With a little planning, you can not only enjoy fresh vegetables before Thanksgiving, but the cooler growing season allows you to grow varieties that you wouldn’t normally grow in the summer.

The key to a great fall harvest is to plan early, select cool season vegetables that take only 60-90 days to reach maturity and sow seeds from August to early September. The fall growing season will allow you to select from great tasting varieties such as broccoli, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, celery, greens, kale, lettuce, and some summer squash such as zucchini.

These types of vegetable plants will thrive until soil temperatures fall consistently below 55 degrees, which usually does not happen until late October to early November, at which point the plants will stop growing and any ripe fruit should be picked off before colder temps damage them.

If you want to extend your season even further consider covering your vegetable garden with a homemade hoop house covered with thick transparent plastic. This will allow the sunlight to heat up the garden during the day and slowly cool down at night, helping to avoid extreme temperature fluctuations which could take place in late fall.

Remember, for the best tasting vegetables feed once a month with an organic vegetable food and only water when the top of the soil dries out. Then sit back, relax and wait until those great tasting home-grown vegetables can be enjoyed at the dinner table!