The Best Fall Vegetables to Plant Before Winter Hits

Starting A Vegetable Garden

When perusing seed catalogs or retailers’ websites, it’s easy to get carried away with the vast selection of vegetables that you can grow. Decide if you want to start with seeds and nurture the seedlings or purchase vegetable transplants.

Who says gardening is just for spring and summer? For many green-thumbed Canadians, a fall vegetable garden is a fun and fruitful way to enjoy fresh produce in the cooler months and to prepare the garden for spring.

The secret to success? You have to know your garden well (your area’s climate makes a big difference, especially in fall) and you have to know which vegetables to plant in the fall. When planted in early fall, certain veggies will continue growing through the autumn — so you can have a bountiful harvest in late fall and even winter — while other crops can be enjoyed in the spring if you plant them before the first frost. With this in mind, we’ve rounded up our picks for the best fall veggies to plant before winter hits.

Tip: It’s a good idea to look for the estimated frost date for your area (you can search the Almanac online by postal code, for example) to help determine if a particular crop has a good chance of thriving if you plant it by a certain date.