The Cold-Hardy Kitchen Garden: Fall & Winter Vegetable Planting Guide for NJ & PA

If you pull out your garden when summer ends, you are giving up the best growing season of the year. Most home gardeners in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and similar climates assume that cold weather means the harvest is over. It doesn't. Many vegetables grow better in fall, taste better, and attract fewer pests than they do in a hot summer. This guide shows you how to plant a fall and winter vegetable garden that actually produces. You will learn why warm soil and cooling air make the ideal combination, which crops handle frost, snow and temperatures down to the high 20s Fahrenheit, and when to sow each one. You will get a late-summer planting plan, advice on intensive spacing, simple protection methods for the coldest weeks, and a watering and care routine that is much lighter than summer's. There is also a section on why frost makes kale, carrots, peas and others taste sweeter, so you know what to expect when you harvest. The guide is written by Resh Gala, a New Jersey garden designer who builds stylish, productive organic vegetable gardens in NJ and PA and shares the results at @hundredtomatoes. She is the author of Vegetable Gardening Made Easy. The advice here comes from her own beds: sugar snap peas picked in November, cabbage, broccoli, bok choy and radishes thriving through frost, and kale, leeks and Brussels sprouts standing up to snow. If you have a sunny bed, a few packets of seed and a calendar, you can use this guide to keep your kitchen supplied well past the first frost.