I just found this great chart over at the Minnesota soemthing-or-other, and plan to use it for my second sowing this summer/fall. My question is: If these are 'cool season crops' and I've heard they don't like heat, then how will they fare in high temps early on after sowing in late summer? What I mean is: our 'heat of summer' is generally in August, and we might see great temps right through September, but they are nowhere near the lows of spring. We get frost about Oct 15th around here. So if I count back to say 60, 70 or 80, even 90 days back, I'm looking at sowing in mid- to late-July and August! When those babies come up, they're going to fry! Help me out here on how to sow cool season crops for fall harvest. Thanks! Here is a link that might be useful: Univ of Minn Cool weather crop sowing

Charles, Yes, I plant them all in mid-winter through spring. When I lived in Fort Worth, some of these were fall plants only for me because Fort Worth warmed up and got too hot too early. Up here, usually the cold nights linger a bit later most years than they did down there and I can get good crops from most cool-season crops on this list most springs. The last two years we have warmed up too early in spring for some of them though. It is really hard for me to get good spring harvests from cauliflower or brussels sprouts in spring, so I plant them only for a fall harvest. I also have trouble with salsify and a few other odd things that need a long cool season. They do better in fall than spring, but I don't grow them much any more in either spring or fall. Up here in southcentral OK (I am just across the river from Gainesville, TX), the key is to plant a lot of them extra early (earlier than OSU recommends) and cover them up with floating row cover that offers some freeze and frost protection. I have floating row cover in several weights, and the heaviest one gives 8 degrees of frost protection. I have found if I cover up the plants with a double layer of row cover, it often will give the plants 12 or more degrees of frost protection. Using floating row cover changed my gardening life because it allows me to plant early and not lose the plants to cold weather. I also often lay down black plastic on top of the cool-season crop beds to warm up the soil while the air temps are still pretty cool. The warm soil can help cool-season seeds germinate more quickly than if I was trying to germinate them in cold soil. To have a good few months with cool-season plants, I really have to push the limits here in terms of planting early, but I figure I have nothing to lose by trying. The nice thing is that if we heat up too early and the cool-season crops fail to produce well (or at all), I know I'll have another chance with the fall garden. That happened last year with snap peas and broccoli. I had a wonderful fall harvest of broccoli, but still didn't get any snap peas. As it turned out, the grasshoppers, which exist in huge numbers in our rural area most years, loved the sugar snap peas so much they ate the plants down to the ground. For a while the peas tried valiantly to regrow, but after being eaten repeatedly, they gave up. I even had them under floating row cover, but the hoppers ate their way through it too. That's never happened before. Maybe I'll have sugar snap peas this spring if the weather cooperates. It also helps that I have a lot of space. When the garden was smaller, I pretty much had to choose between cool-season and warm-season crops in spring because there wasn't room for everything. We enlarged the garden every year until it reached its present size, so now I can grow pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. That helps. My favorite gardening magazine is "Texas Gardener", by the way, and if you've never seen it, you might want to check it out. I find it just as useful for me here in OK as I did when I lived in TX. You wouldn't believe how many great varieties for our part of the country I've found merely by reading about them in Texas Gardener. Two of the five gardening books I'm reading this winter are from Texas too---Dr. Bill Adams' book on Growing Tomatoes and Greg Grant's Vegetable and Fruit book. Dawn

Wow, I didn't know any northeastern state fairs were held in January. You might try reading one of Eliot Coleman's books on winter harvest that explains how he uses row covers, hoop houses, and cold frames. I wonder if the squashes and some of the other vegetables are simply what comes out of winter storage. Parsnips are seeded in late spring and not harvested until after a frost or the following spring. I'm in NH so our ground freezes. We aren't able to harvest until the ground thaws, certainly not in January but I've read that if you cover the row with a thick layer of straw, the ground doesn't freeze. I seeded carrots, beets, and spinach hoping for a very late harvest but I plan on putting a tunnel cover over the bed. Eliot Coleman is in Maine. I've read of NH gardeners using his techniques so they can harvest lettuce and spinach in the winter but you may have to look for particularly hardy varieties.

Hi, It's been a long time since I planted vegetables, but I used to do some fall veggies. Brussels Sprouts should last through early December, and cabbage may do the same. Leeks will last the winter, but I believe they have a longer growing season, and may need to be planted in the spring (it's been a long time, so you may want to check on that). To get good answers to your questions, you may want to do a web search for the County Extension Agent for the county where you live, and ask if there are any registered Master Gardeners in your area. You should be able to ask them your questions, and get good guidance.