Creating a Fall Garden, Zones and Frost Dates

Each year during late August / early September, the same sadness comes over me as I realize it is time to take down our summer garden. I have heard that there are folks out there that are harvesting late in October and even some who harvest year round -- so this year it's my turn to try.

Starting out modest, I am going to just work with one of the five planting areas that we have in our backyard - the middle bed closest to the house. Right now that bed contains some very healthy beans and some pretty ready to die cucumbers. Once the cucumbers are removed it should provide enough space for experimenting, but also not overwhelm us with too much to take care of.

The first thing, when trying to figure out what to plant in any season is to see what growing Zone you live in. Zones is referenced on many seed packets and in many catalogues is based on the average annual minimal temperature of the area in which you live. I live in Zone 7A, but if you want to check your Zone go to the U.S. National Arboretum page to find out. I would recommend re-checking your zones every few years, they don't change often, but you will want to know if they do.

Knowing that I live in Zone 7A (which makes my average annual minimal temperature 0-5F in case you were wondering) my next step was finding out when our projected first frost would be for Fall 2008. First and last frost dates are also very important when putting plants or seed into the ground. I found in my research for fall gardening that many veggies were identified as "plant xxxx weeks before frost date". To find your aprox. first and last frost date you can go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration where they will give you a range of dates and the percentage chance of a frost on that date. For my area there is a 50% chance of frost by October 29th, so I feel comfortable going with that (10% chance by Oct 17 and 90% chance by Nov 11th in case you were wondering - I'm betting on the average)

So with all of that information in hand, I have been researching what will grow best in this area this fall. My next post will cover that as well as what our first steps in preparing our garden for fall planting (and taking down the summer garden) will be.

Good weather to all! (especially those of us expecting a tropical storm tomorrow).