Starting plants for fall garden zone 6 - tips?

I would love to keep my garden growing in the fall but I am a bit unsure when to sow. I read that brassicas should be started indoors by mid summer. Could I start them now? Any tips for preparing the garden for fall? I am in zone 6.

Also, Is there a temperature limitation for plants like kale? I do not have a greenhouse but I have an attic which is quite warm, could this affect the growth of kale seedlings?

Hi Ana,

I'm in zone 6 in Nova Scotia Canada. There's a book I use as my bible for this....
It's called "The Year Round Vegetable Gardener" by Nikki Jabbour. She's just down the road from me in zone 6 too.

There's tons of ideas about ways to mulch stuff so you can harvest into winter, create easy cold frames from straw bales, etc.

But the part I refer to constantly is her index of vegetables! For each one, she lists when and how early you can start plants, indoor or outdoor, whether to cover, and then.... most importantly for your question, she lists when to sow for your fall crop. She also lists all her favourite cold-hardy varieties so you can keep growing longer.
It's a really great resource!

You'll need to know your average first fall frost date, and then you'll need to add however many weeks for your plants to mature after seeding and germination. Work backwards from your frost date and  that's your sowing date. Once they're mature, you can usually protect them from the first few frosts for quite a while and keep harvesting. And if you're growing in pots, say kale, you can move them to the attic when it's time. For in ground crops like carrots, etc. you can mulch well, and cover them and just keep harvesting, even in the snow!

Hi Ana,

To piggyback on what Susanna mentioned, Johnny's seeds has a very handy excel spreadsheet for fall vegetable planting dates.  You can find it on their website.  All you do is type in the date of your average first fall frost and it will give you planting dates for several vegetables.

I'll probably start planting in July for a fall crop of brassicas.  We currently don't have air conditioning so I'm not sure if starting the plants inside will make much of a difference versus starting them outside.   I'm not very experienced with growing fall crops but I had three kale plants overwinter and provided me with quite a bit of fresh kale before they went to seed.  By that time the new plants were big enough to harvest.

Also I've noticed that most stuff that overwintered was in a bed in the backyard that only gets 6-8 hours of sun in the summer.  So that's where I'll probably plant some of the fall crop.

You can definitely start brassicas now. The one big downside I have seen in my garden in summer season is that bug pressure is fairly high. Brassica seedlings do not get along well with flea beetles. Also cabbage aphids could be a problem. I tend to start transplants indoors for a fall garden to be ready sometime in August no later early September.