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Good Gardening: Planning Your Winter Garden

John Fischer

I know you're probably just picking your first tomatoes, and still waiting for peppers to get ripe, but it's time plan for your winter garden
  Any space where you will have harvested the spring or summer crop by the end of August is an area ready to grow more food-- right through the winter.  My spring lettuce crop has pretty much gone to seed, I dug garlic a few days ago, and the potatoes will be ready to harvest late in the month.  All those areas can be second cropped with vegetables that take the cold, and give you fresh produce on New Years Day.
  First let me talk about what winter gardening is not.  Tomatoes, melons, cucumbers green beans-summer vegetables.  Winter crops include lettuce arugula and bok choy, along with carrots, beets, broccoli, fava beans, cauliflower.
  All of them can be planted from seed now, and from widely available starts a little later in the season.  I do a bit of both
  Cool weather crops don't germinate well in warm soil.   I sprout my fall and winter lettuce in pots that I can keep in a shady spot on hot days. Once they are an inch or two high you can transplant them.   If you sow seeds directly in the ground you will have to keep them damp- two or three times a day.
  Another reason to buy starts is that their winter home may not be ready until September.  Since seeds in August, or plants in September are really the same thing, spending money on starts can buy you a bigger planting window.  
  I know it's cold in January, but you don't need a greenhouse to grow winter vegetables.   Many edible plants can take temperatures down to 15 degrees and thaw back to original vitality.  Lettuce is fragile below 24 or 25.  You will eat it in early winter.  Fava beans are hardy to about 15 degrees, and after eating greens all winter, you will get a great bean crop in May.  Leeks can go down to 10 degrees- with no protection.
  You will need to add fertility to your soil- two crops in one year is a lot to ask of your garden.  Always use an organic fertilizer like fish emulsion, or seed meal.  Water soluble chemical fertilizers will just wash away with the rain.
  One of my favorite winter vegetables is purple sprouting broccoli.  Put plants in the ground in September, and by early March you will start a two month broccoli harvest-- with no aphids.
  Look around the web to get winter garden ideas, and  check out what's available at local nurseries  I have some information at recycle-weather.com  And get ready to enjoy a fresh home grown  salad after you come back from a day of skiing.

 

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