Hello friends,
Fall, or autumn as I tend to say after my time living in Australia, is flying by, just as I want to start planting all the plants at our new property. I’m here with some ideas for what to plant in autumn if you get the gardening itch when the gardening season is basically over. This is mid-October for me, in US hardiness zone 6b. Your seasons may vary if you are in a warmer or cooler climate than I am, or in a different hemisphere.
Not only is autumn not too late to get some plants in the ground, but it’s also a great time to take advantage of end-of-season sales at nurseries. More plants than you might think do well, even prefer, being planted in October.
Here is one of my nursery hauls. It includes two Chicago cold-hardy fig trees, two Autumn Brilliance Serviceberries, and a Fuji apple tree.
I’ll share what I planted this month plus two extra plants that thrive when planted this time of year that I didn’t get to, but kinda wish I had. Because this is a blog about permaculture, I’ll also go over what functions each of these plants has in a permaculture garden.
Here’s what to plant in fall in your permaculture garden.
1. Spring Flowering Bulbs
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of autumn planting is bulbs. Having these beauties pop up in spring, even as late snow still carpets the ground, gets the permaculture garden off to a great start for the year.
I chose a few different varieties that were available at my local nursery, an assortment of daffodils, hyacinths, tulips, and crocuses.
Permaculture Functions of Bulbs
Pollinator Attractors
A benefit of planting spring-flowering bulbs is that they are some of the first flowers of the season. Not only is it a joy to us winter-weary humans, but they are excellent attractors of early-season pollinators. More pollinators hanging around will help fruit trees that flower at the same time to set more fruit.
Some are Edible
Some bulbs, such as lilies, allium, and camas, are edible, though many are toxic, so beware.
When I bought my bulbs I didn’t realize it, but it turns out that both tulip and crocus bulbs may be edible. However, be sure to research your specific varieties first if you ever decide to try eating them.
Pest Deterrent
But even toxic bulbs like daffodils and hyacinths have a place in a permaculture garden.
Squirrels won’t dig these bulbs up and they repel burrowing animals like gophers and voles. The shoots and flowers also deter deer. So, it’s a good idea to plant them along the dripline of fruit trees as a line of defense against pests.
2. Garlic
Garlic is, of course, also a bulb, but it deserves its own section here.
Cloves can be planted at any time, as long as the ground is workable, and autumn or early winter is actually the best time to plant them for the largest bulbs in summer.
Permaculture Functions of Garlic
Garlic is an excellent permaculture crop because it fills multiple functions.
Pest Repellant
Like some other bulbs, garlic repels pests and is often planted along the dripline of fruit trees. For this same reason, garlic also makes an excellent companion plant to many annual vegetables.
Edible
Of course, we all know that garlic is edible and widely used in cooking across the world. If you’re like me and use garlic multiple times a week in the kitchen, growing your own will have great benefits.
Even though garlic is harvested in the summer, it’s easy to cure to have it available all year long. It’s one of the easiest crops to grow and store to provide a year-round supply. Growing it yourself means, not only do you not have to buy it (beyond the first seed bulbs), but you’ll have access to a wider variety of garlic flavors.
It’s also an easy crop to grow, with minimal effort and growing experience required to bring in a big harvest. This makes garlic a great confidence booster for beginner gardeners or homesteaders.
Medicinal
A classic example of food as medicine, garlic is fantabulous for the immune system, circulation, heart health, cancer prevention, and of course protection from vampires — and also mosquitos.
Garlic Varieties
You can totally plant organic garlic from the grocery store, and I’ve done so in the past, but this time I picked mine up from a nursery. When buying from a nursery you get more variety options and more information about what variety you’re getting. I chose three varieties:
- Inchelium Red – A softneck variety with large bulbs and wonderfully rich flavor. I remember buying this kind at a farmers’ market once and loving it, so when I saw it in the nursery basket I knew I had to try growing it myself.
- Early Italian – Also a softneck variety that matures early and stores well. The sign said it produces large cloves, but the bulbs in the basket seemed normal-sized to me.
- Chesnok Red – A hardneck variety producing large purple-striped bulbs with fabulous flavor and medium shelf-life.
3. Apple Trees
Apple trees have got to be the quintessential permaculture plant (next to comfrey perhaps), probably because apples are such a widely loved and versatile crop that stores well. An apple tree often forms the central element of a permaculture fruit tree guild.
My family goes through at least an apple a day per person, which adds up to over fourteen hundred apples a year! Assuming three apples to a pound, and a conservative estimate of $2.00 per pound, we are spending about a thousand dollars per year on apples!
That is insane!
Imagine if we could grow all of our own apples. Even if we only ate them in season (not preserving them), that’s roughly $80.00 off our grocery bill each month apples are in season.
And that’s why apple trees are the first trees I wanted to get in the ground to start off our food forest.
Permaculture Functions of Apple Trees
Their deliciously edible fruit isn’t the only function apple trees offer in a permaculture garden. They also provide shade from the intense summer sun and shelter for smaller plants under their canopy. Their spring flowers attract pollinators, and autumn leaf fall mulches the ground and adds nutrients back to the soil.
Apple Tree Varieties
One thing to keep in mind about apple trees is that most varieties need cross-pollination to set fruit. Even the self-fertile varieties will produce more fruit if there’s another apple tree nearby for pollination.
Something I didn’t know, that I learned from a helpful nursery employee, is that not all apple varieties can cross-pollinate each other. So make sure the varieties you select are compatible with each other.
There are so many varieties of apples, that it’s hard to know what to choose. But because I was shopping at the end-of-season sales, my options were narrowed considerably.
I ended up picking three this year.
- Fuji – a favorite in our house
- Cox Orange Pippin – This variety has incredible flavor, said by some to be the best in the world. The drawbacks are that it is less disease-resistant and has a shorter shelf life than many other varieties.
- Snow apple – The tag on this tree identified it as a parent of the Macintosh, my long-time favorite apple, so I thought I’d give it a go.
4. Serviceberry
I’m familiar with the native serviceberry species, Amelanchier alnifolia, or Saskatoon serviceberry (don’t you just love the word Saskatoon?) from my childhood wilderness roamings with my botanist dad. It grows as a shrub, but some serviceberry plants can be trained as a tree.
I knew I wanted to plant serviceberry in my food forest, so when I found it at my local nursery, of course, two came home with me.
The variety I came across was Autumn Brilliance. As its name suggests, this variety has brilliant orange fall foliage. It’s also particularly disease-resistant.
Permaculture Functions of Serviceberry
Wildlife
In spring Serviceberry’s small white flowers attract pollinators. Its branches provide habitat and, in June, food for many bird species.
Harvest
It’s not just birds that enjoy the berries. People enjoy them as well. I find them lovely fresh, and I’ve heard they’re good in jams and pies. The juice can also be added to ciders. Serviceberry berries were food, medicine, and crafting wood for many Native American groups.
Windbreak
The shrubs grow large, up to fifteen feet, and sucker to form thickets. Because of this, they make great windbreaks, particularly in partly shaded areas.
5. Chicago Cold Hardy Figs
When we lived in Arizona we had a fig tree in the backyard of our rental house. It was wonderful. I remember climbing the tree to harvest them and getting so itchy afterward. Not so wonderful. It turns out fig branches and leaves have a milky white sap that is irritating to the skin. The itchiness was a small price to pay for those wonderful figs though. We ate them fresh, squeezed the jelly-like fruit out onto toast, dehydrated them, and made fig bread.
When we moved back to (cold) Colorado and then (also cold) Idaho, I thought I’d never be able to have a fig tree again. Imagine my delight when I learned about Chicago Cold Hardy Figs, which are hardy down to zone 5!
I found some of these beauties tucked in a corner at the end-of-season nursery sale and picked out two to adopt and raise as my own. (My kids are only a wee bit jealous of my fig tree babies.)
Permaculture Functions of Fig Trees
Food
Yummy, yummy food for people. Need I say more?
Habitat
Fig trees provide food and habitat for birds and also friendly wasps, which are the pollinators for the fruits.
Microclimate
The broad, lobed leaves of the fig tree not only provide shade but also transpire more than other trees, creating a cooler, moister microclimate in the heat of summer.
6. White Clover
Of all the plants I bought this month, none were nitrogen fixers. We haven’t tested our soils yet, but we expect they are deficient in nitrogen, so I wanted to get some nitrogen-fixing plants in ASAP. But I didn’t find any of the N-fixing berry bushes I was hoping to find, like sea buckthorn, goumi berry, and seaberry. Those will come next spring. In the meantime, I sprinkled clover seed for a little end-of-season N-fixing.
I also wanted to plant a ground cover around the base of the fruit trees where there’s no woodchip mulch, in an attempt to outcompete the grass. Clover is a great green mulch, protecting the soil from water loss to keep it moist.
Clover checks both of those boxes, so I bought a few pounds of white clover seed to scatter around the bases of all the fruit trees and shrubs. I’m also using it as a cover crop on the hugelkultur mound I’m making and I hope to establish it in the backyard pathways rather than grass.
Permaculture Functions of Clover
Speaking of stacking functions (N-fixer, check; green mulch, check), clover is also edible, both the leaves and flowers. I have yet to eat it, but apparently, it has a sweet, vanilla-like flavor. So there’s another function for clover in the permaculture garden.
Two More I Haven’t Planted this Autumn, But Wish I Had.
7. Stonefruit Trees
Stone fruit trees, including peaches, plums, nectarines, cherries, and apricots, do well when planted in the fall. I love all of these fruits, but peaches are an all-time favorite of mine.
When I was a kid, every August my mom would buy whole boxes of peaches at the farmer’s market. There were days I probably ate ten peaches or more in one day.
Mom would buy a whole box, planning to put up a bunch of peaches in the freezer, only for me to eat them all before she got to it and she’d have to buy another box the next Saturday.
Yeah, I’m going to have to grow several peach trees… And give a bunch of fruit to my mom.
Permaculture Functions of Stonefruit Trees
Stonefruit has pretty much the same benefits as apple trees from a permaculture perspective. Their flowers attract and provide food for pollinators, they provide shade and shelter for the plants beneath them, and they yield delicious fruit for us humans—if the birds and squirrels don’t get them first.
8. Rhubarb
Who doesn’t love rhubarb pie? Mixed with strawberries or just on its own, either way, is fine with me.
I’ve actually been reluctant to grow rhubarb because of all the sugar most rhubarb recipes require. Recently I’ve been thinking about ways to replace white sugar with apple juice in my rhubarb concoctions, and I’m anxious to try it.
But there are many other functions rhubarb fills in a permaculture garden besides being a vegetable crop. More on that below.
Rhubarb is best planted when it’s dormant, which means late autumn or early spring. Planting in autumn will yield a spring crop, so it pays to get them in the ground now rather than waiting until the ground thaws in the spring.
Permaculture Functions of Rhubarb
Vegetable Crop
Did you know that in addition to the stems, rhubarb flowers are also edible? Avoid the leaves though, which are extremely high in oxalic acid and considered poisonous. Even the stems have some oxalic acid (and it increases as the season progresses – so spring harvest is better than summer), but not enough to hurt you when eaten in moderation. Fun Fact: The concentration of oxalic acid in young rhubarb stems is less than what is found in spinach, chard, and beet greens.
Green Mulch
The broad, dark green leaves may not be edible, but they make an excellent mulch for a food forest floor. Just clip the stems off at the base and top to harvest, and drop the leaves in place.
Dynamic accumulator
When those mulching leaves break down they enrich the soil with minerals that the plant brought up from deep in the soil with its taproot.
Insect attractor
Rhubarb is wind-pollinated, but its flowers still attract beneficial insects to the garden.
Pioneer plant
Due to some of the benefits listed above, rhubarb is a pioneer plant — one of those hardy plants that thrive in disturbed areas and make it easier for other plants to grow. This is great for the permaculture garden or food forest that’s just starting out.
Hmmm, maybe I should try harder to get my hands on some rhubarb clumps this autumn for my own nascent food forest.
It’s Not Too Late
If the ground isn’t frozen yet, it’s not too late to plant some of these marvelous plants. The one exception, of the plants I’ve listed here, is clover. If you want to seed clover as a cover crop, it’s best to get it down six weeks before the first hard freeze so the seeds have a chance to germinate and do their work before winter takes them out.
I also wouldn’t suggest planting fruit trees right before a hard freeze, although a bit of frost won’t harm them. This will give them time to acclimate to their new home before the ground freezes.
Protecting New Plants for the Winter
Be kind to your newly planted friends and give them a nice thick layer of mulch to insulate for the winter. You can mulch heavily around trees, shrubs, and perennials, but leave the base of trunks clear so that they become too moist and rot.
Any cover crop seeds you’ve scattered can also be covered with mulch, but make it a very light layer. I left mine exposed but allowed any leaves that fell on them to remain, offering a bit of cover.
It’s also a good idea to wrap the trunks of young trees with tree wrap to give them some insulation from winter winds and freezes.
If you’re pushing the climate zone with any of your plantings, then do even more to protect them over the winter. Here are a few ideas.
- Stack strawbales to the north (south for you southern hemisphere folks) of your trees to provide insulation and also bounce that low-angle winter sun back to the plants.
- Wrap whole small trees with burlap fabric.
- Build a bamboo pole teepee frame around the tree and wrap the whole thing in clear plastic
- Put a temporary hoop house over them for the winter.
Get Planting!
That concludes my list of what to plant in autumn in a food forest (or even a future food forest). There really are a lot of options. Not only that, it’s the best time of year for planting many of these plants.
Want more plant ideas? For trees, how about an American persimmon, hawthorn, or chestnut?
What have you planted this season? Let us know in the comments.
Leave a Reply