Here is a tour of my July garden, with talking points. I touch on Winter gardening in this video, but I’d like to say a few words about it here and post my winter gardening planting schedule in brief for anyone that wants to get started experimenting this year. One thing to know about winter gardening is that it is actually quite easy. There is little work to do once it all gets established and the rains come. Weeds are weak and spindly in the low light, and watering is completely unnecessary. It’s pretty cool to have a garden full of food all winter and the main work just being to pull it out, clean it, cook it and eat it.
Keep in mind that my climate is rather mild. That is not to say that you can’t winter garden in colder climates, but that further expedients and different timing may be necessary. Eliot Coleman grows year round in Maine, as detailed in his Winter Harvest Handbook, so you probably can to, wherever you are. It’s just particularly easy anywhere from about my zone and warmer. Simple expedients like mulching mature roots with straw to insulate or growing under low plastic tunnels will probably go a long way, but the timing will be different. I will see consistent freeze damage to lettuce, but all root vegetables I can think of over winter fine here and most will actually continue growing through the winter (albeit slowly). My lows are around 20 f, but for just overnight and it is rare indeed for really freezing temps to hold through many days. Occasionally lower, but rarely. We get solid frozen ground, but shallow, frost heave, ice on any water left out, but just a sheet, not freezing whole buckets or anything like that.
The first step is to know what is possible. I can grow carrots, beets, turnips, rutabaga, many hardy radish types, parsnips, scorzonera, salsify, chard, kale, cole crops, cilantro, leeks, potato onions, parsley and probably stuff I’m forgetting, in the open all winter, with only occasional freeze damage, usually minor, to a few of those. Lettuce will do okay under tunnels and the like, but not in the open.
After that, the trick is timing. We have to remember in the heat of summer when we’re starting to bring in basket loads of produce, that this abundance is short lived, and it’s time now to put in winter stuff, just as we start summer garden plants when it’s still freezing out. As you can see in the schedule below, that varies depending on what plant it is. I’m likely to put in certain roots early to mature over the summer and then eat them in the winter, the most drastic example being leeks. Leeks I start in Mid January, but eat most of them the following fall/winter and spring.
This schedule is always a work in progress and I may move stuff by as much as a month in the future as I continue tweaking it all. So, use this as a starting place and adjust as you gain experience.
Note that times are either the first or fifteenth of the month, which is how I do nearly all of my planting.
LATE MAY TO EARLY JUNE: Plant in ground- Parsnip, Scorzonera & Salsify.
JULY 15TH:
In flats: turnip, rutabagas (swedes), beets, kale, chard.
Direct seed in ground: Carrots, Daikon for Fall Kimchee & cilantro for fall salsa making.
AUGUST 1st: Sow Chinese Cabbage (aka Napa Cabbage) in ground if there is bed space, or in flats for fall Kimchee making.
AUGUST 15th: Start lettuce and cilantro to over winter, in flats or direct sown.
SEPTEMBER 1st: Direct seed big winter radishes (like daikon, Spanish black, etc.), clover under the current crops for an early start on cover crops.
SEPTEMBER 15th: Direct sow Fava beans under current crops or in empty beds, vetch, barley, rye, other winter cover crops.
JANUARY 15th to. FEBRUARY 15th, sow stuff like lettuce, hardy greens, carrots, radish, spinach and peas under plastic tunnels. Start leeks in flats to eat through the following winter. Many summer crops also start in flats on FEBRUARY 15th, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, brassicas, chard and other greens, beets, turnip & annual herbs etc. But squash and melons I don’t start until MARCH.
