Fall Garden Challenge Day 4

Welcome back to Fall Garden Challenge day number four. It is time to go shopping. Yes, you heard that right. You finally have an excuse to go buy some plants. Actually, you could buy plants, but first we're going to buy seeds. So we've made our planting plan. We know the plants that we're prioritizing for the fall garden. So it's time to order seeds for those plants and the sooner, the better. So what you want to do is if you're growing leaves or roots, you're going to order seeds for those plants, leaves and roots. Unless you're growing something like potatoes, you're going to need to order some seed potatoes. Perhaps if you're doing some garlic, you're going to need to order some garlic cloves or garlic bulbs, but everything else that's a leaf or a root, we need to order seeds. Now, if you've got fruit on your planting plans, then you're only going to order seeds for the plants that are either cucumber, squash, zucchini, or beans. They either are in the bean family or the gourd family. All the other plants that are fruiting plants in the warm season, i.e. tomatoes, peppers, those you want to buy plants, not seeds. Fast forward over to the cool season plants. Again, we're going to order all the seeds we need for leaves and roots. So all of our leafy greens, our root crops like carrots, radishes, and beets, those are all going to be seeds that we order. But for the large, for the fruiting plants, we are only going to order seeds for the peas. Peas, snow peas, fava beans, anything in the bean family we'll order seeds for, but things like kale, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, any of those types of fruiting plants, we're going to buy plants for them instead. So why the discretion between buying seeds versus buying plants? Well, it's because of the duration, how long these things take, right? You learned in day two that the fruits are going to take 90 days or more. And so for most of us, we need a jumpstart with a plant directly in the garden so that each of those fruiting plants has the full 90 days in the garden to get to its fruiting place. Otherwise, if we start directly with a seed in the garden of broccoli or cauliflower, by the time it finally sprouts and starts to grow into a plant, the cool season may be over. All right? So you're going to order seeds for your leaves and roots, and then only for a few of your fruits, either in the bean family or in the warm season, it will also include the cucumber family, like cucumber, squash, and zucchini. So it is time for you to do a little bit of shopping today. Don't overdo it. You really only need one seed packet per plant that you've prioritized in your fall garden. But you want to go ahead and get those supplies to you so that you can get ready to plant in the coming days. All right, thanks so much for joining day number four. I'll see you tomorrow for day five.