If you’re in any doubt as to whether or not to keep growing and plant out more veggies this month, then here are three things that might persuade you.
- An ongoing supply of winter greens – nearly all the veggies that you can plant in autumn crop well over several weeks or even months, meaning you’ll get a lot of food from each plant. Once they reach a sensible size, you can expect to pick Spinach, Chard and Kale leaves right through till next summer, for example. Most of the salad leaves, like Mizuna, Rocket, Frills Mustard and Landcress can be treated as cut and come again and should keep you going through to early/mid spring. Pak Choi can be cut and come again as well, and you can expect broccoli to sprout for several weeks in early spring.
- Great planting conditions this year – after such a hot summer, there is plenty of warmth in the soil, and we’ve had some heavy rainfall now so the plants will have more than enough moisture. The warmth and the gentle night temperatures should be great for plug plants that are going in the ground now, and we’d expect them to grow a little faster than normal.
- Autumn growing requires minimal effort – we say this because often the thing that puts people off growing in autumn and winter is the idea of trying to find time during daylight hours to tend to the vegetable garden. However, this isn’t really necessary – there is rarely need to water the vegetables, most weeds die back for winter anyway so there is less weeding to be done, and there are far fewer pests to worry about. If you can get some mesh netting to cover brassicas, and put down some slug deterrent when you plant, you’ll find that you can easily look after your plot with just an hour here and there over weekends.
