How to Grow Cauliflower in the Fall

July 23, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Cauliflower can be a tricky crop to grow, especially for southern gardeners. A member of the cabbage or brassica family, cauliflower thrives in the cool temperatures of spring and fall. While cauliflower may survive light frosts, it isn’t winter hardy, so growing it in much of the Southeast means finding a sweet spot between temperatures that are too hot or too cold. These tips can help you grow finicky fall cauliflower with success.

When to Plant Fall Cauliflower

Southern gardeners can grow cauliflower anytime the weather is consistently cool and they can avoid the risk of hard frosts. For those in the Deep South, cauliflower may be a good winter crop.

Cauliflower is highly sensitive to temperature. It grows best when the temperature is consistently between 60° and 65°F. If the temperature is too hot, cauliflower will form stunted heads and bolt, or go to flower prematurely. Wait to plant cauliflower outdoors until temperatures are consistently below 75°F.

You also want to plant your cauliflower early enough that you can harvest the heads before it gets too cold. Cauliflower can tolerate light frosts, but prolonged exposure to temperatures below 32°F will damage the curds, making them rubbery.

Days to maturity can vary for cauliflower depending on the variety you select, when you plant, and the weather. For fall-planted crops, we recommend adding 15 days to your cauliflower variety’s expected ‘days to harvest’ to account for dwindling fall light. Those days should begin when you transplant the cauliflower out into the garden, not when you start seeds indoors.

Start Your Cauliflower Indoors

While you can direct-sow cauliflower, for fall gardens its best to start your plants indoors. Even if the weather is still too hot for cauliflower to germinate and grow, you can get the plants started in a cool spot indoors.

Cauliflower can get leggy and weak without adequate light. Most growers will find they need supplemental lighting to start cauliflower and other plants indoors.

Read more about starting transplants indoors here.

Soil Preparation

Cauliflower can also be picky about its soil requirements. If possible, have your soil tested. Cauliflower thrives in fertile soil with a pH between 6 and 7.

For good production, cauliflower needs consistent nutrients throughout its growing period. Amend your soil with finished compost or aged manure before planting. Fertilize with a well-balanced fertilizer if necessary.

Transplanting Cauliflower

After hardening off, transplant your cauliflower seedlings out into the bed on a cool, overcast day. Cauliflower needs plenty of space as it matures, so plant it 18 to 24 inches apart in rows 30 inches apart.

Watering, Weeding, and Care

Cauliflower requires consistent moisture throughout its growth period to produce firm, nicely flavored heads. Cauliflower plants that experience drought can develop off-flavors or a mushier texture. Water consistently if you’re not getting at least one inch of rain per week, especially if you have sandy soil, which drains more quickly.

Ensuring your plants aren’t competing with weeds will also help your cauliflower develop. Weed frequently using a hoe to kill small weeds, but be careful not to damage the plants. Using mulch can also help reduce weeds and keep the soil cool and moist.

Cauliflower Pests & Diseases

Unfortunately, cauliflower is susceptible to several pests and diseases, including cabbage worms, flea beetles, black rot, and downy mildew. Cabbage worms, also called cabbage moths or cabbage loopers, are what we most frequently see gardeners struggling with, and they can be particularly troublesome in the fall after breeding all summer.

To conquer the cabbage worms, visit our guide to organic cabbage worm control.

Cauliflower plant with small head forming — Buddy431, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Blanching Cauliflower

If you want white cauliflower, you need to blanch the curds. When the white head or curd begins to form, tie the top leaves together over it to protect the curd from sunlight, which causes the curd to yellow.

Don’t do this for purple or yellow cauliflower or romanesco! They need the light to develop full color.

Harvesting Cauliflower

Cut your cauliflower heads when they are large and firm. If you leave them too long, the curds will become loose and open, and they will lose flavor. Usually, this is slower in the cool temperatures of fall and winter. Don’t harvest when heads are wet, or the curds will mold in storage.

Cauliflower heads will typically last a week or two in the refrigerator when harvested properly. You can also blanch and freeze cauliflower for later use.

Garden Advice

Hot Weather Harvest: Best Practices

July 14, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

We’ve had some extreme heat in Virginia this summer, and we’re not alone. Extreme heat events are on the rise across the United States. Many gardeners know high temperatures can significantly impact plant growth, causing issues like blossom drop, increased disease problems, and reduced production. Unfortunately, high heat can also affect your freshly picked harvest.

In this post, we’ll talk about how heat may impact your freshly harvested produce and what you can do about it.

How Does Heat Harm Your Harvest?

High temperatures can impact the flavor, texture, nutrients, and appearance of your freshly harvested crops.

Increased Respiration: Hot produce undergoes a metabolic process to consume oxygen and stored sugars and carbohydrates, releasing carbon dioxide, water vapor, and heat. This process can make your produce less sweet, reduce its nutrient value, and change its texture.

Cellular Breakdown: High temperatures can cause cellular breakdown, which causes produce to rot more quickly. The longer your produce stays hot, the lower its shelf life will be.

Wilting: Hot weather harvesting can result in rapid water loss, causing wilting and soft textures in vegetables like collards, cilantro, lettuce, arugula, and basil.

Time Your Harvest

As you’d suspect, to keep your produce as fresh as possible, you want to harvest when temperatures are as cool as possible. Early mornings or evenings, when the temperatures are lower, the field isn’t in direct sunlight, and the plants are more hydrated, are the best times to pick your crops. Cooler, cloudy days can also be a good choice if they align with your harvest needs.

Immediately Cool Your Harvest

When you harvest your produce, you want to remove any field heat as quickly as possible. For most crops like broccoli, lettuce, and carrots, the best way to do this is to wash them in cool or cold water. For sensitive crops like lettuce, you can rinse off any dirt in cool water and then place them into an ice bath. This will help the leaves cool off and absorb moisture, keeping them crisp and flavorful longer.

Thoroughly dry any crops you wash or hydro-cool in an ice bath. Damp conditions can encourage the growth of mold and bacteria. A salad spinner is helpful for drying greens.

A few hot-weather crops like artichokes, melons, peppers, and tomatoes shouldn’t be tossed into an ice bath or washed immediately after harvesting. For these, move them into a cool space as quickly as possible. Ideally, somewhere with AC.

Hands washing lettuce — Washing lettuce by Bryon Lippincott

Move Your Harvest into the Shade

Move your produce out of the sunlight as quickly as possible. For large summer harvests, it’s best to carry each container of produce into the shade as soon as it’s full before moving on to the next one.

You can also use easy-ups or other shade canopies to temporarily shade the area you’re working in. Prolonged exposure to sunlight can impact your produce’s flavor, texture, and shelf-life.

Store Anything You Won’t Use Immediately at Appropriate Temperatures

Different crops keep best at different temperatures. Some crops like cauliflower, parsnips, and spinach keep well at 32°F. Others, like green beans, watermelons, and tomatoes, will store longer when kept at warmer temperatures between 40°F and 60°F. If you want to keep produce in cold storage, be sure to look up your crop’s exact storage requirements.

Check out the Cornell University Cold Storage Chart & Reference Guide for specifics.

Garden Advice

Growing Buckwheat as a Cover Crop

July 9, 2026 Jordan Charbonneau Leave a comment

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) is a grain crop or short-season cover crop that’s perfect for backyard gardeners and small farmers. It’s quick-growing and can help growers attract pollinators, suppress weeds, add organic matter to the soil, and break down slow-release fertilizers. It’s easy to grow and easy to sneak in between summer and fall crops. Learn more about the benefits of growing buckwheat as a cover crop and how to use it in your crop rotation.

Why Grow Buckwheat?

Buckwheat offers many benefits depending on how you use it.

Weed Suppression

Buckwheat grows at near lightning speed. It’s ready in 30 to 45 days as a green manure crop or 80 days for grain production. This fast growth means that buckwheat is excellent for smothering warm-weather annual weeds. For best weed suppression, you want to sow buckwheat fairly densely. We recommend about one pound of seed for every 400 square feet.

Nurse Crop for Clover

Typically, we experts recommend buckwheat as a spring and summer cover crop, but in the southeast we also recommend it for fall and early winter when paired with crimson clover or other cool-season cover crops. Buckwheat acts as a nurse crop for the crimson clover during the heat of the day, and in the fall, it is killed by frost.

Support Beneficial Insects

Buckwheat’s dense, branching clusters of flowers are rich sources of nectar that support bees and other beneficial insects. It’s especially effective in attracting parasitic wasps, pirate bugs, lacewings, lady beetles, hover flies, and other predatory insects which feed on pests like aphids, thrips, caterpillars, and other pests.

Buckwheat flowers in about four to five weeks and continues flowering for up to 10 weeks. If you want to support beneficial insects like pirate bugs, let your buckwheat flower for at least 20 days so that the insects have time to complete their life cycle.

Break Down Slow-Release Fertilizers

Buckwheat’s unique root system produces mild acids, allowing the plants to break down and take up phosphorous and other minerals. When the buckwheat residue decomposes, these minerals become accessible to other crops.

Soil Improvement

For those looking to loosen and improve their soil, buckwheat is also a great option. In the top ten inches of soil, buckwheat creates a dense root system that leaves the soil loose and perfect for the next crop in a low or no-till system.

While buckwheat doesn’t fix nitrogen like legume cover crops do, it can help hold it. The plants grow quickly and take up nitrogen from the soil, preventing its loss through erosion. When you’re ready for the next crop, till in the buckwheat and it will release the nitrogen back into the soil.

When left until flowering, buckwheat also produces a good bit of organic matter, which you can till in or cut and leave on the surface. When left on the surface, it works well as a mulch for fall crops.

Adding Buckwheat to Your Rotation

Buckwheat seeds rot easily in cold, wet soil, and the plant is very susceptible to frost, so wait until your soil has warmed and all danger of frost has passed before planting buckwheat in spring. Burying buckwheat too deeply can also rot the seeds, but you don’t want to leave it on the surface either. After broadcasting your buckwheat seeds, it’s best to rake or harrow them into the soil. As your buckwheat germinates, reseed any bare spots for best results.

Buckwheat will grow well in infertile soil, but it will do poorly in heavy, wet soil. It’s often a top choice for newly cleared land, as nitrogen-tie up from woody debris and decaying roots won’t impact its growth.

We frequently use buckwheat’s fast growth to fill in gaps in the summer and keep soil covered between spring or summer and fall crops. Extreme afternoon heat in the summer can cause buckwheat to wilt, but it will bounce back overnight. In hot, dry periods, you’ll need to water buckwheat.

You can also rely on buckwheat as a quick-growing emergency cover crop in the event of crop failure. We like to leave the soil bare as little as possible.

In fall and winter, you can use buckwheat as a nurse crop for cool-season cover crops before frost. You can also allow buckwheat to winter-kill and use it as a mulch for planting late winter or early spring crops.

Managing Buckwheat

Buckwheat rarely has problems with pests or diseases, but it can become a bit of a nuisance in itself. To avoid buckwheat self-seeding, cut or kill your crop before it has flowered for more than a week. Thankfully, the tender stems make buckwheat easy to scythe or mow down.

If you don’t need that plot in the following season or year, you can also allow buckwheat to self-seed. As buckwheat is frost-sensitive, you may want to replace it with a cold-tolerant legume or other cover crop for winter.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange