
Seasonal autumn foods are at their peak or ripeness and flavor. Autumn is the time of the richest bounty. The food that has been growing all summer is ready for harvest. Through the late summer into autumn, now is the time to buy enough food at farmers’ markets to put by for winter when less fresh food is available.
I like to make jam and preserves from the bountiful ripe fruit. I freeze vegetables for winter meals. My grandparents, lifelong gardeners, did this every year. Now, I do it, too.
The variety of seasonal autumn foods is often larger than those of summer. The warm weather crops, that were started in late spring and early summer are ready for harvest. Cool weather crops are planted in mid-summer to harvest in late summer and fall. Food put by or preserved for eating during the winter and spring months.
This is the last seasonal food list for food crops and completes the cycle. We started with winter seasonal foods in January. These seasonal food lists are a guide to help fill out your seasonal round. To learn about eating seasonally, visit CUESA for seasonality charts and what is in season now.
Contents
Growing Food All Year Round
If you would like to learn how to grow food that you can harvest in your kitchen garden throughout the autumn and winter, Eliot Coleman’s book, Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables From Your Home Garden ALL Year Long (Amazon affiliate link; see book on Amazon.com)
More Seasonal Foods Posts
Seasonal foods for spring
Seasonal foods for summer
Seasonal foods for Winter
Seasonal Rounds: Charting Living In Harmony with the Land
How to Create a Seasonal Round – Part 2
Some of the vegetables listed are technically a fruit, but we use them as vegetables.
Autumn Seasonal Foods
Autumn Vegetables
- artichokes
- beans
- beets
- bell peppers
- broccoli
- broccoli rabe
- brussels sprouts
- cabbage
- carrots
- cauliflower
- celery
- celery root
- chard
- fennel
- kohlrabi
- lentils
- mushrooms – chanterelle, porcini, shiitake, truffles
- onions
- peas
- potatoes
- rutabagas
- salsify
- squash, winter (hard-rind – acorn, butternut, Hubbard)
- sweet potatoes
- yams
Leafy Greens
- collards
- endive, Belgian
- escarole
- fennel
- kale
- lettuce
- radicchio
- spinach
- watercress

Autumn Fruits
Citrus fruits are in season in Florida and California in autumn and winter.
- apples
- cantaloupe
- cranberries
- dates
- figs
- guava
- gooseberries
- grapes
- huckleberries
- oranges, blood
- passion fruit
- pears
- persimmons
- plums
- pomegranates
- pumpkins
- quince
- watermelon

Nuts
- almonds
- chestnuts
- pistachios
- pumpkins seeds
- sunflower seeds
- walnuts See: Foraging Black Walnuts

Meats
- duck
- pheasant
- turkey
See the post: Waterfowl Migration in Autumn
Fish and Shellfish
- oysters
- scallops
Herbs, Spices, and Seasonings
- allspice
- basil
- cayenne
- cinnamon
- cloves
- cumin
- garlic
- horseradish
- lovage
- mustard
- nutmeg
- sage