Why Fall Is Actually The Best Season To Garden (Don't Miss Out!)

If you think that summer is the only season that you can garden, you are missing out because there's another season that's easier, more productive, and dare I say, more fun. In today's video, I'm going to show you 5 reasons why fall, not summer, is the best season for anyone to garden no matter where you live, and I'll even give you a few steps so you can get started this fall. Reason number 1, temperatures are finally going down. I didn't know this when I first started to garden, but most plants in the vegetable garden, they actually don't like the weather being really hot. In fact, most of the foods that we buy at the grocery store in America, most of the things we're used to eating in our diet— tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, zucchini, beans, greens, root crops— they hate weather that's over 90 degrees. I didn't know this when I started gardening. I thought middle of the summer, that's when everything's thriving, but it's not true. So if you've been in a place where the temps are over 90 degrees, there's a reason why your garden has felt hard, why it's felt stressful and less productive. Those plants kind of turn off, especially if the evening temperatures After the sun sets, if that evening temp doesn't drop below 70, these plants, they stop producing, and they definitely stop fruiting and ripening. So as soon as those temps start to come down, where the evening temps drop below 70°F and where the high temperatures are more in the 80s, even the 70s, this is when your plants wake back up. Even plants that thrive and love summer weather, they're going to move into a new stage of production when the temps come down. These lower temperatures aren't just good for your plants, they're good for us too. I don't I don't know about you, but I just don't love heading out into the garden and sweating profusely just because I want to pick a few beans. Now, don't get me wrong, sometimes I do love a good detox. I'll head out in my workout clothes and just sweat it out for a couple of hours, but for the most part, it's just not as fun to garden when it's in the 90s. So as these temps come down, you're going to find yourself wanting to stay out in the garden longer, especially in the mornings and in the evenings, and more time in the garden means your garden is going to look better. So if you've been fighting your garden and feeling like, ah, it looks terrible, but the last thing I want to do is go out there. You're going to love the fall garden when those temps finally drop. Reason number 2 is the soil is the perfect temperature finally. In spring, we are waiting and waiting, waiting for the soil to warm up. It's frozen solid, and then it starts to warm a little bit, and then there's another frost, and it's so hard to get our seeds started because they're sitting in soil that continuously gets colder and then warmer and then colder again. So that's why the spring and the summer garden can feel like it takes forever to get our plants started, but the fall garden is the exact opposite. We're working with soil that is already warmed up. It's been sitting under the sun for months on end, so it is plenty warm, and you've already got plants growing in the garden that will provide a little bit of shade and cool down the soil where you're adding in your fall seeds and plants. So this soil is now the perfect temperature, and you're going to see that the things you plant in this soil at this time of year, they take off so much faster and so much more consistently. In fact, I just saw in my little salad garden, Yesterday that all these baby salad plants were growing. These are from seeds that dropped from old lettuce plants back from the spring, and all of a sudden the soil hit the right temperature, and all these little salad plants just started growing on their own. I'm telling you, if you've gotten frustrated waiting for seeds and plants to take off, you have to try to plant right now for the fall and see how fast everything starts to grow. Reason number 3, there are way less pests. From tiny little insects and bugs to the largest wildlife, almost all of nature does the majority of their eating during the summer season. It's literally built into the nature of all this wildlife to get as much nutrients, as much food as it possibly can in the middle of the summertime. So all the bugs and wildlife that have been feasting on your garden in the summer, they're going to drastically slow down as the weather changes and cools off, as there's less hours of sunlight every single day. So all those bugs you've been fighting from June to August, you can kind of calm down and not feel like you're at war every time you're out in the garden. Of Of course, there will always be pests and wildlife in the garden, but they're just so much less in the fall. If you want to add some extra protection to your garden, even in the fall season, I made a video that shows you some key plants that I put in every single garden that give me free pest control, and you can watch that video after this one. I'll link it right below. Reason number 4 is gardening gets easier in the fall. First step is watering. Now, when you put your fall plants into the garden, especially if you plant by seed, which a lot of fall plants need to go in by seed— we'll talk about that in step number 5— when you plant those Seeds and your plants, you do need to water every single day for at least 2 weeks until you see those seeds germinate, until you see the plant take root and get settled. You will need to water consistently for the first 2 weeks, but after that, watering gets so much easier. Unlike the summer garden, where it matters most what you do right in the middle of the summer or everything just dies because it's so hot and dry, in the fall, you're going to have a much lower evaporation rate, which determines how much you have to water. Evaporation rate is just the rate at which water That's in the air is getting drawn up and away from your garden, and that happens so much faster in the summer, and in the fall, it slows down as those temps go down and the sunlight hours go down. So the soil, once you water it, it's going to hold on to water longer than it did in the summer, which means you just water, get those seeds and plants established, and then we're looking at maybe one good watering session a week, and your plants should still produce for you without a lot of care. Weeding is also so much easier in this season. One, because things aren't growing as wildly as they do in the summer, you're not going You're not gonna have as many windborne, airborne weed seeds coming into your garden space, so that cuts down. But then also the things that you can fill your garden with vastly multiply in the fall garden season. You can now plant almost all kinds of root crops and leafy greens. We'll talk about these in the next step, but these all fill in the blanks perfectly in the garden. All these little understory areas under your plants where weeds tend to grow, instead you can grow fall plants by seed. They'll fill in the blanks. They'll keep the weeds out. they'll give you something to eat in return. And that brings us to reason number 5. Before we get to point number 5, if you want to start your fall garden, I have a 5-day challenge called the Fall Garden Challenge. I'm going to link it right below. This will walk you through everything you need to do to understand your climate and what will work in your garden and even come away with a planting plan for your fall garden. So I'll link that right below this video. Now, the 5th reason is that fall garden plants They're better, and I'm going to tell you why. The things that we grow when the temperatures come down, when you're going into the cool season, you have plants that, number one, they grow faster. All the plants I'm going to tell you about in a second, they are ready to harvest within 60 to 70 days max. Summer plants, some of those take 100 to 150 days before you get to harvest anything, and these go from seed to harvest in 50 to 60 days. These plants know intuitively They only grow in the cool parts of the year, so they have literally set themselves up to finish up faster because they know either cold weather or hot weather is coming. The seeds, they're smart. They know what they're doing, so they're going to be faster to harvest. So if you're an impatient gardener, then you're going to love these. Next up, they're also smaller. So almost all these plants, from all the ones I'm going to talk about, these are more compact plants. You see these tomatoes, these cucumbers? They're wild, they're crazy, they're huge. They have to have a lot of space and sun and time. Small plants, cool season plants, they're smaller. They're going to take up a 4th of a square foot, a 9th of a square foot, a 16th of a square foot, and still give you a harvest. So if you're working in a smaller space or you're just kind of tired of pacing a big garden, you can plant tons of things in a very small space. And next, they're just easier to take care of. Most of these plants, they just get planted by seed, watered, and then harvested. Some of these might need a little bit of pruning or support, but for the most part, it's plant, water, harvest. Couldn't be simpler. So here are some of my favorite seeds that I plant as soon as the temps are coming down. First, I'm going to do leafy greens. I love this spring mix. I love spinach, so good for you through the winter, and arugula. All 3 of these greens are perfect for a cool season fall garden. Then I love to add root crops beside them. Radishes and carrots are 2 of my favorites. You can't find a faster-producing plant than these radishes. And then if I'm growing up a trellis or if I want something fruiting, I also grow sugar snap peas. These are also so delicious. So good for you and so fast. These actually are all inside of our free seed set, so I'll link that right below this video. Now, I made a whole start-to-finish guide on how to grow spinach, which is one of the best things to grow in the middle of the cool season. Believe it or not, all these plants that thrive when it's cool, they actually add to our health as we grow and eat them. They're all built in with antioxidants and vitamins that actually support our health as we move into cold and flu season. I don't know, it's almost like nature knows what it's doing or something. So I've got a full guide to help you learn how to grow spinach, and you can watch it right here.