Yes, it is. And if you are a farmer, you'd better get busy.  I know it is summer and you are worn out from all the picking, weeding, and marketing that is required to deal with the summer bounty, but now is the time to get ready for a profitable winter. For your winter to be profitable you will need to have some crops to sell and if you don't get hopping, you are going to miss your planting window.

                To have success in the winter, farmers need to have their crops planted by mid-September. Why so early? Because you are racing the daylight. Plant growth is regulated by many factors, but one of the biggest factors is the number of hours of light. Unless you have a greenhouse with lights, you will have to rely on the sun for the light that the plants need. Plants need light for photosynthesis so if there is less light there is less photosynthesis and that results in less plant growth.  Summer provides hours and hours of daylight and so the plants grow like crazy. One of the things most of us farmers love about fall is that days are shorter so we don't have to work as much (since most farmers work sunrise to sunset). The downside to these short work days is that the plants don't have as many daylight hours so their growth rate slows down. Once the daylight hours dwindle down to ten hours of sunlight or less, plant growth virtually stops (the plants are growing, but very slowly). Are you with me so far? I'm trying not to get too technical, but at the same time explain the “why” behind the reduction in plant growth.

                Now you know you are in a race, so let's get going. What can you do right now to have a successful fall and winter market season? The answer is easy: start planting seeds! Many of the plants you can grow for the fall and winter are perfect candidates for transplanting. Start filling your planting trays and sow kale, collards, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, and lettuce. Put the flats in your seed starting greenhouse or shade house and water them a few times a day. Remember it is still summer, and those trays can dry out really fast on a long, hot, and windy day. You can also start direct seeding some crops outdoors. Direct seed carrots, beets, and winter radishes in August at least once, and maybe even two or three times if you can.  Late summer is a tricky time to plant so watch out for hot dry spells and adjust your planting plans accordingly. As I mentioned above, I try to have everything planted by mid-September. My farm is located down in the valley so depending on your elevation you may need to have all your crops planted earlier due to the chance of frost and cold night time temperatures. If you have high tunnels and greenhouses your last planting date will be later, but growing crops in those structures will have to be a topic for another day.

                My transplant production strategy is to have a big planting in the last week of August followed by another good sized planting the first week in September, followed by a small planting the second week in September. If you are new to winter growing and harvesting, one important thing to keep in mind is that you need to make your plantings bigger for the winter than in the summer. This is because of the rate of plant growth, once again. Because the plants grow so much more slowly you cannot expect to harvest your entire kale planting one week and come back the next week and repeat the process. A picked bed in the winter can take four to six weeks to recover and even then the leaves will be small. You will need to do some crop planning so that you plant enough to keep your farm business humming.

Because I am not farming full time this year, I am only growing a quarter of an acre of winter crops. Based on my farm system, a quarter acre is twenty beds. I figure that I will sell a half a bed of kale each week so if I have four beds of kale I should be able to keep a steady supply (half a bed is one row per week, and with a six week recovery time before I can pick again I will need at least six more rows of kale to maintain my supply).

Carrots are one of my favorite winter crops, and at four rows to the bed, the productivity per square foot is better than with the kale. I will only need three beds of carrots so that leaves me lots of room for two beds of winter radishes, three beds of beets, four beds of lettuce, two beds of broccoli, one bed of cauliflower, and, because I love the stuff, one bed of radicchio. As you can see, all these big plantings quickly eat up your space.  

Space! You will need space to plant all this stuff. If you are lucky or curiously well prepared, you will have an open field all tilled and ready. If you are like everyone else I know, you will have an overgrown weedy field that once held some crop. (Maybe it was squash…can't really tell because of all the weeds...)

You know what you need to do: get out there and prep that field. I like to do this at night when it is cool and my hectic work is over. I like to unwind on the tractor after my busy day, so I prep the field over a number of days, a couple hours at a time. Since most of the crops are started in the greenhouse, I have a few weeks to get the ground ready.  

Okay: now you know winter is coming and summer is here, but to have success in the “off season” you need to make one last push in the “on” season.” First things first: make and drink some coffee. Now take a few minutes and develop a quick and dirty crop plan and then head to the greenhouse and start sowing those seeds. Think how happy you will be when you have nice cash flow in the winter and the smiles on all your customers' faces when they see the abundance of your winter produce!