Fall greens bed (square foot)

Kale, bok choy, mustard, spinach and arugula sown in late summer. A light frost makes them sweeter, and the spinach can last through winter.

Bed size

4′ × 8′

Soil depth

12″

Layout

Square Foot Gardening

Plants

110

Sun

Full sun. By the time these mature, the fall sun is about half as strong as in July.

Count back 6–10 weeks from your first fall frost: start kale and bok choy indoors first (early July for most of the U.S.), or buy transplants, then sow spinach, mustard, and arugula outdoors in 2-week steps behind them.

What’s planted

• Lacinato kale‘Lacinato’

  6 plants · 12″ spacing
• Bok choy‘Prize Choy’

  24 plants · 6″ spacing
• Spinach‘Bloomsdale Longstanding’

  24 plants · 6″ spacing
• Mustard greens‘Red Giant’

  24 plants · 6″ spacing
• Arugula‘Astro’

  32 plants · 6″ spacing

Why these neighbors

• Red Giant mustard & Lacinato kale

  Glossy-leaved Brassica juncea (Red Giant is one) is the canonical extension-cited flea-beetle trap crop on the perimeter of cole-crop fields — AAFC and US Prairie extension trials show 50–80% concentration of beetle pressure onto the mustard rather than the kale.

• Red Giant mustard & Prize Choy bok choy

  Same trap-crop mechanism as with the kale — the mustard perimeter (row 4 plus the row-6 corners) draws flea beetles away from the row-3 bok choy while it's still small enough to be hurt by them.

• Lacinato kale & Bloomsdale spinach

  Different root depths and different families: the kale anchors take what the shallow spinach mat leaves, and neither hosts the other's pests — a clean interplant for a packed fall bed.

• Prize Choy bok choy & Red Giant mustard

  Matched harvest logic: both are cut whole at 45–50 days, so rows 3 and 4 clear together and free sixteen square feet for a garlic planting in late October.

Care notes

• Timing is the whole game in a fall bed: count back from your first-frost date, not forward from today. Kale and bok choy want 8–10 frost-free weeks; arugula only needs 4.
• Every crop here is frost-tolerant and most are frost-improved — kale, spinach, arugula, and bok choy convert starch to sugar after a light freeze. Don't pull the bed at the first frost; that's when it peaks.
• Bloomsdale Longstanding spinach sown in this layout will overwinter under row cover or snow in zones 5+ and regrow for the earliest spring harvest you'll ever cut.
• Red Giant mustard doubles as ornament — deep purple leaves that hold color through fall. Harvest baby leaves at 20 days or whole heads at 45; watch the row-6 corner cells for flea-beetle damage and cut those back the moment beetle counts climb, so the pest pressure lands on mustard leaves you can spare rather than kale you can't.
• No radish in this bed on purpose: kale, bok choy and radish share clubroot, flea beetles and cabbage aphids, so they're kept apart. Radish goes in the spring salad bed instead, alongside lettuce, spinach, and carrots — all in different plant families.
• Tomatoes shouldn't follow or sit next to the brassica rows — if this bed held tomatoes in summer, give it a year before planting Solanaceae again.
• When rows 3–4 clear in late October, plant garlic in the vacated cells — it's the textbook fall succession and the alliums deter overwintering brassica pests.