Fifth Season Gardening Market Share Analysis for December 2025

Welcome back to our “Year in the Organic Garden Series!”  In August, we were harvesting our summer fruits and veggies and preserving the excess. We also got our Fall garden going!   If you missed the post, or want to refresh your memory, please take a look at August in the Organic Garden. In September, our Summer’s harvest is waning or just plain done and we fully transition to cool season gardening.  Read on for our suggestions on how to make the most of the month.  As always, we welcome your own comments, questions and contributions to help make this an even more useful resource for our readers. Planting your Fall Garden A Fall garden is a “cool season” garden–just like we had in the spring.  The crops that will thrive this time of year are the same ones we were working with back in March.  The difference is that the weather is warm at the start of the season. Be careful to not let your seedlings fry on hot days.  Frequent watering, shade cloth and planting in the shade of your remaining summer garden plants will all help your seedlings become established before the risk of excessive heat is behind us. It is once again time to plant leafy greens, root vegetables, peas and more.  March in the Organic Garden  gives a great overview of cool season crops.  Several crops that are best started indoors in the Spring can be direct sown in the Fall.  This is due to the fact that the soil is already warm.   If you did start seedlings indoors in August, now is the right time to transplant them.  Be sure to harden them off by exposing them to outdoor conditions before they go into the ground.  Just like in the spring, over a week to ten days, bring your starts outside for increasing amounts of time.  When they can be outside for a full 24 hours and still look great they’re ready to go! Don’t forget to fertilize as you can be sure that your Summer garden consumed a good bit of the nutrients in your soil.  Balanced organic fertilizers are great this time of year.  Leafy