This week, let’s take a different approach and talk about things to plant now and through the late fall to get a jump on the spring harvest or even harvest in the summer.

The timing of these plantings is going to vary by the region you garden in but the concepts are the same. Plant something now and let it get well-rooted, allow it to go dormant, then as the daylength increases in the spring watch it bounce back up with growth as soon as the conditions are right with no effort on our part in the spring.

This does a couple of things for us: allows us to put our early spring gardening hours elsewhere, often toward crops that need a little extra effort anyway, and gives us an even earlier harvest than we would typically see if we usually need to wait for the ground to thaw or warm up before working in our garden beds. Many of these things are particularly important for those of us in temperate or cold-weather climates but gardeners in warmer zones can take advantage of this, too, depending on the crop.

On today’s episode of Just Grow Something we’ll talk garlic, onions, root veggies, sprouting broccoli or broccoli raab, cold-hardy greens, and more that you can set and forget for a harvest next year. Let’s dig in!

Resources and References:

Ep. 40 - Growing Garlic

Ep. 67 - When and How to Plant Your Garlic, Plus Tips for Warmer Climates

Ep. 114 - Planting Onions to Overwinter

Ep. 133 - Growing Onions

Ep. 118 - Cover Crops in the Home Garden

Untreated Onion Sets | Sprout Mountain Farms

Soil Temparature Maps | GreenCast

Taylor Soil Thermometer

Truly Garden Cover Crop Seed Mix

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