Yesterday’s entry examined strategies for planning and planting a fall vegetable garden, today we’ll look at tips for raising, harvesting, and selecting crops for growing fall vegetables. Fall vegetables don’t require any special care; in fact you’ll spend less time caring for your fall crops because of the favorable autumn growing conditions. The plants will grow rapidly at first and gradually slow as the days become shorter and colder.

Summer is ending, the days are growing shorter, and temperatures are dropping, but there’s still a little time left for the home gardener to begin Planting a Fall Vegetable Garden. Just think about it; no bugs, no weeds, no watering, no sweat… fall is the perfect season for planting delicious home-grown vegetables.

Bay Laurel, also known as Sweet Bay is a culinary herb plant that makes a great addition to the kitchen garden and can easily be grown on a patio or deck. Bay plants are very attractive with their waxy-looking olive green leaves, branches that can be trained to suit your taste, and flavorful leaves that will serve a valuable function as a versatile kitchen spice.

The previous entry discussed growing okra in the home garden, today’s post takes a look at a few great okra varieties for the home gardener, along with ideas for preparing and cooking these delicious home grown pods.

Okra is one of those interesting vegetables like Cowpeas that for some reason you seldom discover growing in backyard vegetable gardens. Also like those Black Eyed Peas, okra is more popular as a Southern specialty crop; however it will grow perfectly well even in Northern gardens. If you can raise tomatoes and peppers in your garden you should have no trouble growing a healthy and productive crop of okra.

It’s been a rather frustrating year in the vegetable garden, thanks to a group of groundhogs that seem to have taken over the area. I knew woodchucks were very destructive and that a single animal could wipe out entire beds of healthy vegetable plants and flowers, but in the past I’ve never had this much trouble controlling groundhogs.

I also tend to be spontaneous when planning the vegetable garden but I do think that it is important to record the garden’s design and layout, even if it’s after the fact, so that you have a record that you can refer back to when planning your future gardens. Or you can take photos of your garden as a record of what was planted when, where, and the results.

A friend was surprised recently when I commented that carrots aren’t always orange in color. You may also be surprised to discover just how many different colors of carrots the resourceful gardener can grow in an ornamental vegetable garden.