Planting the winter garden

Asparagus seeding out

As the last of the tomatoes & eggplant are being harvested and the herbs are about ready to pick and dry for winter use, I am beginning to plant my winter garden. For the past few years I have wanted to plant crops for winter harvest but always seemed to be too busy to get them planted. Last year I did manage to get carrots in which we harvested until January - they were absolutely delicious! This year I planned ahead and was able to start seeds and plant on time. I started cabbage (red and savoy), broccoli and cauliflower seeds in soil blocks on a heat mat in the beginning of August. A week later I was able to transplant them into larger flats in the greenhouse. After a minor attack from cabbage worms they are in the garden and growing nicely.



Floating row cover on lettuce



Cabbage plants

I direct sowed carrots, romaine lettuce, fall & winter lettuce, mache, spinach and kale on September 13th. By the 16th almost everything had started to come up. The night temps have been in the 50's with daytime temps in the 70's, other than being dry the weather has been perfect. I have 4' x 4' x 1' wire baskets covering the plants with row covers on top. In a week or two I am going to build "mini greenhouses" to cover the plants for the winter.  I am planning on making three 4' x 12' mini greenhouses to start with and will be covering them with plastic to protect the plants from the winter frost.

Spinach Seedling

Lettuce Seedlings

The mini greenhouses will be running east to west with hinged lids on the south side. They should be adequate to keep the plants from freezing and help keep unwanted pests out. In the spring I will remove the plastic and replace with row covers to start next spring's crop. You can find great books by Eliot Coleman on growing a winter harvest in my resources section.