A grocery bill can reveal something surprisingly useful about a garden: which vegetables deserve precious planting space. If a bag of salad greens disappears from the refrigerator every few days, growing those greens in a fall garden may make far more sense than filling a bed with something that rarely reaches the dinner table.
Fall also gives gardeners a different menu of possibilities than summer. Cool temperatures suit crops such as lettuce, spinach, kale, radishes, carrots, turnips, and many members of the cabbage family, making the season an excellent time to grow vegetables that can go directly from garden to kitchen. The smartest fall garden may not look like a traditional vegetable patch at all. It can look more like a grocery list with roots.
