Group,
I live in zone 6, eastern PA. I am a newbie for gardening.
I just got a piece of small community garden and I am learning to garden. Now that it is late august, what should I plant? I do not have any preference, only something that can get my foot wet, something that can survive the winter or can harvest before frost kills them.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Plant cool season leafy root vegetables: Carrots, Beets, Turnips, Lettuce, Chard, Radishes and Spinach.
Sow hardy annuals: Sweet Alyssum, Calendula, Annual Pinks, Snapdragon, and Sweet Peas. HTH
In supermarkets & restaurants, they charge insane prices for gourmet salad greens. You're lucky enough to be in a place where you can grow all of them until late October, or even into November if you take measures to protect them from frost. Lettuce, swiss chard, arugula, spinach, frisé, escarole. Dandelion greens are also delicious when they grow in cool weather. Also, it's time to plant collard greens and broccoli raab. It's also worth planting a late bunch of cucumbers. The ones planted in mid to late May are usually pretty tired by now, or dead. Stick a few seeds in the ground. Some years, you can be eating fresh cucumbers into late October. They need heat to sprout, but not necessarily to succeed for the remaining 98% of their existence.
Kale. Russian Red Kale is delicious and you can kick the snow off of it and harvest it. Young kale = salad greens. Older kale = soup.
Broccoli. Buy starts and plant them right away. Or plant seeds. The fast broccoli is 45 days and it's frost-resistant.
Beets. A 60 day crop. Cold weather doesn't bother them. Make pickled beets or Haaaavad Beets. Eat the greens. They're good.
You'd probably be surprised how much stuff you can grow in Zone 6 in the winter. Talk to other gardeners in your area. Little hoop houses over the garden beds can grow a shitload of food, if you start stuff now, while the soil is still warm.
Jan USDA Zone 3 (Alaska)
If you make tight walls of fallen leaves on either side of the kale in late fall, right up against the plants, it will survive, growing more slowly, until December or sometimes much later, even if it snows. Same with collards. I can't for the life of me figure out why they were considered just a Southern food many years ago. They laugh at snow. Mine survive all winter in zone 5, upstate NY. Kale & collards are delicious when picked in cold weather.
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