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Garden Advice

Protect Your Crops with Row Cover

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If you’ve ever visited an organic vegetable farm, you’ve probably seen large sections of field blanketed in white cloth. Sometimes, it’s laid directly over the crops, and sometimes it’s held above them over small hoops, giving it the appearance of a long caterpillar sleeping in the garden. This gauze-like white fabric is called row cover. It’s typically made from woven or spun-bonded polyester or polypropylene and is designed to be permeable to air, light, and water. Farmers and gardeners can use this fabric to help protect crops from pests, cold temperatures, too much sun, and windburn.

Protect Your Crops From Wind

Wide open fields may be many gardeners’ dream, but they can be windy places! High winds can be tough on plants, especially tender transplants. Constant winds pull moisture from the soil and plants’ leaves. They can also tear leaves and damage limbs, leaving plants more susceptible to pests and disease. Using row cover in windy areas, especially as plants are getting established, can mitigate these issues.

Protect Your Crops From Sun

Shade cloth is similar to row cover but is generally used to protect plants from intense sun and heat. It’s often used to extend the growing season of greens, delaying bolting by keeping temperatures a bit cooler. It can also be used in extreme heat over crops like peppers and tomatoes, which may abort flowers or develop sun-scald.

If you can’t purchase shade cloth, you can hang old torn pieces of row cover or other thin fabrics over crops to provide some shade.

Protect Your Crops From Frost 

As we plan our fall gardens, we think about the dwindling light and drop in temperatures that fall will eventually bring. Row cover increases the temperature and humidity beneath it and can be used to increase growth and protect crops in the spring and fall.

How much protection your row cover provides will depend on the weight. Some thinner row covers only provide about 2°F of frost protection, while others offer 6° to 10°F of protection.

Garden beds with row cover
Row cover protecting White Beauty Eggplant from flea beetles.

Protect Your Crops From Pests

Keeping crops pest free can be challenging without resorting to some form of pesticides. Even those OMRI (Organic Materials Institute) certified pesticides can have unwanted adverse effects, harming beneficial insects in the area along with pests. Row cover allows you to block out pests, no sprays needed.

Row cover works with many crop and pest scenarios, including keeping brassicas like cabbage and broccoli free from cabbage loopers, preventing flea beetles from destroying young eggplants, stopping bean beetles from defoliating your bush beans, and preventing pesky vine borers, squash bugs, and cucumber beetles from ruining your cucurbit harvest.

Isolating Crops with Row Cover

Finally, growers can use row cover to isolate specific varieties. Just as it keeps out pests, it keeps out pollinators. While this is unnecessary for most home-scale seed savers, seed companies and plant breeders sometimes use row cover to block out pollinators and hand pollinate crops. This method allows breeders only to cross desired plants, helping keep varieties pure or creating new cultivars and hybrids.

Selecting Row Cover

As we’ve discussed above, many different types of row cover are available depending on what you need it for.

Frost and Cold Temperatures

If you’re looking to protect crops late into the fall or winter, choose a heavier row cover that offers greater protection from cold temperatures. However, heavier-weight row covers must be removed earlier in the spring as they can quickly hold in too much heat as temperatures rise and you head into summer.

Pest Protection

Lightweight options are generally all you need to protect crops from pests and allow you to keep them on without overheating your plants and soil.

Shade Cloth

Shade cloth also comes in varying options with densities ranging from 10% to 60% or more. It’s important to weigh the pros and cons of keeping crops cool while blocking sunlight which can ultimately slow growth.

When purchasing row cover, it’s worth checking with local garden centers as shipping can be pricey. If none is available, many online retailers carry it. You may see row cover listed under several common name brands, including Reemay, Agribon, Agronet, Agryl, Harvest Guard, and Typar.

If you can’t purchase row cover, we’ve found that tulle works as an excellent substitute. You can find it at most fabric stores, and they generally allow you to buy any length you need.

Row cover in kitchen gardenUsing Row Cover

In the spring, you can drape row cover directly over small, flexible transplants and seedlings. The edges should be weighted down, but leave slack for the plant’s to grow. If you’re using row cover for pest protection, bury the edges in the soil.

You’ll want to support the row cover for larger crops or sensitive plants like spinach, lifting it off the crops. You can form mini hoop houses or low tunnels. Many suppliers sell wire hoops to drape the row cover over, but you can also make your own with PVC pipe or other smooth, flexible material. Again, be sure to weigh down the edges of bury it in the soil.

Weeding and Watering

Especially if row cover is on hoops, it’s relatively easy to lift for weeding and watering. However, to keep your setup as low maintenance as possible, consider adding a water system like drip irrigation or soaker hoses before setting up your cover. You should also mulch well around your crops to keep the soil moist and help block weeds before placing your row cover.

Pollination

Just like row cover blocks out pests, it also blocks our bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. If you have row cover over insect-pollinated crops like the nightshades, including eggplants, tomatoes, and peppers, or cucurbits like cucumbers and squashes, you must remove your row cover when they flower. Removing the row cover will allow pollinators to do their jobs so that your crops will fruit! If you feel you still need row cover or shade cloth in place, you can remove it in the morning when pollinating bees are most active and replace it for the afternoon and evening.

Maintaining Row Cover

Row cover isn’t super expensive, but costs add up, especially in large gardens. By making your row cover last, you can help re-coup the costs and be more environmentally conscious. If you care for it well, you’ll be able to use your row cover for several seasons before needing to be replaced. Roll up or fold your row cover and place it in sealed bags or containers when not in use. Make sure that mice and insects can’t get it and make homes out of it while it’s in storage.


Row cover isn’t the answer to all of a garden’s problems, but it is a helpful tool in the organic grower’s repertoire. Whether you’re tired of dealing with ragged heads of cabbage (hello, cabbage worms), are hoping to grow food year-round, or want to keep your lettuce from bolting a little longer, row cover may be a great way to achieve your goals.

Garden Advice

When to Plant a Fall Garden

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Growing a fall garden allows us to extend our season and get more vegetables, herbs, and flowers out of our space. In Virginia, where we’re located and farther south, it gives us a second opportunity to enjoy some cool-weather-loving crops like peas and spinach for a second time. However, as we’ll discuss below, the name fall gardening can be a bit misleading, you will be harvesting in the fall, but for many crops, you’ll be sowing during the summer.

When Do I Start My Fall Garden?

The short answer is it depends. Where you’re located and what you choose to grow will dictate the sowing times for your garden. The first step is to consider you’re hardiness zone and determine your first frost date. Then look at the days to maturity for crops you’re considering planting.

While frost may seem like the primary factor in a fall garden, you must also consider the day length. During the fall, the days rapidly get shorter, and this, rather than cold temperatures, slows crop growth.

To take this into consideration, you want to add 14 days to the days to maturity time for any variety you’ll direct sow and 14 to 28 days for any variety you will be transplanting. This longer period helps account for setback and transplant shock. 

Once you have your days to maturity plus the added days for daylight, you can count backward from your first frost date to determine your last possible start date. 

For example, let’s say we wanted to plant Capitan Bibb lettuce (62 days to maturity) in a zone 6b garden with an estimated first frost of October 20th. We’ll take 62 days and add 14 days because we’ll be direct sowing it, to get a total of 76 days. If we look at a calendar and count backward 76 days from October 20th, we get August 7th. Therefore we can sow Capitan Bibb lettuce up to August 7th in this garden and expect harvests. 

At 62 days, Capitan Bibb is also a rather quick-maturing crop. If you want a fall garden, it’s best to start planning early! In zone 7a, we begin direct sowing slower maturing crops like cauliflower as early as June 1st.

Garden Apps and Calendars

These days, gardening apps can be very helpful for determining planting dates. Our own garden planner features planting dates based on your zip code. The Farmer’s Almanac also has a planting date calculator and a first frost date calculator on its website. 

If you’d like a more analog option and are located in zone 7, like we are, feel free to check out our planting list pdf. Also, many states and extension agencies offer planting calendars, so be sure to check your local resources as well. 

What Should I Plant?

You can include a wide array of crops in your fall garden, with the exception of some long-season crops like field pumpkins.

We often lean towards cool-season crops like brassicas, peas, greens, and root vegetables when planning fall gardens. While these may last us longer into fall than their warm-weather counterparts, we can still include them in our plans as well. Especially in southern areas, you can start later plantings of squash, beans, sweet corn, and even tomatoes to ensure second harvests at the beginning of fall. 

In the past, we’ve often set out some tomatoes in the second half of June to ensure we had good production for fall tomato tastings. Here are a few of the crops you can consider planting for fall:

  • Cauliflower
  • Cabbages
  • Summer Squash
  • Beets
  • Beans
  • Peas
  • Southern Peas
  • Chinese Cabbage
  • Swiss Chard 
  • Collards
  • Corn
  • Carrots
  • Lettuce
  • Parsnips
  • Rutabaga
  • Broccoli

Planting in the Fall

There are also a few crops that you can plant in the fall to harvest next season. Some, like bulb onions, brassicas, greens, and certain flowers, we overwinter when they’re still small to get an early spring harvest. Others, like garlic and perennial onions, need a cold period to produce well. 

Planning these out ahead of time can help ensure you get a good selection when ordering. For example, we’re already taking garlic orders, even though we’ll ship it out at the appropriate time during the fall based on your location. 

If you’re always sad to see the garden season come to an end, consider adding more fall crops to your garden this season. Start planning your fall garden now to ensure all your crops are in on time and you have abundant harvests!

Garden Advice

4 Unusual Perennials to Plant This Fall

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We’ve discussed what to plant this fall quite a bit on this blog. You may have seen one of our last posts about great heirlooms for the fall garden and currently be sowing or transplanting radishes, carrots, beets, cabbages, and other crops into your plot. These traditional crops often make up the backbone of the fall garden and are a good part of any food storage you put up for winter. At SESE, we also ship out some perennial plants each fall. Similar to many flower bulbs, these plants do best when planted in the autumn before your first frost.

All of these plants ship in the fall and include planting instructions. None of this information is meant to diagnose or treat any condition.

 

Goldenseal

Once common throughout eastern woodlands, goldenseal is now believed to be one of the most at-risk medicinal plants in the United States and is believed to be at high risk of extinction in many parts of its range. 

Goldenseal’s decline is largely caused by over-harvesting and habitat destruction and is on the Appendix 2 list of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). When you plant goldenseal in your woodlands, you’re helping to ensure this specie’s long-term survival. 

Historically, herbalists have used goldenseal to treat various ailments especially inflamed mucous membranes. It was used in gargles for sore throats, topically to treat skin irritations and infections, as an eyewash, and internally to treat UTIs, ulcers, and digestive issues.

There’s also some evidence to suggest that goldenseal has a high resistance to fungal pathogens and may help reduce disease spread in forest settings. Ginseng growers will often include it in their plantings for this reason. 

In the wild, goldenseal grows on forest slopes, open woodlands, and along streams. Plant goldenseal rhizomes in the fall in a spot that receives about 75% shade. A mature plant may be divided three to five times.

Ginseng

Like goldenseal, ginseng is disappearing from the woodlands of North America. For almost 300 years, it has been harvested and exported to Asia, often in significant quantities. One of America’s first millionaires, John Jacob Astor, made part of his fortune exporting ginseng. 

Herbalists highly favor wild ginseng over cultivated ginseng. Interestingly, wild ginseng shows exponentially higher levels of the compound ginsenoside, which is believed to have numerous medicinal benefits.

Traditionally, herbalists often used this plant as a “cure-all,” believing it helps the body adapt to stress. Many thought ginseng could treat various conditions, including depression, nausea, tumors, fatigue, diabetes, ulcers, and more. Read more about this herb before using it on your own.

Today, ginseng is on the Appendix 2 list of the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), threatened by over-harvesting and habitat destruction. You can help ensure its survival by planting it in your woodlands.

Plant ginseng in the fall from seeds or roots. It thrives on northern-facing slopes in dense deciduous forest. You can harvest roots can after four to seven years. Growing in conjunction with goldenseal may help prevent disease issues.

Shallots

These perennial alliums add a bit of gourmet flair to any garden. Griselle or grey shallots are highly sought after by chefs, home cooks, and foodies. They have a distinctive rich, earthy smell and a mild, umami flavor. 

Plant shallots in the fall, like garlic. They’re easy to grow, low maintenance, and typically offer excellent yields. They produce best when you keep them weeded and watered during the spring and summer. Harvest when the tops fall over. 

Egyptian Walking Onions

Egyptian walking onions get their name from the unique way they reproduce. These onions develop bulblets on top of their stalk, which produce new, small stalks. Eventually, the bulblets and new stalks become so heavy that the onion top tips over, placing the sets against the ground and replanting themselves! The way they plant themselves gives them the appearance of walking across your garden. 

These incredible onions can be grown throughout North America, thriving in USDA zones 3 through 9. Not only are they fun to grow, but walking onions are also the ones you want if you always want to have onions. They tend not to produce much their first year, but after that will keep you in a steady supply.

Harvest bulbs in the fall and winter and harvest green onions selectively during their growing period. Plant them in an area you intend to keep them for a long time.

As gardeners, many enjoy adding another heirloom bean to our list of favorites or trying a different variety of tomatoes each year. As we try new crops, we learn and grow alongside our garden. These four unusual perennials are a great way to expand your skills as gardeners, seed savers, home cooks, and herbalists.