What Are Fall Crops?

Every gardener wants to get as much out of the growing season as possible, and fall crops are a good way to do that... but what are fall crops actually?

This time of year I hear a lot of talk about “fall crops”. I have always found this term confusing, because it seems to mean so many things and is used in so many different ways. Out of curiosity I decided to “google” the term in search of a decent definition; and all I could seem to find was lists of vegetables that are considered to be “fall crops”. Here’s a smattering of vegetables that are considered to be fall crops according to a range of sources:

Beans Beets Broccoli Brussel Sprouts Cabbage Carrots Cauliflower Collards Garlic Kale Kohlrabi Lettuce Parsnips Peas Potatoes Radishes Rhubarb Squash Sunchokes Swiss Chard Turnips Zucchini

The odd thing about this list of vegetables is that they have different times for planting and harvesting. They are also differently able to withstand frost, light freezing and hard-freezing. In fact, I really don’t see any consistent connection at all with this group outside of the fact that for each one, it is possible that some action, of some kind, might be taken in the fall. So what on earth are fall crops?

Fast growing and frost tolerant - spinach is an ideal fall crop! [source: https://pixabay.com/photos/green-plan-food-vegan-spinach-2565925/]

What is fall?

For those living outside the tropics, fall or “autumn” is that time of year when the days get shorter, the temperature drops, the leaves change color, and birds migrate south for the winter. Celestially, the fall equinox occurs when there is exactly 12 hours of sunlight between sunrise and sunset, which in the the current year, will be September 22. Of course, this means different things in different locations, because while “fall” might be connected to that specific date, the first frost might be in September in some places, while that might not occur until November in others.

What are fall crops?

The strange thing about the list of crops at the beginning of this article is that there are different subgroups among them relative to what activities they might involve in fall. Here’s a quick breakdown of these different categories using the items from the list as an example: