When to plant fall vegetables

On Monday, I admonished you that August is too late to start planning your fall garden. Instead, you want to start planting some fall crops now and continue through September for others.

Last year, I posted an extensive explanation about when to plant vegetables in your fall garden. The chart in that post (a larger version of the one to the right) makes it easy to plug in your last frost date and decide when seeds need to go in the ground. For example, here in zone 6 we'll be planting parsnips, carrots, and broccoli this week, among other things.

But what do you do if your favorite vegetable isn't on that chart? Take out your seed packet and you'll notice that it usually contains a "days to maturity" number. Count back that many days from your average first frost date, add two weeks (since plants grow slower in the fall) and you have your planting date.