Fall garden planting, zone 5

I'm new at this so I'm open to all suggestions on planting a fall garden in zone 4-5. Has anyone started anything for fall? What have you or have you started planting in your fall garden? I've been told to start my garlic in Sept. Is that right?

Flowers or veggies or herbs.. or all of these?

I am too busy trying to finish up spring planting! ~Jan

I'm mostly interested in veggies right now. I'm thinking maybe radishes and chinese cabbage but what else?

I did lettuce and it only took about 10 days to be "pick ready." If you don't pick it goes to flower pretty quick and then isn't as tasty.

I am under the impression that any cool weather veggies can be planted in late summer, early fall. So it would be peas, lettuce, radish, spinach... ~Jan

Kale :)

Ann, besides the cool weather veggies mentioned above, we - in the Upper Midwest - do mostly bulb planting for spring blooms and sowing of seeds that need cold stratification (a period of cold, usually 60 to 90 days) to germinate. You might want to stop by the seed starting forum for that. Most natives in these parts need a cold period to germinate. It is a mechanism used by plants that shed seed late summer or fall to prevent the seed from germinating with only a few weeks of growing season left - and then, of course being killed because it did not have time to set down roots. Fall is also a great time to plant bare root shrubs and trees. There is a small spurt of growth in the fall for many woodies due to great, cool weather, that allows the roots to dig in. Not as intense as in spring, but they do shoot up a bit. Hope this helps!

That sure does help! Thanks sherriseden and everyone. So far i've planted leeks, garlic, radishes, lettuce and chinese cabbage. Most of these I planted at the end of August and so far so good. :) The leeks I'll leave in the ground under mulch and see if they will be my baby leeks to plant deeper in the spring. Sherri, I've gotten daffodil bulbs to get into the ground and ordered some bareroot trees to plant. Thank you to all of you for your suggestions! :)