The weather has cooled, the summer garden has been harvested and cleaned up, the soil has been tilled, and for the first time we have planted seeds for winter harvest! Being intentional about our homesteading has helped us plan the time and research the proper vegetables to plant a fall garden in zone 8 so that we can have a productive winter harvest.
For decades we have planted a summer garden. We always get excited early in the spring, often plant before our friends, and generally have a beautiful summer harvest. We of course have our favorites- tomatoes, squash, eggplant, peppers, beans, peas, corn, and so on. We enjoy the summer garden immensely for several months. But honestly here in SC it gets incredibly hot, humid and increasingly difficult to do anything in the garden other than grab the veggies and run back to the air conditioning. So by the time we get to August and September we are ready to open the gates and turn the goats loose to finish up what is left of the summer garden.
With all that said, we have always talked about putting in a fall garden. But somehow we just haven’t been able to muster up the ambition to get out there in all the heat and humidity. And we really haven’t ever taken the time to research what will actually produce here in zone 8. So what made this year different? Well, it’s 2020 to start with! Everything is different this year. It’s not that we are locked down, or that we can’t get what we want at the grocery store (not going into that political conversation here!). But what has happened is this- we have slowed down, we have gained an extreme appreciation toward gathering wisdom and knowledge, and we have become very intentional with everything in our lives and on our homestead.
So what do we plant for winter harvest in zone 8? We talked to a master gardener friend of ours, we read our homesteading books (I’ll post links to our favorites at the end of this post), and we made the intentional decision to just do it!
The first step for us was to get the remains of the summer garden cleared out. We have multiple gardens here at One Ash. The goats are doing an amazing job cleaning up the large garden. It didn’t seem to us that we would need that large of a space for our fall garden, so we are just letting them do the work and earn their keep! So the small garden became the one for us to get into. We raked, we pulled strong weeds out, and we cleared the ground. Once we had it all in a pile and let it dry up, we burned what was left. This process gives us a nice clean area and also adds some good ash back into our soil.
Once the burning was done, Mr. One Ash tilled the ground.
He did have a few things in the way…..some still growing vinca, zinnias and basil. And we still have a good supply of green bell peppers producing (we have loved making these into Air Fryer Fried Bell Peppers– check out the recipe!).
He did a great job tilling around these things, well, other than one zinnia casualty! But that’s okay- I have loads of zinnias still growing and even more seeds stored away for next years planting!
From the research we had done (I will add some links to references at the end of the post), we decided to start out with planting turnips and beets. Both of these are things we know we will eat and enjoy. My favorite recipe is to cut them up, toss them with a little olive oil and basil, and roast them in the oven. We put in 2 rows of beets and 4 rows of turnips. We also added in a couple of rows of carrots. We haven’t done well with them in the summer garden so decided to try them here.
It’s been just about a week since we planted and already we have both turnips and beets up!
As we progress into colder weather we will eventually have to pull up the bell peppers. Once we do that we will consider planting things like cabbage, more carrots, and some onion and garlic.
This is all a part of the plan, a part of the intentional homestead of which we have been made stewards. We are caring for the land, we are producing rather than simply consuming, and we are blessed with the bounty!
Here are some of the resources we used to learn more about Zone 8 gardening-
BOOKS- click on the image to learn more
References- click on the links
We hope you are creating an intentional homestead, with plans and goals and increased wisdom and knowledge. And we hope that it helps when we share our experiences!
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