Now is the perfect time to start more basil if yours has already begun to flower. It won’t survive a light frost, but you can plan ahead and plant yours in a pot to bring inside when temperatures start dropping.
Plop in a few bush bean seeds and you’ll get a decent harvest in fall. In fact, this is a good crop to succession sow every three weeks, beginning in spring after all risk of frost has passed. By midsummer, you could be on your third or fourth round of seeds!
Fava beans are exceptionally cold hardy (down to 10°F), so you can sow seeds in midsummer and let the plants produce into winter. Even though they take an average of 90 days to maturity in fall, you can actually start harvesting much sooner than that.
Arugula’s the unicorn of leafy vegetables: it’s more heat-tolerant than most, yet can survive a light frost. And even though it thrives in cooler weather, it can germinate in very warm summer soil (up to 85°F to 90°F), making it ideal for midsummer sowing.
Brassicas are the stars of the fall garden: not only are they very cold-tolerant, they actually turn sweeter after a few frosts! If you’ve always grown kale, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, and collards as spring crops, then you’re in for a delicious treat!