what were these lawns made up of? Well, everything! Commercial grass seed had been developed some time ago, but the average lawn was a mixture of grasses, clovers, and other groundcover plants natural to the area. In fact, an Ideal lawn was considered to be grass and clover, until 'Big Chem' developed artificial fertilizer. The problem was, they couldn't figure out how to fertilize the grass without choking out the clover. Clover, as discussed here, is a nitrogen-fixing plant. If the ground is artificially amended with nitrogen (the stuff that makes grass green) the clover gets choked out. The solution: gaslight America into thinking clover is an evil weed that needs to be destroyed. These companies launched massive ad campaigns that changed our collective image of an ideal lawn. Now, your status symbol isn't just having a lawn, it is having a perfectly trimmed, full, monoculture of non-native grass.

*Results may vary. Dead lady not included.
**May cause cancer, and dead ladies.

Part Two: Why I Changed My Mind

In 2019, my family moved out of the city and into a suburb. The previous owners of our house had a lawn service who would mow and fertilize regularly, and the lawn looked atrocious. There was a large neglected circle of "landscaping" in the middle which was taken over by poison ivy and the wrong variety of Hosta for a full sun location (I mean honestly, variegated dark greens go in partial shade. What are you thinking?). There was a patch of bare dirt that encompassed a third of the front yard that had thistles and plantain growing around it. The underground sprinkling was non-functioning. We moved in in the fall, so I ignored all of this until the spring of 2020 when I had copious amounts of time at home for one reason in particular. 

Thanks pal...

The back yard was very patchy as well, plus I had just torn out a dangerously rotten swing set and needed to fill that area in. I couldn't afford grass seed at the time, because of all that lack of work, but I remembered the clover I had growing in one corner of my old yard. I'd always take notice of how when I would mow it down, there was always a nice layer of green happy clover waiting for me below the layer I had just cut off. If it was so good at filling in space, could this be an option for the back?

I did some research and found a whole slew of benefits, but I still wanted to be a responsible yard owner, so I decided I'd keep it to the back of the house. I found a 5lb bag on Amazon for $20 and seeded the whole backyard. Meanwhile, I worked on the front hardcore to get my lawn on par with my neighbors'. It needed to be thicker, darker, less weedy, and complete. I fixed the irrigation, watered a ton, used a lot of weed and feed product, and went on the hunt for deep-rooted weeds by hand. By fall, my lawn looked amazing. 

By spring of 2021, the weeds had started to return, the grass started to dry out, and moles obliterated the uniformity. Money was now incredibly tight. The township sent angry letters warning me that my yard wasn't up to their standard, so I was forced to turn my irrigation on during peak water prices. In the meantime, my backyard looked amazing. The clover was thick and green, I didn't spend a single dollar on fertilizer, and not one drop of water touched it that hadn't fallen from a cloud. Something clicked in my head, and I called the township. I asked, "What are the regulations on what I can and cannot grow in my front yard?" The answer was "You cannot have bare dirt, and you cannot block any sightlines for drivers around corners." Ok, bet!

You see, if I'm going to have to spend $300+ a year on fertilizer and water just to keep my lawn from becoming bare dirt, I'd rather that money and effort benefit me somehow. The declaration: No. More. Grass.

Part Three: Lawn and Monoculture Alternatives

"Okay, so you're tearing out the grass. What are you replacing it with?" Glad you asked! Let's take a look at some options and then I'll describe what we decided for our home.

Microlawn Mix 

As I discussed above, adding clover to your lawn can greatly improve the biodiversity, appearance, and health of a monoculture lawn. You can create your own microlawn by simply adding clover seed. White Dutch clover is a fantastic choice as all pollinators can utilize it (bees cannot reach the nectar in red or purple clover). This is a very popular choice, so of course major corporations have jumped on the bandwagon and are now selling seed mixes of fescues and micro clover varieties. I don't hate this because they are recognizing a paradigm shift, which hopefully leads to less harsh chemicals being pushed as the only way to have a nice lawn. Now, I will admit that a microlawn is still grass. Grass isn't bad; I'm intending on keeping my back yard as a microlawn. The downside to this is it still needs to be mowed as the grass will continue growing whereas the clover will reach a shorter max height.

Thyme

There are varieties of "Creeping Thyme" (Elfin, Wooly, Purple Carpet) that grow low to the ground and form a ground cover that is highly resistant to foot traffic. It is related to the culinary Thyme, and is actually edible just like its cousin. It starts slow but will quickly fill in your space in a year or two as it spreads. It doesn't need fertilizer and doesn't need to be mowed. Walking on it is totally ok, and it releases a fresh herb scent as you do! Plus the purple and pink flowers really put on a show in the summer.

Landscaping

Fill your yard with landscape features! Plant trees, place accent boulders, add shrubs, and build up some terraces. This can be an extremely expensive option, but the biodiversity will be huge! Everyone seems to have some sort of landscape "island" as an accent in their yard. Usually these spaces need less water and fertilizer because they utilize hardier plants such as shrubs and perennial bulbs which quickly become established. Obviously the bigger the island, the less water and mowing has to be done.

Garden boxes

Not a lot of people seem to be brave enough to plant their garden in the front yard, but I love it when I see it! Utilize all the space you can to grow food for your family! This will consume a lot of water, possibly more than the grass, and it will be more work, but you actually get something out of it rather than perpetuating the mass gaslighting that grass lawns are somehow the only good option.

So, which option did we choose? All of them!

Here's the plan. We wanted to get rid of the grass and replace it with something that would give back. The top priority is food that doesn't need a lot of care or planting. For this, we started looking into permaculture and perennial foods. There's a trivia question you may come across that asks "What are the only two perennial vegetables?" The general answer is Asparagus and Rhubarb. The true answer is mind blowing. Hosta is edible, daylilies are edible, dock, ramps, and ostrich ferns are all edible and perennial! There are tons of options.

This exploration into permaculture led us to food forests, where you build a forest ecosystem from trees down to ground cover of all edible plants. We'll do a full post on this later, but what you need to know for now is that we decided this would be the crown jewel of our front yard. We planted peach trees, hosta, strawberries, kiwi, saskatoon berries, juniper, daylilies, turnips, chives, saffron crocus, and even mushrooms in our food forest.

From there we decided on a 3 year plan where we would slowly add islands of themed plants across our whole yard all the way up to the house. Each island is connected by walking paths throughout to connect and separate them at the same time. Kind of like a botanical garden. The islands we have planned are the food forest, fruit shrubs, herbs, tea and medicinal flowers, tubers and root crops, "floral vegetables", butterfly and pollinator meadow, berry bramble, and a Japanese-style reading garden.

In the meantime as we work through our 3 year plan, we top dressed the yard with White Dutch clover to fill the bare spots as we are no longer going to water the lawn, full stop. So we have 75% of our lawn still "installed" as a microlawn. But on top of this, we aren't mowing either. We started it off as No Mow May, but the thistle, purple clover, and fleabane look so good and bring so many bees and butterflies to the yard that we extended it indefinitely! Every 2 weeks I use the weed trimmer to top all the grass that is poking up over the clover, but that's it.

The last problem I needed to solve was how to protect my food from snow plows and cars parked along the side of the road. Well, I do have a 4' wide perfectly manicured lawn strip along the road as a buffer zone. But something is lying in wait just out of sight. It's creepy,  it's crawly, it's creeping thyme! I top dressed this grass with hardy thyme which will out-compete the grass once established, especially if I don't water. In a few years, that entire strip will be thyme and the grass will be gone!

So that's where we are.

I wanted to walk through the thought process that brought us to this blog so that you know why we're doing this whole crazy project. The last aspect of this all is you, and the rest of the community. I want to take my experiences, the lessons I learn, and share them with others as a way to teach the community a little bit about self-sustainability, organic gardening, urban and suburban food production, and other environmental benefits of growing something other than grass.

Garden Spotlight: Garlic bed

This is the OG garden bed. It's made out of the top of a porch swing frame we cut down and flipped over while refurbishing the play space for our kids. 

The first year we had it, we had tomatoes, squash, and peppers. We ended up with a lot of tomatoes from our two plants, a ton of squash, and everything else got crowded out.  

The next year, we tried planting the whole thing with garlic. We started too late and didn't water enough, so we got a couple of marble-sized heads of flavorless garlic. 

This year's crop is doing great! We only planted half so that we could do root crops in the left half this spring. The parsnips and salsify are coming along nicely.

Once we harvest the garlic, we intend to transplant bush beans into their space to take us through the rest of the season.

Bonus: This is what we're dubbing our "Greenspace Teepee." We built it out of sunflower stalks we dried from last year, and planted climbing crops all around it. By the end of summer, this should be covered in climbing beans, peas, and morning glories to provide a fun space for the kids to play in. We'll do a whole spotlight on this later this season as it fills out!

Bonus 2: Compost space. There's a wood box behind the lattice that we make our compost. This is where we toss our food scraps, yard waste, carboard and shredded paper, and dryer lint. Then we have 3 "stations" at each pallet. Every month, we stir the compost, but then every other month, we move the compost one station to the left. We empty station three into four, two into three, and so on. As the compost travels down the line, it becomes thoroughly mixed and more broken down. We use the compost farthest to the left in the garden and planters. If that's depleted, we move on to station 3. 

Also shown, 3 of our potato planters.

Garden Spotlight: companion beds

I want to start this series off with the main workhorse of our garden this year: The companion beds.

This space started off as an unkempt mess of juniper shrubs and a decorative fruit tree of some kind that shaded the whole patio and dropped crap on it three seasons of the year. It was the only space in my back yard that could have housed a garden of any significance without cutting down some major trees. So we decided to cut down a minor tree and bunch of gross shrubbery! 

In 2020, I spent my summer digging out stumps while tending to my only 8x3' garden box jammed with tomatoes, squash, and a few pepper plants that got obliterated by the preceding two. That fall I knew I'd have a better space for a garden in spring, so I planted the whole box with Garlic.

Spring of 2021 I picked up an electric mantis tiller and stirred up the ground for an in-ground garden plot. It went very well! I had several beautiful tomato plants, a bumper crop of spaghetti squash, peas, peppers, and two types of summer squash that did not produce a single fruit across 6 plants (for whatever reason, the whole neighborhood had no zucchini or yellow squash all year. May have been something to do with the pollinators?) 

That fall I picked up 8 raised bed boxes for $5 each and decided to reorganize once again, and the companion beds were born! One thing I knew I wanted was hog fence tunnels for beans, peas, and cucumbers, so I spaced the 4 biggest boxes (5x5) 4 feet apart in each direction. During the winter, I took inventory of my seeds and made a plan as follows:

Box one is my take on the famous "Three Sisters" garden. I have two types of corn (jeweled and blue popping) with climbing pole beans planted along side each. Then I'm filling the remaining space with squash (mix of summer and winter) to block out the weeds. I also sewed Mache in the open space, planted 3 red cabbages along the side, and did a line of scarlet runner beans along the trellis. I'm afraid I planted the Kentucky Pole beans too early as they'll soon outpace the corn and have little support to climb. This box is going to be a beautiful mess by August!

Box two is tomatoes with herbs, root crops, and leafy greens planted throughout and spring blush peas along the trellis. I'm experimenting with a single-stem method of growing my tomatoes this year to get more plants in the small space. As far as herbs, I have sweet and mini Greek basil, lavender, and sage. For root crops I have 2 varieties of carrot and Salsify. I also broadcast sewed a mesculin mix and some slowbolt lettuce. My hope is that the tomatoes will give shade to my lower-level plants and the greens will keep the soil cool and weed-free.

Box three is an absolute mess in this photo because I took it before I thinned the radishes. This box is 3 types of cucumbers (climbing chompers along the trellish) and 3 types of radish that will all produce at different times. Nothing too fancy here, just a large-leafed vine crop and a sturdy root crop to grow between and underneath.

I'm very excited for box 4! I have several varieties of sweet and hot capsicums, 3 varieties of bunching onions, and sugar snap peas along the trellis. I also broadcast a handful off carrot seeds in here this week too, just to see how they do. My family isn't much into hot peppers, so this box is mostly all mine. I like to make big batches of fermented hot sauces each year out of various chilis. This will be fun.

I have space in the center to place some large planters. Right now I have some okra, a few tree seedlings I'm trying to raise, and a flat of unplanted cucumbers that I need to find a home for. I think I'm going to try to find a galvanized fire ring to put in there as a permanent raided bed that I could grow potatoes or something else in next year. Also, the mulch is inoculated with oyster mushrooms, so those may come up this year again as well.

What is Going on this Month: June

June is a time of growth. Not much planting, not much harvesting. Now is a good time to start experimenting with rain collection, composting, liquid organic fertilizers, and mulching techniques.

As a reminder, my list will be specific to my garden for now but will grow to encompass general strategies for my region and FDA zone, which is 5(b).

Here's what we're working on in June:

- cutting grass for mulch and compost

- Planting quick growing crops: bush beans, salad greens, radish

- Selling and gifting unplanted starts

- Build outdoor mushroom beds

- Mulch beds

- Mulch paths

- Turn compost

Harvest/Forage Schedule:

- Dryad Saddle Mushrooms

- Chanterelle Mushroom

- Chicken of the Woods

- Crown-tipped Coral Fungus

- Dead Nettle

- Hosta Leaves

- Chives

- Asparagus

- Kale

- Salad greens

- Spinach

- Radish

- Herbs

- Chiles/Capsicums

- Onion Tops

- Garlic Scapes

- Black Cap Raspberries 

- Strawberries

- Day Lilly Buds

- Peas