It's still sweltering in my neck of the woods, but the long days of summer will quickly turn into the brisk days of autumn. And the fall garden offers some real treasures, which can be both fun to grow and super healthy. Think lettuces, radishes, and many of the plants in the brassica family including collards, kale, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower! Yum.

Some of these crops have a short growing season, so you can reasonably plant and harvest them before the first frost. Others will tolerate the frost with a little protection, or even none at all.  

Here are some favorites to plant this month:

• Spinach. A true wonder green, spinach is great raw or cooked. It also has a short growing season, produces leaves prolifically, and can tolerate frost. When planting, keep the soil cool with frequent watering and mulch, as hot weather can lower germination rates. Spinach can definitely be grown in containers, although overcrowding can cause the plants to bolt. Recommended spacing is about 4-6" between plants. 
• Collards. My all-time favorite, collards are tasty, hearty greens that are a meal in themselves. They're incredibly vitamin-rich, but also require a nitrogen-rich soil to thrive. Plant collards about 6 weeks before the last frost, at about 12" apart. Leaves will be ready to harvest in as little as four weeks. Check out my favorite recipe for collards, below! 
• Lettuces. There are many types of lettuce. All love the cool soil of autumn, and a few (romaine for example) can tolerate the later-season cold. Lettuce is easy to plant in containers too. 

I'd plant all of these from seed, although you might find starts for fall crops in your garden center too. Check the seed packet, but in general plant seeds about 3x as deep as they are thick (i.e. so plant a 1mm seed 3mm deep), and be sure to water a bunch in the first week. If possible, plant veggies with a longer growing season - like broccoli and cauliflower - from starts. 

And as promised, some tips on cooking collards. Tough greens like collards need some TLC to break down their cell walls. My tried-and-true approach is to roll a stack of greens into a (yummy) cigar, and chop them into smaller pieces. Then cook them down in vegetable broth for about 20 minutes, and/or until tender. At this point they're great as-is, although my favorite final steps are to 1) squeeze water out of the leaves, making little balls of the greens, and 2) sprinkling the greens with salt, garlic, ginger, peanut and red pepper. This final tip I picked up from my time living in Niger, when women would literally coat a tray of bitter greens in an inch of this spicy powdered mixture. It's like mothers milk to me, and any variation that remotely resembles that taste makes me very, very happy. The spicy / nutty flavor is also a great "dressing" for the hearty taste of the greens. Watch for a future post with me sharing this recipe ... I'll take any excuse to make it! 

Enjoy your cool-season garden!