Strangely enough, all the nurseries and the home improvement stores call it quits on gardening supplies and seeds by late summer. Its hard to find seeds at this time of the year, and almost impossible to find potted vegetable plants to take home for planting in the garden. Compare this with late spring/early summer, when sales of tomato and other Solenaceous plants reach their peak.

But late summer is the best time to plant Cruciferous plants like cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli. These plants, when started early enough, resist the freezing temperatures of November quite nicely, and they aren’t subject to the same problems with flea beetles and damaging winds like they would be in an early spring planting.

And I haven’t even mentioned plants that harvest within a couple of month, even a few weeks, like radishes, turnips, and turnip greens. A healthy spinach crop will produce abundantly throughout the entire winter, and kohlrabi (another cruciferous plant) is reported to be extremely resistant to freezing temperatures.

Winter cover crops, like rye or hairy vetch (a nitrogen fixer), are also a good idea to curb erosion and produce organic material for green manure, composting, or mulch.