Growing Veggies in Cool Temps

Are you enjoying the slow cool-down we're having this Fall? It's a great time to clean up the beds while the temperatures are cool enough to work up a healthy sweat pulling out corn stalks and raking leaves off the lawn.

It's sad to put the garden to bed, though - summer's sweet days with blue skies and bright sunlight are gone, taking all the flowers and pretty colors of the veggies with them. The breezes across my yard have just the tiniest hint of winter and I miss the noisiest of the summer birds at the feeder.

But (aha!) there is a little glimmer of a growing season still in my garden - I'm experimenting with growing vegetables into the late Autumn, early Winter.

When I lived in the Willamette Valley, the growing season was beautifully long - the weeds grew every month of the year even if the vegetables didn't. I didn't know then that some veggies love the cool weather and I could have been growing broccoli, lettuce, peas, and all the root vegetables for most of the year, with a break for summer heat which they all hate.

Now that I'm in Central Oregon, my growing season is frighteningly short - between 75 and 90 days. Some years it's almost impossible to grow corn or tomatoes outside of greenhouse. The cool summer nights stop the growth and the poor heat-loving plants can't always recover enough to produce good crops. So I grow a lot of the veggies that love our cool Springs and nuture them carefully as far into Summer as I can (shading the lettuces got me a few more weeks of harvest in June).

Now that I've gotten the last of the "hot" veggies out of the ground - beans, corn, tomatoes - I've got lots of room to plant a Fall crop.

Since the temperatures are staying warmer than usual, I think I'll put in a cover crop of legumes - some garden peas will like the Fall rains and they should be able to grow enough before the snow falls. I know my Summer corn uses up a lot of nitrogen so I can turn the pea plants back into the soil in the Spring, replenishing the bed where I intend to grow corn next year.

 The carrots and potatoes are still in the ground so I'll wait until early Winter to dig them up, before the ground freezes solid.
 A few of the raised beds get lots of sun in the afternoon and are protected from cold winds by a hedge, so I may build some cloches to grow broccoli and lettuce.

Several years ago I found this OSU publication with great directions for building a raised bed garden cloche. I built mine with row cover and deer screening instead of the plastic, but in the cooler Fall temps, the plastic is a better choice. If I also put some row cover over the plants inside the cloche when the nighttime temps get really low, I should be able to extend the growing season into December.

There's a ton of information in these publications if you want to try some cool-season gardening:

Cover Crops - http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/17462/fs304-e.pdf

Fall and Winter Vegetable Gardening in PNW -
 https://catalog.extension.oregonstate.edu/pnw548

Warm Season Crops in a Cool Climate -  http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1957/21092/k-em9027coolseason.pdf?sequence=12

 Build your own raised bed cloche - http://extension.oregonstate.edu/deschutes/sites/default/files/ec1627-e.pdf

The Garden Party's Over

That's it! The first hard frost has wiped out the veggies. Not a moment too soon since the family of four deer has figured out how to push through my fence. Just this morning one of them lifted two cantaloupes out of the cold frame - just in time for breakfast (theirs,  not mine).

Once I put my frustration aside (after all, how many more veggies can I expect in October?) I'm intrigued by the deer's menu.  First they ate the carrot tops and the broccoli.  Okay, they're going to be pretty healthy this winter.  Then they ate the onion tops.  Well, that seems a little strange but maybe they needed some seasoning on the carrots. And then - then! - they ate the flat-leaf parsley.  Ha! Gourmand deer cleansing their palates after a hearty veggie meal. Alllll rightey then!

It all points to the end of the garden year - frost-burnt cucumber and squash vines, shriveled petunia stems, sad, frozen hostas, exceptionally hungry deer prowling in daylight hours. And the last of the hummingbirds seems to be gone from the feeder.

But I'm looking forward already. The flower beds are 13 years old now and looked patchy even at the height of the summer bloom - now is the time to fix what is obviously "broken" in the summer garden design.

Since the annuals are finished, I can pull them out to better see what the perennials are doing. Once I've pulled the last of the weeds and raked up any debris left behind, I like to step back (sometimes the view from an upstairs window is best) and see what is wrong with the design.  I take photos of my flower beds throughout the season so I'll be able to judge what's working well (or not) as the year moves along. This particular bed has wonderful Spring flowering bulbs and late Summer Lavender but it's pretty bland in between.  I can see, from this vantage point, that the Irises have multiplied and are overwhelming everything else so I'll be digging and dividing them. The lavender plants are doing well, placed evenly throughout the bed but it's now obvious that I need to add some contrast and height to the picture. I'll add some Russian Sage (Perovskia) which will arch above the shorter plants and some pink-flowering Persian  Stonecress (Aethionema schistosum) to cover the ground beneath.

It's a great time to put in some new plants: the nurseries don't want to carry their stock over winter and the garden is nice and damp from the random fall showers.  I do a lot of planting in October so the new plants will have enough time to produce new roots before the ground freezes solid - I've got four or maybe five weeks, so I'd better hurry.

If I can get the garden ready for the first snowfall,

my 2016 garden will be in great shape.  If the four-legged neighbors leave anything for me...

I've found that the OSU Extension Service's Garden Tips help me remember all my seasonal chores - here are the tips for October and November: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/deschutes/sites/default/files/GardenTipsOctNov.pdf