Re: Fall vegetables

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At 8:51 PM +0100 10/9/07, Alexandre Leonardo wrote:

I'm thinking of starting a vegetable plot in my garden. I have no experience with vegetables so I would like your advice on this matter. What would be the best vegetables to sow at this time of year. This is southern Portugal and the weather is still warm, arround 20-25ºC (and likelly to stay like that for a few more weeks). Thank you for your advices

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The number-one rule for food gardens is to grow what you like to eat.

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, this is a good time to sow seeds for any leafy greens. If you eat them as baby greens, they will be ready to eat in 30 days or so. I especially love all kinds of kale, but other possibilities are chard, spinach, lettuce.  A variety of chard called Bright Lights is especially decorative. Carrots, beets, and radishes, too. It's getting a little late for peas, and here the birds will eat any pea greens they can get, but if the weather cooperates it's worth trying. Garlic cloves can be planted anytime for the next 2-3 months.

If you have a source for transplants, you can plant anything in the cabbage family, including broccoli and kohlrabi, and maybe some herbs if they are big enough and you can protect them. The roots need a month or two to get established before the cold weather comes, or else the plants will be stunted and not grow in the spring. Birds also love broccoli leaves and will eat anything not protected.

I protect small plants with one-gallon (4-liter) plastic containers with the bottoms cut out and the top removed (to allow heat to escape). Sometimes if I'm not paying attention, snails and slugs take shelter in these, too. I put a stick through the top, into the ground, to keep the wind from blowing it away. I also put plastic window screening or nursery flats on seedbeds, to keep birds from eating the seed after I sow it.

If you use larger cloches or make small hoop houses, you may be able to plant later or stretch the season a bit. (I planted tomatoes in mid-February last year and had tomatoes by mid-June.)

I have used "bird netting" but it's unwieldy to work with. Also, a couple days ago another person at the community garden called me over because a small bird was caught in the wadded-up bird netting in one garden. I slowly cut away the netting while holding the bird, and it was such a relief when the bird flew away!