The Winter Garden
Frost on leaves in the thick of winter.
Just like that, winter is upon us. With shorter days and colder temperatures, your garden is going to look quite different than it did a few months ago. For those living in regions with standard changing seasons, gardeners have to hunker down for the winter by harvesting all fall crops, prepping soil for snowfall, wrapping up small trees and shrubs, and moving any crop growing indoors. As for folks living in warmer areas without any first or last frost dates, we still have the opportunity to produce plenty of food outdoors, but let’s remember that a winter garden has a lot of different crop options and requirements.
A cauliflower growing slowly in the midst of the winter season.
First and foremost, the winter garden is much slower to grow than that of its’ summer counterpart. While warm crops like tomatoes and peppers flourish with multiple rounds of picking for many months of the year, a lot of the cool-season crops take a lot longer to yield a harvest and a smaller one at that. Plants like carrots, winter squash, beets, and potatoes take many months before they are ready to be pulled, and brassicas like cauliflower, broccoli, and cabbage will only produce one head per plant. Due to this particular nature of the winter garden, the need for a successful harvest relies on how we choose to manage and plan our our crop rotation for the season.
Picking carrots that are finally ready.
Harvesting a butternut squash.
While in the spring and summer, you can plant a lot of different crops and get a lot of harvests throughout the season, winter is not as forgiving. You won’t be able to reseed many times over during November and December, so a tried and true strategy I use is selecting only a few crops and planting many of each, instead of planting a few of many different kinds of crops. For example, I could plant six to eight broccoli plants, a full raised bed of bok choy and kale, and the remaining containers could have three kinds of lettuce. By implementing this practice, particularly for smaller gardens, I usually grow a decent-sized harvest of the plants that I love rather than a little bit of everything. However, if a little bit of everything is more your style, go for it.
Rain water on plant foliage.
A young tree and shrub wrapped and prepped for the winter.
Lastly, with winter comes the rain (and maybe even hail or snow!) Due to the colder atmosphere, you will have to adjust your watering schedule for your cool crops, ensuring they don’t drown in moisture. You will be watering your plants a lot less in general, but keeping in tune with how to manage watering during rainy spells is essential. If it is due to rain, make sure to skip watering until after the rain ceases. Some of you can use the ‘rain guard’ feature on your irrigation system if it applies, and if not, you can temporarily shut off your timer altogether. If it rains for days on end, then covering your crops might be something worth considering to avoid soggy soil and wet plants.
Watering the garden in the morning is the best time of day to do so.
The winter garden is a beautiful thing, and even without constant bountiful harvests and fast-growing crops, there is still a lot to learn and care for and quite a bit of beauty too. Winter gardening takes a little more patience but is well worth the effort. Look out for my next blog post on House Plant Winter Care!