Planting Into Fall | Lavender Frog Farm & Garden

Never thought I'd write a blog.

Actually, I'm pretty sure at some point I've said I would never write a blog.

Here we are.

But for the first one, you might want to know a bit more about who you might — or might not — be taking advice from.

Anyone who knows me probably isn't that surprised. There's usually a person, a connection, or a way to find whatever it is someone needs. And when a completely random question comes up, there's a decent chance it's already been researched.

Some of that information is completely useless beyond the exact moment I need it — until the oddly specific day somebody else needs it too.

So maybe a blog actually makes sense.

We'll see.

Since this is the first one, it's probably going to be a little longer than most — and possibly annoying if you came here looking for an answer to something. Moving forward, the informative ones will get to the useful information a whole lot quicker.

We're starting in September, which means fall is coming.

I LOVE summer. Give me 90 degrees and sunshine and I'm perfectly happy. I'm definitely not one of those people counting down the days until sweater weather.

But I love fall too.

The colors, the start of baking season, the warm days and cooler nights — it's just different. The leaves haven't started falling yet, but they're coming and we have a lot of trees.

So, soon we're going to have a LOT of leaves.

But at least I'm about done picking weeds for the year.

And when I say weeds, I mean the ones growing around our plants or anything that could actually cause a problem. Most of what people call “weeds” gets left alone around here. It's usually growing there for a reason.

And while things outside are starting to change, there's still plenty of planting to do.

Here in Connecticut, September can be a really good time to plant. The days can still be plenty warm, the nights are cooling off, and most importantly, the soil doesn't suddenly become cold because the calendar says summer is over.

That's the part that matters to the plants.

Soil holds summer heat longer than the air does. That gives newly planted perennials, trees and shrubs an opportunity to work on roots without dealing with the same combination of heat, active top growth and water loss they deal with during the middle of summer.

And no, that doesn't mean you can plant absolutely anything in September or October and hope for the best.

Fall planting is not one-size-fits-all.

You have to know what you're planting, how much time it needs before the ground freezes, whether it's hardy where you live and what your actual weather is doing.

That's also why frost dates and hardiness zones aren't the same thing.

Your USDA Hardiness Zone is based primarily on average annual extreme minimum winter temperature. It helps tell you whether a perennial plant is likely to survive your winters. It does not tell you the exact day to plant something, when your first frost will happen or what the weather is going to do this year.

We're working on adding hardiness-zone information and a zone map to the website because with thousands of plants, “Will this grow where I live?” shouldn't require a research project.

Research projects are a thing around here. Luckily, you don't have to like doing them to shop with us.

One thing we've noticed growing lavender here for the last few years is that ours really seems to like being planted in the fall.

We've planted lavender at different points of the growing season, and there's been a noticeable difference with the lavender planted in fall. It establishes well here.

That's what we've noticed on our farm. Just because it works for us doesn't mean it's going to work the same way for you.

Lavender hates sitting wet, especially going into winter. Good drainage matters. A lot. Cold isn't necessarily the only problem for lavender in a Connecticut winter — cold and wet is a shitty combination.

Our slopes happen to work in our favor. They're one of the reasons lavender has done so well on this property. Water doesn't sit around its roots.

The backyard, on the other hand...not so much. But that's a whole story in itself.

Your soil, drainage, sunlight, weather and even where you put the plant can completely change the outcome — where you put a plant matters just as much as when you put it there.

New for us this year is garlic! 

From what I'm reading — because we haven't actually grown it yet — garlic is one of those things that really does want to go into the ground in fall. It needs a period of cold before growing the following season, and we're planning to get ours planted at the end of October. Plant too early and you risk getting more top growth than you want before winter. Wait too long and you're trying to plant cloves in frozen ground, which sounds like a terrible time and isn't on my list of things to do.

We've never grown it before, so this will be our first shot at it.

We'll see how it goes.

If it works, I'll tell you about it.

If it doesn't, I might tell you about that too.

Before this gets any longer, here's some of the actually useful stuff to know about fall planting in Connecticut -

And since this first one is apparently becoming the long version, there's one more thing worth saying - 

What works in Connecticut isn't automatically what works anywhere else.

That's going to matter here because Lavender Frog Farm & Garden isn't just for Connecticut gardeners. While we're getting ready for winter, somebody somewhere else may finally be heading into some of their best planting weather.

So you'll hear about what we're doing here, what we've learned, what worked, what didn't, what we're trying next...

There will be baking. There will be gardening. There will be things that go exactly as planned and plenty that don't. There will be random information that seems completely useless until somebody needs it.

And apparently, now I have somewhere to put all of it.