How to Extend Your Garden’s Growing Season

Does the first frost always seem to come too soon? For many gardeners, it’s hard to see those last tomatoes succumb to frost when they would have ripened in a few days, or those peppers that needed just a week or two more to produce another crop. The good news is, you can extend your garden’s productivity – besides protecting your existing plants, you can plant crops in late summer and fall to harvest into cold weather.

Here are some ideas on how to extend your garden’s growing season.

Individual Greenhouses

It’s impractical to build a greenhouse over your entire garden each fall! But you can create a greenhouse effect for your individual plants. What’s more, you can use inexpensive items or objects that are found around the house (or someone else’s house if you need to borrow some!). Here are two approaches, one more of a quick-fix approach and the other more elaborate.

1. Clear plastic bags make great covers for tomato plants. Don’t put them on in the daytime, or you might cook your plants on a warm autumn day. But in the evening, if frost is predicted, throw clear garbage bags over the plants (you can use white or black garbage bags in a pinch, but you’ll have to remove them early in the day so light can get to your plants). The stakes or cages will hold the bags up.

Remove the clear bags when things have warmed up a bit, and if it stays cold, leave the bags in place and ventilate them periodically.

Smaller plants can be protected with clear 2-liter bottles cut in half, or with the bottom cut off if the plant is a bit taller. You could also use milk jugs.

2. You can make a plastic tunnel over your garden rows using plastic sheeting and plastic hula hoops. Take advantage of those fall sales when summer toys like hula hoops go on sale. Cut the hula hoops in half and stick them into the ground, curved-side-up, at intervals down your garden rows. Then lay plastic over the hoops and weigh it down with bricks, rocks, or logs. For tall plants like tomatoes, you can use PVC piping to create a taller, square frame along your tomato rows and cover with plastic.

Fall Crops

You can plant kale and cabbage in the fall for a winter harvest. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower can also be sown in late summer for a harvest in fall. That’s not all – radishes and spinach can also be sown in late summer for a late fall harvest.

Shrubs, Plants, and Flowers

Now is a great time to take cuttings and replant some things. Take cuttings from basil and root them indoors, then grow the basil in pots indoors all winter. Then you can move the pot outdoors when it gets warm, or plant the basil out in the garden again. You can also take cuttings from the indoor plant in late winter and plant the seedlings out in the garden when the weather warms up. Almost all members of the mint family can be extended this way.