In the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, we enjoy a fairly long growing season, but fall always creeps up on us fast. In the zone 7a gardens at Southern Exposure, we’re already starting cauliflower for our fall garden. As you’re planning and planting fall crops, these are some things to consider.

Understand Your Timeline

A long growing season means that you can start multiple successions of quick summer crops throughout the summer like zucchini, bush beans, sweet corn, and zinnias. You can also plant cool season crops like cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, and spinach in spring and then again in fall. 

How late you can continue to plant these crops is determined by two factors: your first estimated frost date and the day length.

This first frost date is a hard cut off for frost-tender crops like summer squash, but you have a bit more flexibility with hardy crops like collards and beets. The shortening days in late summer and fall will affect each crop’s days to maturity. 

To calculate how late you can last a crop, you need to take both factors into account. To begin, find your variety’s days to maturity. Then add 14 days if you’re direct sowing or 14 to 28 days for transplanting. This addition accounts for slower growth during the shorter days of autumn. Last, take your total number and count backwards from your first frost date. This is your last possible planting date.

Many cold hardy crops will grow into winter in cold frames, high tunnels, or low tunnels. Just keep in mind that as the temperatures continue to drop and the days get even shorter, their growth will slow or stop. Young cold-hardy crops kept through the winter will begin growing in late winter in spring for and early harvest.

Bed Prep and Summer Cover Crops

If you want to maximize production from your garden, it’s important to pull spring and summer crops when they’re no longer productive. When lettuce bolts, the vine borers overtake the zucchini, and the bean production drops, pull the plants and prep the bed for a new crop or cover crop.

You should also remove any weed and other debris and pull back mulch. Add a couple of inches of finished compost to the bed. 

After preparing the bed, you can plant another crop or a cover crop. Summer cover crops like sunn hemp, buckwheat, and soybeans can revitalize the soil for another vegetable crop later or grow for the rest of the season to help build up organic matter. 

To choose a cover crop, read our post Summer Cover Crops. 

If you’re already plenty busy with summer garden crops like tomatoes and squash, it’s perfectly fine to put empty beds into cover crops for the rest of the season. Building soil for next season is more productive than planting more crops that you don’t have the time or energy to manage.

Selecting Crops

While ‘days to maturity’ is the key feature when selecting fall crops, it’s not the only thing to consider. Some crops have been bred to hand the hot days of summer, the dwindling light of autumn, or the cold snaps of approaching winter.

For example, lettuces like Capitan Bibb and Jericho Romaine lettuce, which were bred for heat tolerance, are a good choice for late summer. Some fall crops like Snowball Self-Blanching Fall Cauliflower will even say it in the name. This variety offers self-wrapping leaves that protect the white curds from heat and sunlight during late summer or early fall. 

Crops bred for cold hardiness like Champion Collards and Gigant Winter Kohlrabi will help you extend your growing season into winter. Quick growing crops like Cherry Belle Radishes allow you to squeeze in a last-minute harvest even with shorter days.

Direct Sowing Crops for Fall

In hot conditions, direct sowing can be tricky, especially with cool weather crops like lettuce, cabbage, carrots, and rutabagas. To have success, you want to keep the soil cool and moist. Here are a few quick tips when direct sowing:

• Use shade cloth.
• Lay boards of cardboard over the soil, but check every day and remove it as soon as they germinate. 
• Water consistently.
• Use overhead watering for crops like carrots, which are sensitive to soil crusting. 

Starting Transplants for Fall

Starting transplants can be easier than direct sowing, because you have more control over the environmental conditions, including moisture level and soil temperature. Cool weather crops like lettuce, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and kohlrabi germinate well in relatively cool, moist soil. 

For example, most lettuce germinates best around 75°F but will germinate at temperatures as low as 40°F. Rather than direct sow them or sow them in flats outdoors, we start our fall lettuces indoors and place the flats into the refrigerator for 4 to 6 days. 

If you don’t have space in your fridge, you could try another area that stays cool, like a root cellar. Monitor them; they need light once they germinate!

Use Mulch

When planting and growing in the heat of summer, keeping the soil cool and moist is key for good growth and production. Placing a thick layer of mulch on the soil after watering will help hold the moisture in and insulate the soil. 

You can use wood chips, grass clippings, straw, or old leaves to mulch. Mulch as close to the base of plants as possible, but don’t cover them. Wait to mulch direct sown crops until they’re a couple of inches tall. 

Fertilizing your vegetable garden can encourage plant growth and improve your yields. Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as dumping a bag into the soil for magic results. When used improperly, fertilizer can have negative effects on your plants, garden, and the surrounding environment. 

In this blog, we’ll talk about why you may or may not want to use fertilizer in your vegetable garden and how to do so efficiently. We’ll also include a few alternatives.

Always Get a Soil Test

Before you add any amendment to the garden, the best thing you can do is get a soil test. A soil test gives you information about the micro and macronutrients in your garden and your soil pH. This baseline will allow you to choose an appropriate fertilizer.

You don’t want to add fertilizer without testing. If nutrients are already present in your soil in good quantities, adding fertilizer will do more harm than good. Excess nutrients can inhibit plant growth, contribute to pest and disease issues, and reduce your yield. 

Excess nutrients also often run off with rain and irrigation. These nutrients wash into ditches, streams, and eventually other waterways where they can cause dangerous algal blooms. 

What Fertilizer Should I Use?

There is a wide range of fertilizers available to home gardens and knowing which one to select can be tough. Here are a few considerations to make the right choice for your vegetable garden. 

Organic Versus Synthetic Fertilizer

Two main categories of fertilizer are organic and synthetic.

Organic Fertilizer

Organic fertilizers are those derived from natural sources like plant or animal material. You may see organic fertilizers like kelp (a type of seaweed) meal or bone meal. Organic fertilizers are generally available in granules and slowly break down and release into the soil. 

This can be a disadvantage for plants that need a quick boost. However, organic fertilizers are less likely to create nutrient run off. They also can improve soil structure, feed beneficial microbes, and don’t form a crust on the soil like synthetic fertilizers may create.

When looking for organic fertilizer, the Organic Materials Review Institute (OMRI) seal indicates the product can be used on certified organic farms.

Synthetic Fertilizer

Also known as inorganic or chemical fertilizers, these are also derived from natural sources but have been processed and concentrated. Most of these fertilizers are quick-release and water-soluble, meaning that they’re quickly accessible to the plant. However, some are coated to slow the release. 

These fertilizers are immediately available to a plant that needs a quick boost. However, this means that it’s also easy to over-fertilize or burn your plants with them. As they’re water soluble and quick release, these synthetic fertilizers are also much more likely to end up in waterways. 

N-P-K

Beyond synthetic and organic, all fertilizers are marked with three numbers like 4-6-2 or 4-4-4. These numbers refer to key plant macronutrients, Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), and Potassium (K). The number shows the percent of the bag’s weight that the nutrient makes up.

If you don’t know what ratio your crop needs, no worries. Most companies market their products for specific applications. You can find general fertilizers for vegetable or flower gardens or more specific ones like those for blueberries or tomatoes. If you’re still unsure, you can also Google your crop’s specific needs.

What Plants Should I Fertilize

If you’re going to use fertilizer, it’s best to focus on “heavy feeder” crops that pull a lot of nutrients from the soil. These include: 

• Tomatoes
• Peppers
• Eggplants
• Sweet Corn
• Squash
• Cucumbers
• Potatoes
• Cabbage
• Broccoli

What Plants Don’t Benefit from High-Nitrogen

Nitrogen is essential for plants’ vegetative growth, but some plants need less and are more sensitive to over-fertilizing. These include:

• Root Vegetables (beets, carrots, radishes)
• Legumes (beans, peas, cowpeas)
• Leafy Greens (lettuce, collards, spinach)
• Sweet Potatoes

In high nitrogen soil, root vegetables like beets and tubers like sweet potatoes tend to put on excellent foliar growth at the expense of root and tuber development. This can lead to a smaller harvest or impact quality, leading to roots that are less sweet and nutrient-rich.

Legumes like cowpeas, pole beans, and snap peas all fix nitrogen on their own. They have a symbiotic relationship with bacteria on their root nodes that allow them to covert atmospheric nitrogen into a usable form. Excessive nitrogen caused by over-fertilization can hinder this process and negatively affect the plants’ health. Excess nitrogen may also increase foliage growth and reduce fruit growth. 

When you over-fertilize leafy greens, the plants may put on poor root growth and bolt early, shortening your harvest window. 

This is not to say that these plants don’t benefit from fertilizer, just that you need to be careful with the ratio as they’re sensitive to high nitrogen. 

Different plants require nutrients in different rations. For example, beets, carrots, turnips, and other root vegetables thrive with plenty of phosphorous, which is essential for root development. 

When Should I Fertilize?

For most annual vegetable garden crops, agriculture experts recommend applying granular fertilizer in spring, just before planting. You can incorporate this into the soil and then water it.

Heavy feeders like corn, squash, and tomatoes may also benefit from “side-dressing” or an additional application of fertilizer later in the summer. For corn, side-dress when the plants reach 12 to 24 inches tall. Fruiting plants like tomatoes and squash can benefit from a low nitrogen fertilizer once they begin to flower. Adequate quantities of phosphorous and potassium are ideal for fruit production. 

When applying fertilizer, be sure to follow the product’s instructions. There should be application rates on the package, often indicating how much to apply per thousand feet of garden area. Extension agents or nursery staff can help you work out how much you need for your space if you’re unsure. 

Other Ways to Add Nutrients to Your Garden

Many organic gardeners choose to forgo fertilizer entirely. For some, it isn’t worth the cost and risks. Thankfully, there are plenty of other ways to add nutrients to your garden:

• Make Your Own Compost
• Spring Cover Crops
• Summer Cover Crops
• Fall Cover Crops
• Winter Cover Crops
• Biochar
• Mulch
• Additional Nutrient Sources

Lacewings are one of our favorite beneficial insects to find in the garden! Their shimmery wings and slender body make them look a bit like mini nocturnal dragonflies. While they don’t get the credit that lady beetles, bees, and butterflies often receive, these delicate insects are among the gardener’s best helpmates.

Why are Lacewings Good for the Garden?

Lacewing larvae, or the immature stage of lacewings, are voracious predators. They feed on a wide range of garden pests including aphids, mealybugs, some scales, lace bugs, asparagus beetle larvae, Colorado potato beetle larvae, and caterpillar eggs and larvae including corn earworms, cabbage loopers, and cabbage worms.

Lady beetles usually take the spotlight for killing aphids, but lacewings are actually more effective. These talented predators feed on a wider range of insects. According to some sources, lacewing larvae can eat about ten times the number of insects as lady beetles. A single lacewing larvae can eat about 200 aphids in one week. 

Lacewings also make sustainable pest control because they stay in areas that they find suitable habitat and food. We’ll cover how to attract them below.

What Lacewings Will I Find?

There are over 4,000 species of lacewing worldwide, with 85 to 90 of these species being native to the United States! The most common species to see in the Southeastern United States where we grow, are from a large family called the green lacewings (Chrysopa spp.).

However, it’s also possible to find other species like the brown lacewing (Hemerobius costalis). Thankfully, all the species of lacewing are easy to recognize as lacewings and beneficial for the garden.

How to Identify Lacewings

As adults, lacewings are nocturnal and you may find them on your window screens of around outdoor lights. They have long, slender, soft bodies that are usually green or brown. Their name is fitting and their shiny, translucent wings are netted with veins. They also feature long, slender antennae and may have gold, coppery. or dark eyes. 

Their eggs are small, about 1mm in length and typically white. They lay their eggs atop thin, hair-like filaments. 

The eggs hatch into the larval stage. In this stage, the lacewings lack wings and have a flattened alligator-like body with distinct legs. Some species collect organic debris on their hairs to deter predators.

Before maturing into adults, the larvae pupate in silk cocoons on the underside of leaves and stems.

Four Ways to Attract Lacewings to Your Garden

Lacewings are beautiful to see and helpful for controlling pests. Creating a suitable habitat for them in all their different life stages is essential to encouraging them to live in your garden.

Plant Pollen-Rich Flowers

Adult lacewings make the switch to a vegetarian diet, feasting on pollen and nectar. While they may not be helpful as predators in this stage, offering them plenty of food usually means that they’ll stick around to lay some eggs, providing your with another generation of lacewings. 

They prefer small flowers that are rich in pollen and nectar like goldenrod, Queen Anne’s lace, Dara, dill, cosmos, coreopsis, caraway, tansy, Angelica, alyssum, and fennel. 

Lacewings have multiple generations per year that need to feed on pollen and nectar to reproduce. Having flowers blooming throughout the season is key. Planning successions and opting for long blooming flowers can make a big difference.

Provide Shelter

Depending on the species, lacewings overwinter in protected spots as adults or larvae. Shrubs, hedges, and dense foliage near your garden can provide suitable shelter. Adults may also choose to hunker down in dead plant material and leafy debris, so waiting until it’s warm in spring to do your garden clean up can also help keep them safe. 

Reduce Chemicals in Your Area

Pesticide applications will kill lacewings and other beneficial insects. Avoid using pesticides, especially broad-spectrum on your property. Where possible, encourage your neighbors to do the same. 

Note that pesticides may also come in on flowers and nursery plants. When possible buy local, ask about treatments, or grow your own starts at home. 

Allow Some Early Aphids

This may seem like a silly idea, but an early population of pests like aphids can help ensure lacewings find your garden in the spring. If you have some early aphids, wait a bit to remove them if possible. 

Purchasing Lacewings

While most people choose to attract native lacewings, some farmers and gardeners order them. Several green lacewing species like Chrysoperla rufilabris are now available online as a biological control for farms and orchards. 

Lacewings are an excellent part of the organic gardener’s integrated pest management plan. Attracting and encouraging local lacewing populations is a great way to keep several annoying garden pests in check without resorting to pesticides.