I planted my fall garden here in Buffalo around the end of July and will take what I can get until frost or time to replant my garlic in the same spot. I think you have enough time for an early beet and iffy on the peas depending on days to maturity. Both I think can take a light frost. Here, I think our first frost the last couple years has been somewhere between Oct. 1st & 6th... maybe last year was later. What town are you in?

Mark

I'm in St. Catharines. I think that I will be pulling up some more beets for dinner tonight, replant in their place, and then maybe leave it at that.

I can hope that they'll grow big enough, but if they don't then maybe I can harvest their greens for salad.

The peas have been a loosing battle from the get-go. The bunnies seem to enjoy them, and every time they started getting to a good size they'd be cut down by the rabbits. I would really like to enjoy a few fresh peas before the end of the year, but I won't expect it.

So not much I can do to help the plants along, get them to grow a little faster?

Rebecca

I just checked and I planted everything 7/22. I also checked the GrowGuide from chestnut-sw.com and using 10/2 as a first frost date, this week is time to plant...tada..Spinach! (Sick of it yet?)

Ongoing (that means a week behind schedule but still ok to plant) is:

beets
kale
kohlrabi
mustard greens
radishes
swiss chard
turnips

Peas, unfortunately, the last chance was around the last week of July.

Changing the frost date to 10/6, it says new this week is radishes, and last chance for starting carrots (outdoors of course) and leaf lettuce (starting seeds indoors; the week of 8/11 is the last chance.)

It's been a weird weather year so you never know what the weather will be like in 6 weeks.

Hope this helps.

Mark

I don't know if you can speed things up... hot days & sun which speeds up tomatoes & peppers would start to decline soon... watering & fertilizing heavily may increase growth but don't know how much... maybe you can give it a try, plus use frost protection, like floating row covers... or grow in containers--they usually produce sooner than in-ground,plus you can take them indoors or inside the garage when frost is predicted then back out for daytime sun. Being on Lake Ontario may give you a little extra time vs inland areas too.

The question is what are you're willing to do for a successful crop, and is it worth the time/cost/effort.

Mark

Just a note about peas and rabbits... we have the same problem. We got some mesh fencing and "wrapped" the pea plot in it. Served double duty - kept the rabbits out and gave the peas something to climb. We planted 2 rows and all we had to do to harvest was walk around the outside of the fence. We mulched enough that we didn't have to go inside the fence to weed, either. I love "lazy" gardening!! And we are going to be planting more peas this week; I found some sugar-snap type peas with a shorter DTM and we will see how that works. I'll let you know!

Rebecca,

That depends where in St. Catharines you are. I'm guessing you're not on the escarpment, so you may have an extra week or two. It can be a couple degrees colder on the escarpment than off. I've lived both on (Niagara Falls) and off (St. Kitts) and have had mornings with frost in the Falls when there was none in St. Kitts.

All in all I have noticed that we seem to have had warmer weather well into fall the past few years. Is that just me or do you notice it too?

Anyway, I've done spinach in NF on nights with frost with no ill effects. Lettuce and beets might be frost tolerant too.

Other greens like arugula, and chard to be picked small.

Still to be planted on my schedule in zone 5b are fall/winter lettuces and spinach,which go in in early September. It's much, much too hot to plant spinach now, as I've learned from many past tries, so I now plant spinach in late September. It can be cut a little in fall, but it's big advantage is wintering over for a very early spring crop. Yesterday I sowed fall chicories and escaroles.