One of the best seasons for gardening is right around the corner. Cooler weather, dwindling insect population and fall rains make for great gardens.

Vegetables such as tomato, cabbage, beans or greens, maturing in cooler weather, will be sweeter and better tasting. Now is the time to prepare for a fall vegetable garden.

You may be surprised by how many vegetables can be grown in fall. Bush green bean seeds planted now should be on your table in October and November.

Master Gardener Carol Wood harvests the summer’s crops in her garden as she gets ready to grow fall vegetables in cooler temperatures and with fewer insects.
Duane A. Laverty/Tribune-Herald

Blue Lake, Contender, and Tendercrop are varieties that do well here. Bush varieties usually mature in eight weeks.

But make sure you allow a little extra time for fall vegetables to mature just in case of an unexpected early frost.

Since green beans produce their own nitrogen, be careful not to over fertilize, which will result in lovely plants and no beans. They will respond to a light application of fertilizer when they are about six to eight inches tall.

In general, beans need half as much fertilizer as all other garden vegetables.

Mustard, kale, turnips, collards and carrots planted now should be ready to eat in November. By harvesting only the outside leaves of the leafy vegetables, you will have fresh wonderful-tasting greens till spring.

Collards are a favorite at our house. Last winter, we had enough collards to share and freeze for summer eating. The recipients say these were the best collards they had ever eaten.

Spinach was another success in my small garden. Having had germination problems in the past, I soaked the seeds for an hour before planting, which improved germination tremendously. I enjoy the crinkly leafed spinach.

My neighbor, Ila Jean Carothers, prefers the flat leaf spinach which outgrows mine each year. Plant the seeds in moist soil and cover with compost or potting soil that will not crust over. (Seedlings have difficulty breaking through a hard soil crust.)

As it cools in September, add beets, radishes , spinach, and cucumbers to your garden. Leafy vegetables can be planted thru November. English peas for spring harvest may be planted in November or December.

One of my favorite fall vegetables, broccoli, will be available as transplants in the fall. Packman and Green Comet varieties do well here. Homegrown broccoli and store-bought are two different vegetables at our house.

If you grow a couple of plants this year, you will grow many more next year.

Remember to mix in a layer of compost before planting. The compost loosens clay and holds water in sandy soils. Compost also slowly breaks down and becomes a nutrient source for the plants.

Spinach and other leafy vegetables can be planted in Central Texas gardens into November.
Ila Jean Carothers photo

A good rule of thumb is to never plant anything without adding a bit of compost. Your plants will reward you with improved growth, better yields and improved quality.

Young seedlings should be thinned a week or two after germination. As hard as it feels to remove healthy seedlings from a garden, your plants will benefit because they need air and space for the roots to expand.

Radishes must be thinned within two or three days. The radish, which can mature in a month, grows quickly and will just stop expanding if another radish is too close. (Sow a week’s worth of radishes each week. They all mature at the same time.)

The first time I planted carrots, I could not bear to thin them and harvested pencil-thin slivers. Last January, I planted two varieties — Danvers half long and Nates Coreless, which do well here.

According to the planting guides, carrots can be planted from November to February.  They did not come up until March. It must have been too cold for them.

Strangely, I pulled large tasty carrots in June. This fall, I will plant them in November and hope for carrots about 70 days later.

If you live in an apartment, try a few vegetables in large pots on your balcony or patio. Just be sure they get lots of sunlight. Lettuce will grow well with less sun than the other winter vegetables. Make sure you have good drainage and use potting soil in the pots. Our natural soil would not drain well in pots.

Carol Wood is a McLennan County Master Gardener and vegetable specialist.

Central Texas planting guide

Reprinted with permission of the publisher from the July/August 2010 issue of Texas Gardener magazine. © Suntex Communications, 2010.