Garden Planner Pro Blog
Fall Garden
Guides and how-tos from the Garden Planner Pro blog on fall garden.
23 posts
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Your First Frost Date Is a Coin Flip (and Your Low Corner Loses First)
An average first frost date means roughly half of years are earlier. Why the number is wrong for your yard, where the cold actually settles, and what to watch instead.
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Don't Dump Your Pots Out This Fall. That Potting Mix Has Another Year in It.
Replacing container soil every year is mostly wasted money. What really changes in old potting mix, the ten-minute refresh, and the three pots you should empty.
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Your Fall Seedlings Vanished Overnight. Look for the Slime, Not the Bug.
Ragged holes in fall greens and no insect anywhere on the plant. How to tell slug damage from caterpillars, earwigs and birds, and what stops it this week.
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Crop Rotation Only Works If You Remember Last Year, and Almost Nobody Does
Rotation isn't hard to understand and it's nearly impossible to execute, because you plan in February and the evidence disappeared in November. Fix it in September instead.
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Those Gray Clumps on Your Kale Aren't Mold, and Washing Won't Fix Them
Cabbage aphids look like powdery mildew and behave like nothing else. How to tell them from the two things people mistake them for, and why soap sprays keep failing.
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6 Crops You Can Still Start in a Pot This Month, Ranked by How Fast They Feed You
September sowing on a balcony works, but the deadline isn't frost. It's daylight. Six container crops ranked by days to maturity, and how much to add for a fall sowing.
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8 Garlic Varieties Worth Ordering This Week (And the One That Isn't Garlic)
Seed garlic sells out through September for October planting. What hardneck and softneck actually change about flavor, storage and your winter, plus eight varieties worth the order.
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No Root Cellar? Your Potatoes and Onions Want Opposite Rooms
Potatoes want cold and damp, onions want cool and dry, squash wants neither. How to find three storage climates in an ordinary house, and what rots when you don't.
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The Tomato Plants You Pull This Week Decide How Next July Goes
Some of what you clear out of the garden this month carries next summer's disease back into the bed. Most of it does not. How to tell which is which.
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Next June's Strawberry Harvest Is Decided in September, Not Spring
Strawberries set next year's flower buds in early fall. What you do to the bed this month matters more than anything you do in April.
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Green Tomatoes on the Vine? The Frost Timeline You're Ignoring
Tomatoes stop ripening once nights drop below 50°F, weeks before your actual frost date. What to pick now, how to ripen it indoors, and what to do with the rest.
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Freshly Dug Sweet Potatoes Taste Like Cardboard. The Week After Is What Fixes That.
Sweet potatoes are not sweet the day you dig them. What happens in the warm week afterward is what makes them worth growing, and most gardeners skip it.
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The Weekend Box That Keeps Your Garden Growing After Frost Takes Everyone Else's
A cold frame is a bottomless box with a clear lid, and it buys hardy greens weeks of extra growing time. What to build it from, where to put it, and how not to cook the lettuce.
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Everyone Amends Their Soil in Spring. That's Months Too Late.
Lime takes months to move soil pH, so April is the wrong time to apply it. Test your beds in September, amend in October, and let winter do the work.
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Sow Spinach Now, Ignore It All Winter, Cut It in April
Spinach sown in late summer sits out the winter alive and starts growing again before you can dig. The timing, the mulch, and the varieties that survive it.
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That Pepper Plant Is a Perennial, and Composting It in October Is a Waste
Peppers are tender perennials, not annuals. How to cut yours back, bring it inside before frost, and get ripe fruit weeks earlier next summer.
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Take Cuttings From These Herbs Now or Buy Them All Again in May
The basil and rosemary you already own can make next year's plants for free, but only if you take the cuttings while it is still hot. How to do it, and which herbs to skip.
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Your Tomato Plant Is Still Setting Flowers, and Every One Is a Lie
A tomato flower opening in late August will not become a tomato. Here is the math, and what pinching the tops off does for the green fruit already on the vine.
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Save These Seeds This Week - And Whatever You Do, Skip the Squash
Beans, lettuce and peppers are making free seed in your garden right now. Squash and cucumbers are setting a trap. How to tell which is which before you save.
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Buy This in August or Your Fall Garden Ends on One October Night
Row cover is what stands between a fall garden that quits in October and one you harvest into December. Which weight to get, and why August is when to get it.
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Those White Butterflies Over Your Fall Kale Aren't Just Passing Through
August-planted brassicas get shredded worse than spring ones, and the cabbage worms doing it are nearly invisible. How to spot them and what actually stops them.
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Stop Leaving Your Garden Beds Bare Over Winter - Sow This Instead
The bed your beans just finished in doesn't have to sit empty until spring. Which cover crop to sow in August and September, and how to pick between them.
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How to Plan a Fall Vegetable Garden by Counting Backward From Frost
Late July is when fall planting gets decided. The days-to-maturity math that tells you what still has time to make it before your first frost.
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