This Is Why Fall Gardens FAIL [And How To FIX It For AMAZING Results!]

What's growing on, gardeners? Today is September 1st, the first day of meteorological fall, and it is the official start date of fall gardening season, what I believe is the best season of the year to grow a vegetable garden. However, many new gardeners unfortunately fail at their first few attempts at growing a fall garden. That's because fall gardens play by a completely different set of rules, and if you don't follow those rules, you likely will arrive at disaster. So on this video, I'm going to explain to you exactly why gardeners fail at growing a fall garden, and how to fix it. If you're new to the channel, please subscribe, hit the bell for notifications, and check out my Amazon store and Spreadshop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom apparel and gear. So why is fall the best time of year to garden? Well after a long hot summer, a lot of us are burnt out from the extreme heat, the humidity, the drought, the torrential thunderstorms. We are just tired of the miserable conditions, and temperatures finally start coming back down and we stop sweating. In addition, not only does the heat stress go away, and we don't have to water nearly as much, but the insect pests start going away as well. It's a lot like the conditions of spring, without the erratic temperature swings and the severe weather. So it's just like gardening in spring, but with much calmer, more favorable conditions. However, there is one massive pitfall that you must understand when it comes to fall gardening, and it is the problem that trips up so many new gardeners. While fall is similar to spring in many ways, in one way, they are completely opposite. You see, in spring, the hemisphere of the earth that you live on is gradually tilting towards the sun, so days become ever longer and temperatures increase over time. So after you sow that seed or that transplant in spring, you're actually getting longer days and warmer temperatures progressively, so the growth rate of the plants are going to speed up as time goes on. When you sow seeds and transplant in late summer, early fall, the exact opposite thing is happening. The hemisphere of earth that you live in is tilting away from the sun, so temperatures are progressively getting cooler and the day length is progressively getting shorter. So as those plants grow, they are getting less and less energy from the sun. So for that reason, the growth mechanics of plants get flipped 180 degrees on their heads. So when growing a fall garden, you are working against the calendar instead of with it, and this is the source of almost all of our problems and why we fail at fall gardens. So that being said, the number one reason why your fall garden fails is because you are not thinking six to eight weeks in the future. Yes, today is September 1st, according to the calendar, but according to your vegetable garden, today is somewhere between October 15th and November 1st. That is because from the day you sow a seed in a transplant tray, it takes one to two weeks to germinate, where basically nothing happens at all, and then another three to six weeks for those transplants to turn large enough that you can actually transplant them out into your garden. So there's basically a six to eight week period that is lost. So if you're doing the thing that many gardeners do, which is actually wait for temperatures to cool down before you start any of your fall seeds, it is already six to eight weeks too late. Reason number two why gardeners are failing at growing a fall garden is they are not using transplants to their advantage. You have to use transplants to your advantage in a fall garden just like you do in a spring garden. Just like in the spring, we start our seeds indoors in the winter. That way we can carry out six to eight week old transplants and put them out at our last frost date to get a jumpstart on the season. You have to think the same in terms of a fall garden. You have to start your transplants indoors while it is still way too hot outside to get a six to eight week jumpstart on the season and then transplant them out into your garden when fall temperatures are here. I live on the southeastern coast of North Carolina, zone 8B, and it's still going to be hot for quite some time here. In fact, as I'm filming this, it's 93 degrees and sunny right now, and I have to film this video in spurts because due to how hot and sunny it is, my camera will keep overheating if I don't bring it inside about every 15 to 20 minutes because it's so darn hot out. Yes, a cloud over the sun, finally. Thank you. I could swear it just dropped about 20 degrees because a cloud went over top the sun. So many gardeners fall into this trap that because it is still way too hot right now to plant seeds out into our garden for fall, they won't start them yet. So I am going to adopt a winter-like mindset for starting my transplants. Today, it is way too hot in my garden to start transplants directly in the soil. So I'm going to take transplant trays and I am going to sow seeds in them. I'm going to plant some lettuce, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and other things that do well as transplants in this tray. And I'm going to start it indoors under grow lights in my office. If you don't have grow lights, you can use a very sunny windowsill. And then in six weeks, there will be nice-sized transplants so I can transplant them out into my garden when temperatures are appropriate. And that is going to give me a huge jumpstart on the season. September 1st may be way too hot for me to grow these things out in my garden, but October 15th will be just perfect. So instead of starting from seed on October 15th, I'll have nice, big, six-inch-tall transplants that I will be able to put in my garden. And that is going to give me a jumpstart on the year so then my plants don't stall out on me at the end of November, beginning middle of December, when the days contract too much and the solar energy is in short supply. Because that will happen if you wait too long to plant out your fall garden. You will run out of growing season. Reason number three why gardeners are failing at growing a fall garden is you are letting nature beat you. You see, we have tools as gardeners that we use for figuring out when we should plant our plants. We have things like average temperature data, first and last average frost dates. But what happens if we don't have an average year? What happens if summer drags on longer than average and it's hotter than usual into fall and that delays our planting? What happens if our first frost comes earlier than average by a few weeks and it threatens our entire growing season? Well, we don't have to be at the mercy of nature. We can modify our climate so we don't have to worry about things like summers that drag on longer than usual or early frosts coming in and ruining our harvest. We can beat them. One way I beat the heat is by installing shade cloth overhead my garden. You see, it is way too hot to grow many things in my garden right now. Even your standard summer vegetables like tomatoes and peppers, I have to put shade cloth overhead in order to cool things down. So, it is so much nicer under here it's not even funny. If you are having an issue with summer heat that drags well into fall and it's threatening your fall garden, just put shade cloth up ahead and it will take the additional heat out of the equation. This is also how I get a big jump start on the fall gardening season for vegetables that cannot be grown or should not be grown from transplants. Things like root vegetables like your carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, radishes. These things should only be direct sown because if you try to grow them as transplants, the roots come out either deformed or you get a high percentage of loss in the transplanting process. So, here I have a bed of beets that I was able to direct sow. I planted these last week and they are already up. If my soil was beating in the sun, I would not have been able to start these from transplants because the soil would have been too hot for germination. But because this whole area is under shade cloth, these beets are thriving where they otherwise wouldn't be. And if you're thinking you don't have a means or ways to install shade cloth overhead using a cable system like I have in my garden, you can just easily build a simple hoop structure over your raised bed or your garden rows using simple PVC pipe from either the plumbing aisle or the electrical aisle at Home Depot. That's all I did here. I have these little hoops built over a lot of my raised garden beds. I will link to a video above that will show you how to build one. You can assemble one of these easily in only about 30 minutes. And what's nice about it is you can swap out the covers depending on the season. So right now it's the summer. I have shade cloth mounted overhead, so I have insect netting protecting the carrots and zucchini and cucumbers and basil underneath this raised garden bed. When I remove the shade cloth that's strung overhead my garden, if I still need to provide shade protection for the plants in here, I can just get a smaller shade cloth and install it over the hoop structure. Then, if I no longer need the shade, I can allow the plants to grow unprotected throughout the fall. And if I were to get an early frost, I could just place some frost fabric over here. Some light agricultural fabric will protect the plants underneath and that can extend my growing season for weeks longer. So you can use these all-purpose structures and change out the material that you are using to protect your plants depending on the season. So you don't have to have your gardening season ruined by an early frost either. You can cover your structures and you can beat the early frost. You can extend your growing season for weeks, sometimes even months, because a lot of these cold hardy vegetables, if they don't have the hard frosts form on them, even if it gets very cold, they can tolerate lower and lower temperatures. So a lot of times it's the frost formation that causes the damage. If you can simply keep the frost off, even if you're still getting freezing temperatures, a lot of these cold hardy root vegetables and leafy greens can grow well into the winter with a simple agricultural fabric protecting the vegetables. Reason number four why your fall garden is failing is that you are not growing the right varieties of plants for the time of year. Over generations, humans have taken single species plants and they have bred them to have different tolerances to heat and cold. So it is possible that you are growing a variety of plant that isn't going to thrive in your unique climate. For example, we tend to think of lettuce as a cool season frost tolerant crop, but actually there is a tremendous amount of variance in temperature tolerances between different varieties of lettuce. For example, something like this Giant Caesar Romaine, well your green Romaine types actually tend to like warmer weather. They like temperatures in the 70s and the low 80s and actually they are not very frost hardy. If this Romaine variety was to get hit by a frost, it would probably get damaged. Meanwhile, something like this Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, this is a ruffled, rippled red leaf lettuce. This is extremely cold hardy and when it gets into the 70s and 80s during the day, the lettuce actually can bolt and become very bitter. So variety selection does matter. I am going to start this Romaine variety indoors right now because I need to get this out into my garden in early October because I need to start harvesting this before the frosts and freezes start in the middle of November. But something like this Marvel of Four Seasons lettuce, it is way too early for me to plant this right now. I need to direct sow this in late October, early November when the soil becomes really, really cool because this is something I can grow in Zone 8 all winter long. And this is not true just for lettuce. Something like this Sun King variety of broccoli was specifically bred to grow in the spring time because sometimes you get those stretches of warm weather in the spring and that can ruin your broccoli heads. Well, this was made to try and resist those intermittent stretches of warm weather in the spring. But this may not be a good variety for you to grow in the fall if it's getting really cold out. Something like this Snow Crown cauliflower was specifically bred to head very quickly and make small heads in the low light, lower temperature conditions of the fall and early winter. So this may be a really good variety for you to grow in the fall, but it may not do so well in the spring when it gets really warm, really fast. So again, variety selection matters. Make sure that you choose varieties that were bred for the unique conditions of your fall. And also keep in mind that you folks in Seattle are going to have very different falls than the folks in Orlando. So make sure that you pick the right varieties for your unique climate, read them, make sure that what they were bred for makes sense for your weather patterns. And reason number 5 why your fall garden is failing is often overlooked, but it is honestly one of the most critical things. And that is you are simply running out of intense daylight. In the fall, the sun is becoming weaker and the days are becoming shorter. So even if you don't have persistently cold temperatures and your climate is fairly mild, you may not have the solar intensity necessary for your vegetables to grow and they may stall out on you if you didn't plant them early enough before they hit maturity. Now for example, I live in southeastern North Carolina, zone 8B. So I am at a very similar hardiness zone to Seattle and Portland in the Pacific Northwest because we have very similar annual minimum temperatures. However, our sunlight is completely different. In December and January, I get a UV index of about 3 here and I still get about 10 to 11 hours of daylight throughout the December-January time period. But if you're up at a very high latitude in the Pacific Northwest, you may have days that are only 8 to 9 hours long and you may get a lot of overcast skies and UV indexes of 0 and 1. And the solar energy just isn't there for anything to grow. So if you did not plant things out into your garden early enough, you may be out of luck and they may sit there pretty much not moving for months until the day length increases once again. The other thing that you need to understand is that the days to maturity on seed packets usually assume spring planting. So this carrot right here says 75 days to maturity. Well, that may hold true in the spring, but it may not hold true in the fall because again, the sun is getting too weak. So if you ran out of time to plant these, there may be a long period of time where the carrots just sit and don't grow and do absolutely nothing for weeks or months if your day length is too short. So it's really important that you select the right varieties and you plant them early enough if you live in a location where the sun is so weak that nothing is really going to grow. So again, plant selection and variety selection means everything. Do you have the conditions in your falls and winters to grow a 110 days to maturity Brussels sprout variety? If you don't, you want to grow varieties in your garden that have very low light requirements. Something like arugula can grow indoors under fluorescent lighting or on a sunny windowsill. So something cold hardy like this can do well out in your garden. Something like a radish. This only takes 25 days to maturity, so they have a very low requirement for strong sunlight. This can produce bulbs for you even in short season climates that get very little light. Maybe you need a very small headed cauliflower variety like this that only takes 50 to 60 days to maturity. So again, know that the calendar is working against you in fall. Make sure you plant things out probably earlier than you think you need. And you know what? It's better to get a jump start on the season and be too early and cover things with shade cloth like I am to get them through the hot days to guarantee that you will actually have a harvest. Because what you can do if you live in a location that's a high latitude and things tend to pause and sit still in the winters, you can treat your garden like a giant refrigerator of sorts. So if you can get cold hardy things like collards and leeks and bunching onions and carrots roughly to maturity before the day length gets too short and you get that pause, well these are very cold hardy things once they reach maturity. So they can kind of sit in stasis and not get any bigger. And then you can just use your garden like a root cellar or a refrigerator and then come outside and then harvest those things once they reach maturity. Some of them can even survive in snowpack. So cold temperatures aren't necessarily a big deal as long as you got your plants to maturity and then you can just come and harvest them at your leisure as long as you don't get so ridiculously cold that it could even kill a mature carrot or collard or something like that when you get those below zero temperatures. And that right there are the key reasons why gardeners fail at growing a fall garden and how to fix it. Almost all of the problems that we have with fall gardening has to do with either mistiming our plants or growing the wrong plants for the time of year. So if we just sit back and we think about how the calendar and the sun work against us instead of with us with the fall, it all becomes clear and then we can make smart decisions and make sure that we can pair the appropriate species and varieties to our unique conditions in our unique climate. So everybody, I sure hope you found this video helpful. If you did, please make sure to hit that like button, subscribe to the channel, and please ring that notification bell if you want to be notified when I release more videos like these. If you're curious about any of the products that I featured in this video, like the shade cloth or the insect netting or the agricultural fabric, I will place direct links to all of them down in the video description for your convenience. For everything I use in real life in my garden, all the products are linked in my Amazon storefront. So expand the video description, click on the Amazon storefront link and you'll see everything I use in real life. And while you're down there, please check out my spreadshop for custom merch if you want to support the channel. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next video. Well, I've been watering the potted plants for a while and Dale wants a little water fountain. He loves drinking from the hose. I don't usually like letting him do it, but because we've been running the hose for about 10 minutes, it's nice and cleared out. So the water is pretty fresh. It hasn't been sitting in the hose and Dale just loves it. It's so cute to watch him do this. He loves getting his thirsties from the hose. It's so funny with Dale. If you put out a bowl of water that's room temperature, he won't touch it. He always wants fresh water with ice cubes in it indoors or he likes drinking the cold water from the hose. It has to be as cold as possible for Dale to want it. It's the cutest thing. Slow down there, buddy. You're enjoying it a little bit too much.