Think about planting your cool-season garden

When most people think about vegetable gardening, they think of tomatoes and peppers and the heat of summer. They complain about the heat, the water and the tomato hornworms.

I enjoy my summer garden, but I find a winter garden just as rewarding and a whole lot easier.

The terms fall, winter and spring garden can be confusing. They are really the same; planted now, some vegetables are finished before the cold, some produce in the cold and some start growing in fall and finish in the spring.

Maybe it would be better to call the garden the cool-season garden. Some of the cool-season garden plants include cabbage, lettuce, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, mustard, onions, parsley, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, carrots, cauliflower, celery, collards, endive, garlic, parsnips, peas, spinach and Swiss chard. I also love to grow snow peas.

It is time to think about planting a cool-season garden. The vegetables that we plant in the fall garden usually require only 60 days or less for the crops to mature and the plants are usually root or leaf type crops. With cooler temperatures and less sunlight, cool-season vegetables usually grow slower and are easier to control. With the cooler temperatures, you also do not have to water and weed your garden as often. Insects are usually less of a problem during the fall and winter.

Vegetables like radishes, cabbage, carrots, lettuce and onions can be produced this fall. Crops that take longer and may require some protection from early cold temperatures include broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts.

Some people try to grow some of these vegetables as a summer vegetable, but they like the cooler temperatures of fall and spring. Some of the leafy vegetables like lettuce and cabbage ‘’bolt’’ or send up flower stalks during the summer when temperatures are too hot. The plants will also have a bitter taste due to the heat. A general rule of thumb is if you eat the seed or fruit, it’s a summer vegetable; if you eat the root or leaves, it is a cool-season vegetable.

Since most of the spring or fall vegetables do not take up much space in a garden like squash and melons, they can be grown in small spaces in the landscape or in containers on your patio. This makes the plants even easier to care for, and you do not have to go far on a cool winter day to harvest or care for your garden.

These cool-season vegetables require no special treatment over summer vegetables. The same garden soil is fine. We need to modify some cultural practices, however.

Make sure when you water your vegetables, it is mid-morning to mid-day. In winter, we do not want water left on the plants to freeze at night, nor do we want to water too early and freeze the plants in the morning. Water mid-day allows the temperatures to be warm enough and the plants to dry by evening.

Cool-season crops do not require very much nitrogen fertilizer and require higher amounts of phosphorus and potassium fertilizers, so use a 16-16-16 or even numbered fertilizer or even a fertilizer where the last two numbers are higher than the first number. On a bag of fertilizer, the first number is the percentage of nitrogen, the second is phosphorus and the last is potassium.

It may be a bad time to say it’s time to do a vegetable garden after a long hot summer, but maybe next year skip the summer garden and just do a spring and fall garden. They are easier and less time consuming.