Full List of Seeds to Sow for Your Fall Vegetable Garden

Extend the season by growing a fall vegetable garden! Use this list of quick-growing vegetables to have harvests right through November. Includes peas, root veggies, salad greens, Asian greens, and information on sowing times and days to maturity.

We’re in the middle of glut season. Baskets of tomatoes, trugs of zucchini, and more lettuce than we could possibly eat. It may be far from our minds, but within weeks, our veg will begin dying down, and patches of once productive garden space will be empty. If you plan, it’s possible to keep the homegrown food coming right through the cooler days of autumn. The fare will change, and in some cases, the growing technique, but with a little forethought, you can extend the season into autumn and beyond. It’s not too late for a fall vegetable garden.

Use the guide below to help you to choose the right veg to grow and when to start it from seed. Put in a little time now for seed sowing, and you’ll reap the rewards later when many other vegetable gardens are bare!

What to Plant in Your Fall Vegetable Garden

If you think back on when you started some of your summer crops, it might have been months ago. Pumpkins, squash, corn — many of these vegetables need many months to mature. In a fall vegetable garden, you’ve got a lot less time for things to grow before the cold starts setting in. That means you must focus on crops that grow relatively quickly and in mild conditions. As summer wanes into September and October, nights can get chilly, so you need to grow hardy plants that might not mind those conditions as much.

Below are some vegetables you can grow in your fall vegetable garden. They include a lot of leafy greens like spinach and chard, but Asian vegetables, too. You may also be able to squeeze in a last crop of peas, especially if you choose a dwarf variety, and quite a few other crops, too! Some, like kale and lamb’s lettuce, can even stand through frost and cold. Their growth will slow down, but they’ll still give you greens long after other veg have disappeared from your beds.

• Arugula is also known as rocket. This peppery leaf is easy to grow and can be used in dishes ranging from salads to rice to pizza toppings. 45-60 days to maturity.
• Beets for Roots and Greens Beets thrive in cooler temperatures and will grow to maturity in about 50-60 days. However, you can also grow beets for their delicious greens and can begin harvesting them much sooner. The leaves are similar in taste but earthier than Swiss Chard. You can eat them as baby leaves or wait until they’re more mature to harvest. 21-42 days to maturity
• Bok choi / Chinese Cabbage A mild flavored crisp vegetable that can be used both raw and cooked. Though each plant needs about a foot to mature into full size, you can grow ‘baby’ leaves in pots and containers. 25-30 days to maturity.
• Cabbage There are varieties of cabbage that naturally mature in both autumn and winter. Sow well in advance since it takes 50-90 days for them to reach maturity.
• Cilantro / Coriander Cilantro is a popular herb in Asian and Latin American dishes, including soups, salads, and ethnic savory dishes. 60-70 days to maturity.

• Cress is usually sold in the supermarket as sprouts, and you can grow it as such in just a couple of weeks. Sow it for mature leaves, and you’ll be rewarded with spicy greens within 50 days.
• Kailaan / Gai Lan Thick, fleshy cabbage-flavored leaves used in stir-fries, salads, and other dishes that call for cabbage leaves and greens. When grown in containers, you must use the plants in their ‘baby’ state. In the open ground, they need just over a foot to mature to full size. 60-70 days to maturity.
• Lamb’s Lettuce / Corn Salad This hardy green comes in two varieties. This is one you sow in late summer, and it gives you tender greens in autumn. The other is a winter-hardy variety. 50-70 days to maturity.
• Lettuces There are dozens of different types of lettuce, but most will give you an autumn harvest. For extending the season, look for varieties that are winter hardy. 40-60 days to maturity.

• Mibuna is an Asian vegetable with a peppery, mustardy flavor. It’s used in stir fries but is more commonly uncooked and used in salads or as toppings for savory dishes. 40-50 days to maturity.
• Mizuna Similar to Mibuna, this Japanese green resembles Arugula (Rocket) and is used predominantly in salads and uncooked dishes. 40-50 days to maturity.
• Mustard Greens are hot and peppery and great in salads, stir-fries, and other dishes that need a little heat. Remember that while the baby leaves are tender and flavorful, more mature leaves can be bitter. 30-40 days to maturity.
• Pak choi / Bok choi An upright succulent green with fleshy bases and robust green leaves. Very mild flavor. 45-75 days to maturity.
• Peas It’s possible to get a second crop of peas in the autumn. In July and early August, sow varieties resistant to hot weather and diseases like powdery mildew. 70-90 days to maturity. You can also sow peas now for shoots.

• Radishes are a relatively trouble-free vegetable that loves cooler conditions. Autumn conditions are perfect for these tasty and colorful little root veggies. 30-60 days to maturity.
• Spinach You might find that it’s a lot easier growing spinach as an autumn crop due to the long-day information above. 35-45 days to maturity.
• Swiss Chard This green grows fast and can stand all winter long in mild climates. You can even get a flush of new green leaves the following spring. 40-60 days to maturity.
• Turnips Quick-growing turnips plump up to the size of radishes in about a month but grow to full maturity in about 50 days.
• Winter Radishes Unlike ordinary garden radishes, which you can sow for the fall vegetable garden, winter radishes are bigger and used differently. They’re spicy and crisp but used more like other winter root vegetables: roasted, boiled, or grated. One of my favorites is the Spanish black radish, with black skin and a crisp white interior. Winter radishes are sown in late summer and take 60-70 days to reach maturity. You can store them in the ground all winter in milder climates.

When to Start a Fall Vegetable Garden

So now you know that to grow autumn crops, you must choose the right types of vegetables. Leafy greens are ideal since they are quick to mature. You can also take advantage of many being long-day veg, so their tendency to bolt will decrease. The next thing to calculate is when to sow seeds. Your region’s first and last frost date will dictate when to sow veg. If you live in the USA, these are your dates. For the British Isles, these are your first and last frost dates. Count back the days to maturity for any plant from the first frost date. That day will be the last day you can sow seeds.

Time to Maturity for Vegetables

The time it takes a seed to grow into a crop varies from vegetable to vegetable. It can also vary by variety and time of year. Take lettuce, for example — in the chart above, lettuces are given about 40-60 days to grow to maturity. There’s a big difference between those days because it will take longer for them to grow in cooler weather. Sow in late spring, and it may only take 40 days, but sow in late summer, and it may take longer.

Lettuce varieties also play a big role in time to maturity. Smaller varieties, like Little Gems and leaf lettuce, will take much less than head-forming lettuce. There are also varieties better suited for growing in cool weather and through the winter. Lettuce, ‘All the Year Round,’ is a butterhead you can harvest up to October when grown outdoors. Other varieties, like Green Oak Leaf and Valdor, can tolerate winter temperatures. At least here in Britain.

Vegetables are Aware of Darkness

Photoperiodism is your word of the day. What it refers to is the number of hours of darkness and light that a plant is exposed to. When growing vegetables, it’s important to us because plants use light, or rather darkness, to tell the time of the year. They use that timing to know when the optimal time to mature and set seed will be.

Leaves are little solar panels, and they communicate to the whole plant if the days are drawing longer or shorter. They tally up hours of darkness and strive to set seed at a particular night length. This time varies by plant, but long-day vegetables all aim to set seed when days of light rise above a critical threshold. That’s typically when there are more than 12 hours of sunlight.

Long-Day Vegetables

Some veg, like spinach, aim to set seed near the shortest night (longest day) of the year. For those in the northern hemisphere, that’s usually June 21st. That means that even if you keep it well-watered and shaded around this time, it will still tend to ‘bolt.’ The same goes for turnips, arugula (rocket), and most other veg.

The trick to growing these long-day plants is to plan for their maturity date to be well before midsummer or after. Sow spinach in late July and August, and you’ll have a much better chance of a crop than sowing it in May. That makes spinach a great choice for your fall vegetable garden.

Hacks for Autumn Crops

Many autumn vegetables sown from seed will tend to be green and leafy. Think lettuces, Asian greens, and cool climate herbs and leaves. If you’re a little late in sowing, another way to extend the season is to buy plug plants. Many seed companies will still be offering them from late July to August, so have a browse. It’s a quick and efficient way of skipping the initial growing time and giving your fall vegetable garden a jump start!

You can also encourage new growth on non-woody perennial herbs by cutting them back hard. Herbs like peppermint, lemon balm, lovage, welsh onions, and chives will grow new shoots and leaves up to the first frost. Bring them indoors or under cover if you’d like to extend the season even further.

More Fall Vegetable Garden Inspiration

There are plenty of things that you can do now to prepare your garden for fall. There are crops to harvest, but you may have beds beginning to open up that need an annual application of compost mulch. You can also start new garden beds, continue composting, and think about crops to grow in winter.

• Fall Gardening Check-list (printable)
• The Easy Way to Grow Pumpkins
• Unexpected Crops and Unique Vegetables for Your Garden
• Autumn Foraging Guide: 6 Easy to Identify Wild Foods