12 BEST Vegetables, Flowers, and Herbs in your FALL GARDEN

If you think gardening ends in summer, then I've got a surprise for you. In this video, I'm going to show you my 12 favorite things to plant every single fall. We're talking leaves, roots, fruits, and flowers so that you're going to totally rethink the fall garden, and it just might become your favorite season ever. If you haven't read my book Leaves, Roots and Fruit, I outline why I divide plants into these categories. I'll put a link to it right below this video. Leaves are the easiest to grow, and they're definitely easy in the fall. Most leafy greens thrive when the weather is cooler. Here are some of my favorite leafy greens to grow, especially some that will hang on even when there's frost or even snow. I know. So first is cilantro. This is an herb that thrives in the cool season. If you struggle with this in the summer when it's hot, you're going to want to grow cilantro from seed directly in your garden. And this fall, it is delicious in fall salads. Another herb, same plant family, is dill. If your dill flowered a long, long time ago, you get a second chance. And dill loves the cool weather of fall. Those are two herbs that are delicious in the fall garden. Spinach is one of the hardiest salad greens you can grow in the fall. It's going to last deep into winter. It doesn't mind frost or snow. So good for you. It's literally like nature knows what it's doing because so many of the vitamins and minerals that we need to fight off the flu and cold, they're inside this plant. And believe me, it's so much more nutritious for you when you grow your own. You can grow it from seed right in the soil. Get tons of spinach all fall long. Another green that holds up under cold is cabbage. And my favorite is this Napa cabbage. I like to grow just like the typical head and cabbages, too. Those work. Napa and Asian cabbage varieties will grow faster and form the head faster so that you can get a harvest before it gets too cold. You can plant these indoors and move them out or just go from seed directly to harvest right in your garden bed. Two other greens that hold up when it gets cold are kale and Swiss chard. Both of these plants, they're in different plant families, but they're both biennials. That means that they want to stay in the garden more than a year before they go to seed. This is good news for people like me and you because it means these plants are literally fighting and dying to stay alive for us. They don't mind frost or cold. They're little bumpy leaves. That's called savoy, and that savoyness actually gives them protection against the colder temperatures. You can buy kale or Swiss chard plants. That's a good idea. If you haven't started these from seed, you can start these from seed indoors or try to plant them from seed to grow directly in the garden. Get them started early, though, because it takes a little while for these plants to take off. But once they do, man, we're talking harvest every single day from just one plant of each. All right, that covers our leaves. Now let's talk about the roots. So first and foremost, easiest root to grow in the fall is radishes. These are going to give you a harvest in like, 30 to 40 days. Absolutely worth it. This year, I started pickling my radishes. Complete game changer. So delicious. I eat them as a snack every time I'm hungry. Next up are beets. Beets are great to grow in the fall. They can survive the cold temperatures, and they're so good for you. Same thing. Like, nature knows what it's doing. So many of the things you need to fight off the flus and colds of the fall season, they're inside these beets. Same plant family as Swiss chard. True superfoods. Okay. And of course, carrots. These actually get sweeter when the temperatures drop. They can hang on through frost and cold, and you can plant them from seed to directly in the garden at the beginning of fall. You'll have harvests all fall long, and then for those that didn't quite finish, just leave them in the ground, and they'll start to grow again from seed as soon as the soil thaws out in early spring. Two other roots that aren't actually roots, we're talking bulbs and tubers. The most important to grow in the fall is garlic. You're not going to get a garlic harvest in the fall, but you definitely should plant it. So garlic is a bulb, and you're just going to break off a clove and plant it up. So. So garlic is one of those things. If you miss the window, you miss the plant. And these need to get planted in the fall, so order your seed. Garlic. Now, you want to plant these right after your first frost. These are going to stay in the garden all through the winter, and then they're going to be ready to harvest sometime around the beginning of summer of the next year. Takes a long time. So Put them in now. Potatoes aren't going to work for everybody watching this video, but if you're in a warmer place, then potatoes are great to plant in the fall. And if you are in like the southern part of the United States, if you've got a pretty mild winter, putting potatoes in in the early fall is going to give you a nice potato harvest, either right before we drop into the coldest temps of the year, or you might actually get spring potatoes from fall planted tubers. So this is a great time to get those potatoes into the ground. You'll be digging them up either before the end of the year or soon into spring. Big payoff for just a little thing My plate Planting Starter Kit is the perfect way to get started understanding how plants fit together. Because you want to know which ones are small, which ones are big, and can you put all of them together in just one bed? Yes, you can. So grab my plate Planting Starter kit. It's right below this video. It's completely free and it'll help you understand how I pack all these plants into my garden so you can do it too this fall. Now, you're not going to believe this, but you can actually grow fruit in the fall too. Not the kind of fruit you're thinking about like berries and watermelons, but you can grow peas and fava beans. Yay. Not as sweet, but definitely very good for you. Packed with protein and, you know, delicious and beautiful. So you should grow these up a trellis. You want to either have an obelisk or an arch or panel trellis. Plant these seeds at the base and you're going to be picking peas and fava beans before the end of the year. So delicious. The little flowers are beautiful too. You're going to love them. Now if you want to add some flowers to your fall garden, I highly recommend. My favorites are violas, pansies. Those I would buy from the store. Or if you're pro, maybe you got these growing from seed indoors. Well done. Or if you just want to start with seed, I would go for calendula or chamomile. Both of those grow great from seed planted right in your beds right at the start of fall. Now fall is actually one of the best seasons to do more than just vegetable garden. It is the best time to plant up a native plant space. Native plants are my secret to protecting my garden from pests and I made a video all about it. So watch that one right here.

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