The 5 Best Crops to Plant around Labor Day for a Great Fall Garden

Late summer is here and most people are away on vacation, enjoying the sun and hopefully some wonderful local produce at restaurants and farmstands!

Labor Day brings us all back to reality, though as a parent I’m sure we all know that sometimes routine with our kids is actually a relief for all involved!

It’s also time to get back in the saddle in your veggie garden! It is time to clear out the weeds and some of the crops that did not do too well while we were away (wilted squash perhaps?), and plan for a rocking fall garden!

In fall, daylight hours decrease as well as the sun’s intensity, because it is lower in the sky. Temperatures also start to dip – at first just the nighttime temps, and then daytime. This means that the growth of your veggie garden will start to slow down a lot!

But that doesn’t mean that you need to stop enjoying harvests! Plant these crops around Labor Day to keep enjoying your garden up until Thanksgiving! Need plants? Email us at info@homefrontfarmers.com!

1. Lettuce: Stock up on lettuce – plant into any nook and cranny that you can! Lettuce planted around Labor Day will mature well into October and hold in your garden into November! The key is to plant a lot – more than you ever would in spring – in order to have enough!  A good rule of thumb is to plant 2 to 3 times as much lettuce in fall as you would in the spring.
2. Bok choy: Bok choy grows very quickly, and will give you a great yield in the fall! You can plant from seed or transplant. 
3. Cilantro and dill: Cilantro and dill are two crops that can be quick to go to seed in spring. They flower quickly in the heat. But Labor Day is the perfect time to plant them again, so they can enjoy the cool weather of fall! Bonus: they do not go to seed when planted in fall, and cilantro can even winter over to give an extra early spring harvest!
4. Spinach: Spinach loves cool weather and can actually overwinter quite well without any cover at all if you plant in the fall. Plant in September so that it can get rooted well. Harvest when you’d like in October and November, but don’t pull the roots out! Leave them in the ground over the winter and you will be welcomed with a nice harvest the following April!
5. Arugula: If your arugula went to seed too quickly this summer, September is the perfect time to plant it! Direct seed arugula around Labor Day and you will have a nice stand of it by October – and you may even be able to get a couple of harvests out of it!