This is the time of year to get back out into the garden!

Mrs. Survival Gardener and I tore out our snake bean bed on Sunday afternoon (it isn’t work for us… it’s a Sabbath break from real life!), along with some sweet potatoes, and got to work on our fall gardening.

Winter is a wonderful time to plant greens. Here are my favorites for the cool months ahead:

Lettuce
Turnips
Mustard
Collards
Kale
Ethiopian Kale

For winter root crops, I love to grow beets; however, they consistently do poorly for me. With that in mind, I plant them again and again, hoping for better results… but I don’t count on them. Garlic has done marginally for me as well. I need to try some new cultivars.

Here are the crops I know I can count on:

Turnips
Radishes
Carrots

That’s about it. For delectable winter goodies for the table, here are the vegetables we like to plant:

Broccoli
Cauliflower
Cabbage (red and green)
Peas
Kohlrabi
Green onions
Chives

If we have beds that are just sitting around waiting for something better – or if they’ve done poorly and need a good kick in the seat of their sandy pants, we plant these guys:

Fava beans
Peas
Lentils
Mustard (for kicking out nematodes)
Buckwheat (which expires with the frost but likes the cool before then)
Chick peas
Rye
Wheat

You can turn most of those under to add fertility or just cut them down for the compost pile. In the case of the small nitrogen-fixers like lentils, chick peas and peas, I’ve also cut them back and planted other crops right in the middle.

This is also the season to start planting sugarcane for next year’s crop.

Finally, the fall is a good time to plant fruit trees and shrubs that are cold-tolerant. Persimmons, mulberries, peaches, pears, goumi berries, blueberries, blackberries, etc.: they love getting in the ground in fall then bursting into new growth in the spring.

So… what are you waiting for? Get out there and get planting your Florida fall garden!

My beautiful Florida fall garden. Broccoli, lettuce, turnips and more!