New fall garden

I live in South Dakota and planted a new fall garden on Sept. 13, 2012, just a small 4 x 4. I am doing this as an experiment. The temperature is supposed to hit 30 degrees here on Saturday night, so I will cover it that night. This may go nowhere, but it is worth a try. Has anyone else in my climate tried this?
I am 1998joyce, and this is my first time to post something, so this is also a learning experience.

Welcome 1998Joyce. We'll help you whenever we can.

I'm nowhere near the Dakotas so can't help with fall gardening. I'm in Maine though, and as long as I keep the bed covered with heavy row cover which will protect down to 28*, the greens do well. I've grown arugula, mizuna, claytonia in the fall for greens.
If you can cover with thicker plastic or clear vinyl as a 2nd isulating layer, as in hooping that over your bed, you can get a longer growth period.
If nothing else, its a good experiment to see how it works in your area.

I'm sure come spring you'll learn lots from other gardeners here on this forum. They are very informative and happily share their experiences and pictures. With plastic, you can start your spring garden earlier than expected.
Good luck and have fun with your gardening experience.

Hi there, what did you plant? I am also from SD I planted my fall garden about 2-3 weeks before you and haven't covered anything yet. I have peas, carrots, lettuce, spinach, beets, radishes, and turnips and they are all so far so good. Use quiltbea's great advice with the plastic and the hoop houses and you should be good to go for a while, you know how the weather is here so it's so hard to predict how long it will all last. This is also my first year of planting a fall garden so I am curious to hear your progress. Best of luck to you!

Welcome to the forum Joyce. We hope you will visit often and look forward to seeing you around.

Welcome Joyce! I haven't gotten around to planting my fall garden, and so I think it will have to be just garlic for my fall planting this year. I am hoping to get my ripe tomatoes cleared off Sat. afternoon and get the vines covered before it hits the predicted low of 30 here as well! Not ready for the season to end. Let us know how things go for you!

GG

Wow, it is so nice to hear from all of you. Thanks so much. I think I am going to like this. Thanks for all the ideas. I will keep you posted about the progress (or lack thereof!) of this fall garden. I recently got an email from the Square Foot Foundation about the seed packet I purchased for this garden. It was a special group of seeds specifically planned for a fall garden. There are 15 different kinds of seeds in it. I can't imagine there being enough warm weather to see much production, but who knows? I am open to experiment. It has only been 8 days since I planted, and a couple things are already up.

Someone asked what I planted in the fall garden, so here goes.
All of this came from Jung Seeds.
Ruby Queen beets, Black Seeded Simpson lettuce, Buttercrunch lettuce, Tyee Hybrid spinach, Lucullusswiss chard, Evergreen scallions, Cherry Belle radishes, Super Sugar snap peas, New Red Fire lettuce, Scarlet Nantes carrots, Lincoln leeks, and Tokyo Cross Hybrid turnips. I guess that is 12 things. I said there were 15. Some of the seeds went into several squares. As I look over the germination info on the packets, it does not seem possible that very much of this will be ready to harvest before the weather turns too cold, but again, we will watch this together.
Also, it is nice to know I have a fellow gardener on the other side of South Dakota. It's almost like we are neighbors!

Joyce, I too ordered the special fall seed pack. This was my first summer of SFG and have no idea how fall planting will do. The info before I ordered, said crops would grow yet this fall, even here in Michigan. I doubt I'll try carrots, as my summer crop has been in the ground 4 months and they still aren't ready to harvest! Am anxious to try some of the greens. Good luck. I'll let you know how it goes here in MI.

I grew up in Minnesota and our neighbor was a very successful gardener.

They grew lots of tomatoes well into the fall pushing into October. She would heavily mulch the tomatoes with a layer of shredded leaves and straw and then on the cold nights cover with plastic.

The root/low crops got a thinner layer and plastic row crops.

Welcome to the forum and good luck!

1998Joyce
I live in Maryland so alot warmer BUT!
I was very pleased with my fall garden last year. I only planted a few crops just to try out my first fall garden last fall. I wish I had planted more!
Be careful to remove some or all of the plastic when the sun is out. It can get very hot under the plastic. You can put a heavy banket over the frame at night when the temps get cold or dip below freezing.(see the book) Remember that the colder it gets the slower the crops grow so be prepared for that.
I was growing spinach, lettuce, radishes last year and picked my last bunch on Dec 31st.(in MD)
Anything you can get from your fall garden will be better then none at all. Happy Gardening