You’ll see Swiss Chard in just about every magazine’s list of the top 10 greens or top 10 superfoods to incorporate into your diet, and for that reason it’s a top fall gardening green to include in your cold crop plans this year. Not only are you saving grocery money by growing your own super-greens, you’re teaching your children about nutrition, or – if your kids are grown and gone from the house – encouraging your spouse to join you in a healthier green salad or side dish.

Swiss Chard is most often made with a light sauté in olive oil and fresh, diced garlic (which you’ve also grown in your garden!) and served as a side dish or within a vegetable wrap. Sautéed Swiss Chard also has a place on homemade pizzas, in calzones and in sausage rolls, sandwich wraps, and in hearty soups and stews.

What gardeners here in our Morris County area have said about their autumn Swiss Chard plantings is that they love the look of Swiss Chard in their gardens before they even get to the good part of eating them. The glossy leaves come in green, or autumn-gorgeous gold, orange and white, as well as purple, pink and red. The leaves may be heart-shaped or arrow-shaped, adding a lush, textural, colorful punch to a pretty fall garden layout.

Swiss Chard’s flavor is best, and less bitter, in cooler weather, making this an ideal green for consumption, although some gardeners prefer to grow it for ornamental use alone. After all, the leaves are multi-hued, and the texture and 30” height and width of this plant make it a space-filler that adds autumn beauty to your gardens.

What Swiss Chard Needs:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 10 – 30” tall

Width: 10 – 30” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Adding a pop of autumn red color to salads and stews, radishes are known for being fast-growers, with some varieties of cold crop gardening radishes ready for harvest less than a month after seeds are planted. Your salad, or fall hearty stew, will stand out with radish slices or ridged cuts in a variety of colors from white to red to pink to lavender. There’s even a radish type called ‘Easter Egg’ which comes in, among other shades, purple.

They grow well in containers, and since they grow so quickly, this is one of the most popular planting projects for children to work on, since their gardening efforts produce results in such a short amount of time. Your little ones can take their places side-by-side with you in your fall and cold crop garden, tending to their radish circle and very soon harvesting their crop.

Winter radishes, also called daikon radishes, will grow in 50 to 55 days – still a good clip in gardening time – and they’re happily planted among slower-growing crops like parsnips and carrots. As the radishes grow in a hurry, they break the soil crust to help the parsnips and carrots make some headway, and then those fast-maturing radishes are out of the ground, making room for those other crops to spread.

What Radishes Need:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 2 – 6” tall

Width: 2 – 6” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

These nutrient-packed ‘superfood’ greens deserve a place in every fall and cold weather gardening plan, since they’re incredibly versatile in recipes. Pick them raw for spinach salads, use raw leaves as garnishes for plating and for entertaining platters. Sauté spinach in olive oil and garlic for an antioxidant feast, and make a sandwich or wrap from that. Add your sautéed spinach to a quiche, a breakfast burrito, omelet, or calzone…the list goes on and on, with your homegrown fall spinach crop saving you lots of money at the supermarket and giving your family a healthier intake of greens. Spinach, after all, is a top source for iron, calcium, protein, Vitamin A and other healthy perks.

Spinach loves the cooler weather, so put them into the ground or your containers in late summer/earliest fall to give your greens time to flourish. You’ll get a strong fall harvest of spinach, and can extend your spinach crop if you place or plant them in a coldframe.

What Spinach Needs:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 3 – 15”  tall

Width: 3 – 15” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Fall Plantings for Cold Crops — Radish

New title: When to Plant Radish

By:

Sharon Naylor

Adding a pop of autumn red color to salads and stews, radishes are known for being fast-growers, with some varieties of cold crop gardening radishes ready for harvest less than a month after seeds are planted. Your salad, or fall hearty stew, will stand out with radish slices or ridged cuts in a variety of colors from white to red to pink to lavender. There’s even a radish type called ‘Easter Egg’ which comes in, among other shades, purple.

They grow well in containers, and since they grow so quickly, this is one of the most popular planting projects for children to work on, since their gardening efforts produce results in such a short amount of time. Your little ones can take their places side-by-side with you in your fall and cold crop garden, tending to their radish circle and very soon harvesting their crop.

Winter radishes, also called daikon radishes, will grow in 50 to 55 days – still a good clip in gardening time – and they’re happily planted among slower-growing crops like parsnips and carrots. As the radishes grow in a hurry, they break the soil crust to help the parsnips and carrots make some headway, and then those fast-maturing radishes are out of the ground, making room for those other crops to spread.

What Radishes Need:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 2 – 6” tall

Width: 2 – 6” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Carrots are one of the most popular fall gardening plantings here in the Morris County area. Loaded with anti-oxidant and cancer-fighting Vitamin A and beta-carotene, these healthy veggies are used raw in salads, served as crudités at a party, boiled or steamed as a side dish with spices like cinnamon and nutmeg, added to grilling veggie mixes right through fall, and also made into hearty soups and bisques for fall holiday entertaining.

Nutritionists say that cooking carrots releases their calcium for an even greater health kick. This versatile veggie in your garden can save you a significant amount from your grocery budget.

The fun thing about fall and cold-weather crop carrots is that they get sweeter as the temperature cools.

You’ll find sweet carrots in traditional long form, as well as in smaller baby carrots and even small and round ‘balls’ as well as cylindrical shapes. Carrots grown from seed might range from light to dark orange, pale orange, nearly-white, red and even purple.

When you put carrot seeds in the ground, follow the package directions to the letter, helping your carrot crop grow efficiently for good harvesting cycles throughout the cooler weather months. And pile a thin layer of mulch over the roots to keep the soil from freezing, so that the carrots can continue to grow even in some temperature-dip snaps, giving you a regular harvest all through the fall and early winter.

What Carrots Need:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 6 – 15” tall

Width: 6 – 15” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

I can’t stop myself from the cliché: Give Peas a Chance. Silly, yes, but also one of the smartest cold-weather crops to ‘give a chance’ in your veggie garden right now.

Just give them a little structure to climb on – like a length of wooden trellis or a metal teepee – and your pea crop can deliver the following cool weather-loving treats:

• Green peas, also called shell, pod or English peas. (A cook’s hint: pick them right before meal-prep before their natural sugars turn into starches, providing better taste.)
• Snap peas, which give you long, plump pods that you just need to boil or steam for eating as a side dish, as an add-in to a stir-fry or even a veggie addition to a lasagna. No part of the snap pea goes to waste, which is why it was historically one of the top pick for inclusion in ‘victory gardens’ of the late 1940s and also in European kitchen gardens.
• Snow peas also give you pea-stuffed pods for stir-fries and other dishes.

If you plant peas, expect them to go fast. A big pile of pea pods will make enough for one meal for the family, and if there’s any crop to plant generously with multiple plantings, it’s this one. Kids especially love being given the job of harvesting the pea pods, plucking them from the vines and dropping them in their very own pea-picking buckets (check out our kids’ buckets here at The Farm.) Oh, and take a second to smell these pea pods…the fresh aroma is unbelievable, a soul-quenching connection to the natural act of growing from the earth.

What Peas Need:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 1’ – 7’ tall

Width: 6 – 12” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing bagged lettuce prices soaring at the supermarket here in North Jersey. And, I completely admit that I grab the bagged lettuce out of laziness, instead of buying heads of lettuce and chopping them up. But if I grew my own lettuces, I’d be invested in my crop and all too happy to chop up my homegrown lettuces into a garden, Cobb or veggie-blend salad of my own making.

Not wanting to pay $5 for a small handful of greens in a plastic bag anymore, I’m adding lettuces to my veggie garden. Plus, they’d be organic veggies, grown right here on my garden plot and thus not requiring any carbon footprint for having to be shipped from anywhere. I see no downside to growing lettuces! I didn’t have room for them this summer, but since lettuces are a happy fall and cold-weather crop, I’m clearing space and getting ready to plant a collection of great lettuces.

They’re one of the most versatile types of garden plants, coming in so many different textures, tastes and colors. I love a salad of curly-edged greens, with buttery leaves, and a mix of fall color like those varieties having reddish-bronze leaves. Add in some radishes and fall veggies, and lunch is ready to go…for free. Plant lettuce plants, or sprinkle some seeds every week to keep your lettuce crop coming up and at you every week during the cooler to cold months, even into the time of frost.

Here’s a primer on the types of lettuces you can blend in your garden:

• Crisphead: you know this one better as iceberg, a satisfying crunch but not as many nutrients as other lettuce varieties.
• Butterhead: these lettuces have smaller, looser heads
• Loose-leaf: this one doesn’t form a head at all, but rather spreads out into looser leaves
• Romaine: this popular, nutrient-rich lettuce grows upright in a cylindrical shape

Lettuce grown in cooler temperatures actually tastes better, since those grown in hot weather can be more bitter and quickly going to seed. So if you tried lettuce this past spring and summer and didn’t get a good crop, don’t be afraid to try again. Chances are far better for your lettuces this fall.

What Lettuce needs:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 2 – 12” tall

Width: 2 – 12” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Pumpkins are too pretty to stop at just one carved jack o’lantern on your front step. A big new trend in fall garden décor is using pumpkins in many different ways to add fall flair to your home’s seasonal style.

Here are some of the top ways to bring more pumpkin-power into your fall garden décor plan:

• Create a cascade of large, medium and small pumpkins down one side of your front steps. Fill in with autumn-shade potted plants and you have a ‘pumpkin garden’ decorating your entryway.
• Place large pumpkins, plain or painted, in your outdoor garden planters to spruce those pretty containers up and add autumn orange color to your garden.
• Place large and small pumpkins on either side of your garage doors.
• Create a pumpkin display in a corner of your backyard deck. Group large, medium and small pumpkins, some plain and some painted, and add garlands of autumn-color leaves, seasonal corns and other fall décor pieces to give your outdoor gathering space a fall fix-up.
• Fill in empty spots in your garden landscaping with clusters of pumpkins.
• Place several medium or small pumpkins on different levels of your rock garden or koi pond rocks.
• Indoors, line five or six mini-pumpkins on your kitchen window sill.
• Use mini pumpkins as place setting décor, with dinner guests’ names on each as place card alternatives.
• Fill a pretty wicker basket with an array of mini pumpkins and gourds and display that just inside your front door, or outside on your porch.
• Make a centerpiece from a glass bowl filled with mini pumpkins.
• When visiting friends or attending a party, use a Sharpie in any color or metallic ink to write a fall-themed message or quote on a pumpkin you bring as a hostess gift.

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Cabbage adds zest to fall potato salads, cole slaw and sauerkraut for football game tailgate parties, and stuffed cabbage rolls for party appetizers. With fall-friendly cabbage in your garden, you get to choose from late cabbage varieties that can be planted right now and harvested in autumn, saving you in produce fees at the supermarket and adding fresh crunch to your family’s dinners.

Fall-growing cabbages can grow to softball-sized heads in less than 60 days. They’re full and fresh, and they also add a dash of color to your garden, such as red-leaf varieties like ‘Ruby Ball’ introducing red leaves, and purple-red striations in your crops. In addition to being pretty and autumn color-inspired, red cabbages are said to have the sweetest flavors, so look for red-leaf types to mix in with your yellow and green varieties.

Cabbages picked young and fresh have milder flavors, as well, so don’t be afraid to pluck your smaller cabbages when it’s their time.

What Cabbages need:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 6 – 18” tall

Width: 10 – 30” wide

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

The excitement of planting a vegetable garden comes back at you again with this year’s second crop of new choices for your garden space. It’s time for Cold Crops, and this post starts a lengthy series on the top cold-crop vegetables, root veggies, greens and herb that love this cooler weather and deliver their bounty right through til winter.

Your garden is ready to give you its best from your new organic cold crops.

The first we’re starting with is Broccoli, packed with nutrients, a said cancer-fighting cruciferous, and an essential ingredient in hearty fall soups and bisques, not to mention fall veggie stir fries and cocktail party crudités.

Broccoli loves cool weather and is frost tolerant, so plant it in late summer/early fall for a great fall harvest. Bear in mind, though, that you’re not likely to get those enormous broccoli heads that you see at the farmer’s market. You’re likely to get smaller, very tender heads.  And if you leave the greens on the plant after picking your broccoli heads, the plant will give you two or three more broccoli ‘blooms’ this season.

Broccoli needs:

Light: Sun, Part Sun

Height: 18-24” tall

Width: 18-24”

Help Your Fall Plantings Thrive By:

• Following seed packet or plant pot directions carefully
• Making sure your garden or container soil has good drainage
• Making sure your garden or container soil has the right pH level
• Adding Dr. Earth fertilizer with probiotics to your soil
• Protecting them from garden pests with regular organic pest control treatments
• Removing weeds in a timely manner

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.

Garden décor is growing more and more rustic-inspired. All across our Chatham, Morristown, Madison and North Jersey region, we’re seeing more homeowners adding a ‘countrified’ feel to their outdoor living areas and garden landscaping. Several southern celebrities have boosted the trend for rustic outdoor décor through their highly-publicized weddings. Reese Witherspoon and Miranda Lambert’s rustic weddings delivered their relaxed, country-chic looks to the masses, and everyone wanted Reese’s and Miranda’s inspired rustic designs.

Starting with the lanterns. When I saw the metal lanterns hanging at The Farm this week, they took my mind right to a beautiful scene of an outdoor party with the night stars above, outdoor seating, music and dancing, delectable foods, and lanterns on S-hooks and hung from secure wires between trees. For an evening outdoor celebration, lanterns make the ambiance, adding a soft glow to your open-air party area.

You might have solar LED lights in your gardens already, and those are nice for low-level lighting. But to bring the eye upward and make the entire yard look professionally-designed, like a gardening magazine spread or an HGTV ‘After’ shot, place lanterns in the eyeline between the ground and the stars…at eye level, in trees, on terrace railings. Always safely using lanterns to hold lit candles, never leaving them unattended, and never leaving them lit in dried-branch trees (not that we have that problem this year, but you’ll surely wish to re-use your metal lanterns again and again, year after year.)

If you have no place to hang lanterns, bring them to the center of your outdoor dinner or outdoor party by making them your fall table centerpiece décor. A lantern in tin, bronze, or any other kind or color of metal makes the perfect, affordable rustic centerpiece, especially when lit with a candle within, and also surrounded by little votives in your party’s theme color. Most hosts do keep their lanterns for their outdoor parties season after season, but if yours is an event at which you plan to allow guests to take home the centerpiece (such as an at-home fall wedding,) your guests will really want to win that whose-birthday-is-closest game!

Sharon Naylor is the author of over 35 books on family celebrations, including weddings, bridal showers, vow renewals, and more. She is beyond thrilled to be the new guest blogger for The Farm, and she will be posting inspirations and tips for your parties, get-togethers and big family moments throughout the year. Visit her website www.sharonnaylor.net for more on her books and articles.