The 12 Best Vegetables for Your Zone 9 Fall Garden

Don’t pack away your gardening gloves just yet. The mild weather and cooling soil in USDA zone 9 is perfect for a second season of delicious, bountiful vegetables.

The keyhole garden in fall still packed with vegetables

Autumn is basically spring in reverse, so all those early season crops that thrive in March and April will thrive in October and November as well. Some, like kale and carrots will actually taste better later in the season because cool nights and light frost improves the flavor.

Here are a dozen of the best vegetables to plant in fall along with some garden care tips to ensure a great harvest.

Best vegetables for the zone 9 fall garden

Haricot vert & Filet Beans

French Gold filet beans

Haricot vert and filet beans are fast growing and meant to be eaten when the bean pods are young and the beans not full developed. So where other beans might take 60 days or longer to mature, you can be harvesting these in as little as 6 weeks.

Direct seed these in the garden in late September or early October while the soil is still warm, and harvest them in mid-to-late November—just in time for fresh beans for green bean casserole at Thanksgiving.

Lettuce, Mesclun, Spinach & Other Leafy Greens

Loose leaf lettuce mix in the garden in October

Summer is a tough time for lettuce as it tends to bolt quickly. And spinach doesn’t like heat at all. In the fall, however, they’re fast growing and thrive in the mild Zone 9 weather.

You can start in late September with lettuces and mesclun, but wait until mid-October for arugula and spinach because they appreciate cooler weather. I like loose leaf lettuce mixes because they grow at different rates and you can pick them continuously throughout the Autumn. If you want head lettuce or Cos/Romaine varieties that you pick whole, plant new seed every 2-3 weeks for a continuous harvest.

Kale

Lacinato (aka: Dinosaur Kale) loves fall weather

Kale is a Zone 9 fall superstar. It’s cold-hardy, looks nice, and its flavor actually improves with a little late season frost. If you want something that looks good in the garden as well as on the table, go with lacinato (aka: dinosaur kale) or a purple/red varieties like Redbor which adds visual interest to the garden.

Swiss Chard

Yellow and red “Bright Lights” Swiss Chard

Swiss Chard is a tough and productive vegetable that provides a continuous supply of greens. It’s a “cut and come again” plant so you can trim off the outside leaves for eating as you go and the plant will keep on growing more. Varieties like “Bright Lights” have bright, multi-colored stems in red, yellow, purple and green that look cool in the fall garden as well.

Broccoli

Waltham Broccoli (like all brassicas) loves cool autumn weather

Probably the quintessential cool-season crop here in Zone 9, broccoli thrives in the autumn. If you choose one of the heirloom, open-pollinated varieties like Waltham, you’ll get a main harvest from the center of the plant, and several smaller heads from side shoots after the main head is harvested. Keep in mind some varieties have a really long time to maturity (like 80+ days), so you want to plant them early to ensure a harvest before the weather gets really bad. If you’re in a warmer zone like 9B and up, you can also grow broccoli like a perennial and get another harvest from them in the spring.

For a fast start in the garden, I find that broccoli is best started from seed indoors and transplanted after the seedlings have their 3rd set of leaves.

Cabbage

“Point” is a sweet cabbage that keeps a long time in the garden

Like its brassica cousins broccoli and cauliflower, cabbage loves the cool weather and frost can make it even sweeter. I prefer point cabbages over the ball types as they do better starting off in the warmth of early fall and can be picked earlier than their round siblings.

Note: cabbage butterflies (those white butterflies with black spots) find these plants (as well as the other brassicas) very attractive in the fall and will lay their eggs on them, leading to cabbage worms that’ll eat the outer leaves. If you run into this, they’re easy to control with floating row cover. That prevents them from laying their eggs in the leaf crotches of the plants.

Carrots

Multi-colored carrots – a little ugly but still great tasting

This is a perfect root vegetable for fall. Carrots like to be direct seeded in the soil so planting them in early autumn in the still-warm soil encourages quick germination. As the weather cools the roots will store more sugar sweetening them as they mature.

Tip: If you have rocky soil or containers, go with a shorter variety of carrots. You won’t have to till the soil as deeply and you can pack them in more densely than longer, larger varieties.

Radishes

Radishes sprout and mature very quickly

Radishes grow really fast (like 3-4 weeks to maturity), so if you’re an impatient gardener, this one offers a quick reward. Like lettuces, you can succession plant ever 2-3 weeks for fresh harvest throughout the season.

Bonus: you can plant these in between slower-growing crops like kale and broccoli to maximize garden space.

Beets

Beets. Image credit: homesteadandchill.com

Both the root and the greens of beets are edible, making them a versatile addition to your fresh veggies in the fall. Like carrots, they become sweeter and more flavorful in cool weather. If you’re growing them in containers or shallow soil, go for a flatter variety like “Egyptian” which grow most of the root above the soil rather than below.

Tip: If you want the best beet harvest, make sure to thin the seedlings properly to give each plant plenty of room to grow. Crowded beets don’t develop a good root structure leading to thin, bland beets.

Peas

Tom Thumb is a compact pea that doesn’t need much trellising

Both snap peas and snow peas are great for the fall garden. You can plant them later in the season (mid-to-late October), they’re frost tolerant, and will flower and produce sweet, crisp harvests well into the winter. While pretty much any variety of pea will do well in autumn, I prefer smaller container varieties like Tom Thumb and Little Crunch which produce an abundance of peas but don’t require the extensive trellising full-sized peas do.

Cauliflower

Cheddar cauliflower from the garden

Cauliflower is another brassica that does really well in the cool of autumn. It’s not as flavorful as broccoli, but it keeps quite a bit longer and it’s more versatile when it comes to ways of preparing it. Personally, I love it in giardiniera because it offers lots of tangy flavor and keeps its crunch.

Cauliflower comes in lots of different colors too, not just white. Cheddar, a yellow cauliflower, and Violetto, a purple variety, are two of my favorites.

Just keep in mind that, like broccoli, some of these can take close to 90 days to harvest, so you want to plant them early in autumn in order to harvest before the year’s end.

Garlic

Silverskin garlic from the grocery store can be planted and give you a big garlic harvest in spring

You won’t be harvesting this in the fall, because garlic takes about six months to mature. But, if you plant it now, you’ll have lots of fresh garlic by the time spring rolls around. For our mild winters you’ll want to choose a softneck garlic like “artichoke” or “silverskin”, both of which have a long storage life after harvesting. Hardneck garlics are better suited to cold winters.

Money-saving tip: If you want to save a couple bucks, the whole garlic commonly sold in grocery stores is usually silverskin, an all-white garlic widely grown commercially in California in winter. Look for large bulbs with a good, thick skin. They usually have 10-12 cloves that you can break up and plant, giving you a dozen mature garlic bulbs in spring for less than $1.

Final Tips for Fall Garden Success

Spring and summer crops like corn, squash, tomatoes, and melons pull a lot of nutrients from the soil during the growing season. As a result, your garden beds will be lower in critical nutrients as well as the raw organic materials that help the microorganisms in the soil replenish those nutrients. If you’re re-planting in those summer beds with fall crops, make sure to turn in a generous amount of well-decomposed compost first. The compost will make sure the soil critters have plenty to eat over the growing season and will, in turn, provide the nutrients your veggies will need to be strong and productive.

So, Zone 9 gardeners, just because the summer is over, that doesn’t mean the gardening season is. Get out there and get planting now, and you’ll have fresh produce until Christmas rolls around (maybe even later)!