If you live in Southern California you may or may not know that we have 2 growing seasons!

Once your spring and summer fruits or veggies have come and gone it is time to think about fall planting. You may have heard of it, it is called succession planting. There is a wide variety of things you can grow using your SoCal Mulch speciality blend soils in the fall. Here is a full list of great foods to grow in the fall:
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Acorn Squash

Asian Pear

Barbados Cherries

Black Crowberries

Black Salsify

Belgian Endive

Broccoli

Brussels Sprouts

Butter Lettuce

Buttercup Squash

Butternut Squash

Cactus Pear

Cape Gooseberries

Cardoon

Cauliflower 

Chayote Squash

Chinese Long Beans

Crab Apples

Cranberries

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Date Plum

Delicata Squash

Diakon Radish

Endive

Feijoa

Garlic

Ginger

Grapes

Guava

Hearts of Palm

Huckleberries

Jalapeno Peppers

Jerusalem Artichoke

Jujube

Key Limes

Kohlrabi

Kumquats

Muscadine Grapes

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Mushrooms

Ong Choy Spinach

Passion Fruit

Pear

Persimmons

Pineapple

Pomegranate

Pumpkin

Quince

Radicchio

Sapote

Sharon Fruit

Sugar Apple

Sunflower Kernels

Sweet Dumpling Squash

Sweet Potatoes

Swiss Chard

Turnips [/fusion_builder_column]

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What a great idea! Here is a great picture and some instructions on how to create a hotbed for your plants with those pesky plastic bottles you have lying around.

1. Use one of our premium soils to set the foundation for your hotbed. You can learn more about our soils here: https://socalmulch.com/grow-mulch-soils/

2. Grade your land and ensure that your drainage is properly graded in

3. Cut off the bottom of your plastic bottles, scissors will work fine.

4. Put your seeds or seedlings into the ground then put your hot house bottles over the top

5. Don’t forget to label your bottles with what you have planted or you can use popsicle sticks with permanent marker!

This custom blended designer soil is distinct in that we take great care in blending some of the best products nature has to offer. SCM blends the following items into our PharmaSoil: Forest Humus, Douglas Fir Fines, Organic Compost, 3/8’s Mini Fines, #4 Perlite, Bat Guano, Worm Castings, Bone and Blood Meal, Pacific Kelp, Sphagnum Peat Moss and Oyster Shells. This product is designed for growing some of the finest highly sensitive plantings with an increased female production in mind. We have designed this with a perfect PH. We have grown some extremely beautiful plants with this Soil.

Get ready to enjoy the best vegetables you’ve ever eaten.

In many regions, vegetables will grow 3 or 4 seasons of the year. Warm-season vegetables, such as tomatoes and cucumbers, grow in the frost-free weather of late spring until fall. Cool-season vegetables, such as lettuce and broccoli, grow in the cooler weather of early spring and fall; most withstand light frosts.

In vegetable gardening, 3 things are absolutely crucial for success: full sun, good soil, and plenty of water. The next factors also make a big difference:

growing varieties adapted to your region
practicing good gardening habits
identifying and controlling pests
Because Bonnie plant varieties are distributed regionally, you will automatically have varieties for your area. Our web site can help with good gardening practices and identifying pests.

Relax with your first garden. You may make a few mistakes, but you’ll begin to understand what makes vegetables grow. Probably the biggest mistake first-time gardeners make is making the garden too big.

Make your first garden a manageable size. A few containers might be way to “dip your toe” in the water. Or, a raised bed measuring 4 x 8 feet, such as the ones featured in our raised bed section will give you plenty of space to learn. In the ground, the biggest that you might want to attempt is a 12 x 24-foot summer garden for a family of 4 that could include: 3 hills of yellow squash; 1 mound of zucchini; 10 assorted peppers; 6 tomato plants; 12 okra plants; a 12-foot row of bush beans; 2 cucumbers on a cage; 2 eggplant; 6 basil, 1 rosemary, and a few low herbs such as oregano, thyme, and marjoram tucked in here and there.

When you grow vegetables, you and your kids learn a lot about nature, too.
Spending time in a garden will actually grow more than vegetables. You’ll be surprised how much you learn, and you can pass on that knowledge to little ones, too.

You’ll be surprised how quickly vegetables develop. Most grow from a tiny transplant to a full harvest in 30 to 90 days. Because of this, vegetables cannot be ignored. Overgrown zucchini will look like a baseball bat and over-mature okra are like cardboard. On the other hand, a garden grown okra pod is usually flawless, not skinned and browned in shipping. Zucchini and other vegetables are the same way. And their flavor is fullest because they have been on the plant until the last possible moment, building flavors and sugars to full ripening.

The first season is usually the hardest because of the time, cost, and work in setting up the garden. The next time you plant it is much, much easier. The main set up will have been done.

And don’t give up. You will make mistakes. So did Einstein. A vegetable garden asks that you check it almost daily for water, pest control, and harvest. If you do that, you will discover a new dimension to living. What you see and learn in those regular visits is as rewarding as the harvest. Enjoy.

Article source: http://bonnieplants.com/library/are-you-new-to-vegetable-gardening-read-this-first/