Mother Earth News is a great place to get info! that is why I got a tab for them on my blog!

Well-cared-for gardens, orchards and livestock can be amazingly — sometimes exhaustingly — productive. After all, there’s only so much fruit and produce you have time to can and space to store. And only so many eggs you can eat, milk you can drink and meat you can make room for in the freezer. When you find you’ve temporarily produced more than you can consume, why not do what small farmers have always done? Sell your extra products at a farmstand or farmers market, or barter, trade or donate what you can’t use.

Setting Up a Farmstand

Getting started selling vegetables and extra goods is simple. “Tap the network you already have,” says Mary Shepherd, editor of the bimonthly magazine Farmers’ Markets Today. “Put up a sign at work, send an email or put a post on Facebook.” You can also consider posting an ad on the ‘Farm + Garden’ category at Craigslist.org.

If your road gets enough traffic and you have a handy parking spot, try to sell products right from your home. You can make your own farmstand for selling eggs, vegetables and more by putting your offerings on a table next to an “honor box” for payment. Just be sure to bolt the box to something secure. Promote your farmstand with a sign in your yard, an ad in the local paper or flyers at local cafés.

Another option would be to park a produce-loaded truck near a busy corner to sell sweet corn, melons or other goods. In many small towns, you may be able to get permission to park your “portable produce stand” in the parking lot of the post office, courthouse or another central building.

Farmers Markets, Big and Small

If you’re thinking about someday expanding your business, start by selling a few weeks’ worth of surplus products at the small, outlying farmers markets for which the organizers are often craving vendors, suggests Charlie Touchette, executive director of the North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association (NAFDMA). The smaller markets come with an entire support network, including the opportunity to sell alongside people who have been doing this for a while.

On the other hand, larger farmers markets are often more stringent about who can sell, and they usually charge a fee for an assigned space. “Go to the market manager and ask what the rules are,” Shepherd says. “Some markets will have a community table where you could possibly bring produce in a certain week of the month.” Asking a regular vendor to sell your produce doesn’t often work, Shepherd says, because many markets prohibit vendors from selling things they didn’t produce themselves, and vendors may be leery of taking your word on your growing procedures.

Grow Your Own Best Fall Garden Ever

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Right now, before you forget, put a rubber band around your wrist to remind you of one gardening task that cannot be postponed: Planting seeds for fall garden vegetables. As summer draws to a close, gardens everywhere can morph into a tapestry of delicious greens, from tender lettuce to frost-proof spinach, with a sprinkling of red mustard added for spice. In North America’s southern half, as long as seeds germinate in late July or early August, fall gardens can grow the best cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower you’ve ever tasted. In colder climates it’s prime time to sow carrots, rutabagas, and turnips to harvest in the fall. Filling space vacated by spring crops with summer-sown vegetables will keep your garden productive well into fall, and even winter.

Granted, the height of summer is not the best time to start tender seedlings of anything. Hot days, sparse rain, and heavy pest pressure must be factored into a sound planting plan, and then there’s the challenge of keeping fall plantings on schedule. But you can meet all of the basic requirements for a successful, surprisingly low-maintenance fall garden by following the steps outlined below. The time you invest now will pay off big time as you continue to harvest fresh veggies from your garden long after frost has killed your tomatoes and blackened your beans.

1. Starting Seeds

Count back 12 to 14 weeks from your average first fall frost date (see “Fall Garden Planting Schedule” below) to plan your first task: starting seeds of broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, and kale indoors, where germination conditions are better than they are in the garden. Some garden centers carry a few cabbage family seedlings for fall planting, but don’t expect a good selection. The only sure way to have vigorous young seedlings is to grow your own, using the same procedures you would use in spring (see Start Your Own Seeds). As soon as the seedlings are three weeks old, be ready to set them out during a period of cloudy weather.

If you’re already running late, you can try direct-seeding fast-growing varieties of broccoli, kale or kohlrabi. Sow the seeds in shallow furrows covered with half an inch of potting soil. Keep the soil moist until the seedlings germinate, then thin them. The important thing is to get the plants up and growing in time to catch the last waves of summer heat.

When is too late? The end of July marks the close of planting season for cabbage family crops in northern areas (USDA Zones 6 and lower); August is perfect in warmer climates. Be forewarned: If cabbage family crops are set out after temperatures have cooled, they grow so slowly that they may not make a crop. Fortunately, leafy greens (keep reading) do not have this problem.

2. Think Soil First

In addition to putting plenty of supernutritious food on your table, your fall garden provides an opportunity to manage soil fertility, and even control weeds. Rustic greens including arugula, mustard, and turnips make great triple-use fall garden crops. They taste great, their broad leaves shade out weeds, and nutrients they take up in fall are cycled back into the soil as the winter-killed residue rots. If you have time, enrich the soil with compost or aged manure to replenish micronutrients and give the plants a strong start.

You can also use vigorous leafy greens to “mop up” excess nitrogen left behind by spring crops (the organic matter in soil can hold quite a bit of nitrogen, but some leaches away during winter). Space that has recently been vacated by snap beans or garden peas is often a great place to grow heavy feeders such as spinach and cabbage family crops. When sown into corn stubble, comparatively easy-to-please leafy greens such as lettuce and mustard are great at finding hidden caches of nitrogen.

3. Try New Crops

Several of the best crops for your fall garden may not only be new to your garden, but new to your kitchen, too. Set aside small spaces to experiment with nutty arugula, crunchy Chinese cabbage, and super-cold-hardy mâche (corn salad). Definitely put rutabaga on your “gotta try it” list: Dense and nutty “Swede turnips” are really good (and easy!) when grown in the fall. Many Asian greens have been specially selected for growing in fall, too. Examples include ‘Vitamin Green’ spinach-mustard, supervigorous mizuna and glossy green tatsoi (also spelled tah tsai), which is beautiful enough to use as flower bed edging.

As you consider the possibilities, veer toward open-pollinated varieties for leafy greens, which are usually as good as — or better than — hybrids when grown in home gardens. The unopened flower buds of collards and kale pass for the gourmet vegetable called broccolini, and the young green seed pods of immature turnips and all types of mustard are great in stir-fries and salads. Allow your strongest plants to produce mature seeds. Collect some of the seeds for replanting, and scatter others where you want future greens to grow. In my garden, arugula, mizuna and turnips naturalize themselves with very little help from me, as long as I leave a few plants to flower and set seed each year.

With broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, and their close cousins, hybrid varieties generally excel in terms of fast, uniform growth, so this is one veggie group for which the hybrid edge is a huge asset. Breeding work is underway to develop better open-pollinated varieties for organic growers, but for now, trusted hybrids such as ‘Belstar’ broccoli, ‘Gonzales’ cabbage or ‘Snow Crown’ cauliflower are usually the best choices.

Finally, be sure to leave ample space for garlic, which is planted later on, when you can smell winter in the air. Shallots, multiplying onions, and perennial “nest” onions are also best planted in mid-fall, after the soil has cooled. In short-season areas these alliums are planted in September; elsewhere they are planted in October.

4. Watering Fall Garden Plants: Keep ’Em Soaked

Even short periods of drought stress can put a nasty kink in the growth curve of most fall crops. Dry soil can be murder on slow-growing beets and carrots, and any type of setback can devastate temperamental cauliflower. Your best defense is to install a soaker hose before you set out plants or sow seeds. Try laying out the hose in various patterns and turning it on to get a good look at its coverage first. If the hose won’t stay where you put it, use short stakes or wire staples to hold it in place.

Keeping newly planted beds moist long enough for seeds to germinate is easy with leafy greens such as arugula, Chinese cabbage, collards, mizuna or turnips, because the seeds naturally germinate quickly, in five days or less. But beets, carrots, lettuce and spinach are often slower to appear, which means you must keep the seeded bed moist longer. Simple shade covers made from boards held above the bed by bricks do a great job of shielding the germination zone from drying sunshine, or you can shade seeded soil with cloth held aloft with stakes or hoops. You may still need to water by hand to make sure conditions stay moist, but shade covers can make the difference between watering once a day or four times as often.

5. Go Mad for Mulch

Whether you use fresh green grass clippings, last year’s almost-rotted leaves, spoiled hay, or another great mulch you have on hand, place it over sheets of newspaper between plants. The newspaper will block light, which will prevent weed growth, help keep the soil cool and moist, and attract night crawlers and other earthworms. To get the best coverage, lay down the double-mulch and wet it thoroughly before you plant your seedlings. Cover the soaker hose with mulch, too.

Mulching can have one drawback in that organic mulches are ideal nighttime hide-outs for slugs and snails, which come out at night and chew holes in the leaves of dozens of plants, and may ruin mature green tomatoes, too. Watch for mollusk outbreaks, and use iron phosphate baits or beer-baited traps, if needed, to bring problem populations under control.

6. Deploy Your Defenses Against Garden Pests

Luscious little seedlings attract a long list of aggressive pests, including cabbageworms, army worms, and ever-voracious grasshoppers. Damage from all of these pests (and more) can be prevented by covering seedlings with row covers the day they go into the garden. Use a “summer-weight” insect barrier row cover that retains little heat, or make your own by sewing or pinning two pieces of wedding net (tulle) into a long, wide shroud. Hold the row cover above the plants with stakes or hoops, and be prepared to raise its height as the plants grow. See The No-spray Way to Protect Plants for more details on using row covers in your garden.

Summer sun can be your seedlings’ best friend or worst enemy. Always allow at least a week of adjustment time for seedlings started indoors, gradually exposing them to more direct sunlight. Even transplants that are given a week to get used to strong sun appreciate a few days of shade after they are set out, which can be easily provided by placing an old sheet over the row cover. Or, you can simply pop flower pots over the seedlings for a couple of days after transplanting. In most areas, insect pressures ease as nights become chilly in mid-fall, but you might want to keep your row covers on a little longer if your garden is visited by deer, which tend to become more troublesome as summer turns to fall.

Fall Garden Planting Schedule

There is no time to waste getting your fall garden crops into the ground, but exactly when should you plant them? Exact dates vary with location, and we have two online tools to help you find the best planting times for your garden. See Know When to Plant What: Find Your Average First Fall Frost Date to find an article that includes a link to tables showing average frost dates for cities in your state. For fall gardens, we suggest using the date given for a 50 percent chance of having a 28-degree night — what gardeners call a killing frost. (Keep in mind that cold temperatures may come and go for several weeks in late fall. In most areas, you can easily stretch your fall season by covering plants with old blankets on subfreezing nights.) Also check out our What to Plant Now pages for monthly planting checklists of vegetables and kitchen herbs for your region.

12 to 14 weeks before your first killing frost

Direct-sow last plantings of fast-maturing, warm-season vegetables such as snap beans, cucumbers, and summer squash. Also sow parsnips and rutabagas, and begin planting cilantro, lettuce, and radishes.
Start cabbage family seedlings indoors, and set out the seedlings as promptly as possible.
In climates with long autumns, plant celery, bulb fennel, and parsley in the fall.

10 to 12 weeks before your first killing frost

Set out broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, and cauliflower seedlings, along with celery, bulb fennel and parsley.
Direct-sow beets, carrots, collards, leeks and scallions, along with more lettuce and radishes. In some areas, even fast-maturing peas and potatoes will do well in the fall garden.

8 to 10 weeks before your first killing frost

Direct-sow arugula, Chinese cabbage, lettuce, turnips, spinach, mustard, pac choi, tatsoi, and other Asian greens.
Sow more lettuce and radishes, including daikons.

6 to 8 weeks before first killing frost

Make a final sowing of spinach along with mâche, which matches spinach for super winter-hardiness. (In most regions, you can expect to enjoy these crops in your Christmas salads!)
Make a final sowing of lettuce beneath a protective tunnel or frame.

On or around your first killing frost date

Every fall garden should include garlic and shallots. If you love onions, be sure to try multiplying onions and perennial “nest” onions.

Getting the Most from Your Fall Garden

High-density planting in double or triple rows can increase your per-square-foot return by 40 percent with broccoli, or up to 70 percent with cabbage. Use a zigzag planting pattern to fit more plants into less space while allowing 18 inches between plants. Use dwarf varieties when spacing plants closer together, because too much crowding can lead to delayed maturation and low yields.

Cut-and-come-again harvesting can prolong the productive lives of heading crops such as spring-planted cabbage and Chinese cabbage. As long as the primary head is cut high, leaving a stout stub behind, small secondary heads often will develop within a few weeks. Many varieties of broccoli are enthusiastic cut-and-come-again vegetables, too. After the main head has been harvested (taking only 3 inches or so of stem), varieties such as ‘Belstar,’ ‘Green Goliath’ and many others produce numerous tender side shoots. The harvest will continue until temperatures drop into the teens, which seriously damages broccoli plants. In much of Zone 7 and 8, healthy broccoli plants will keep spewing out shoots for months, and sometimes all winter.

Transplant the untransplantable if that’s what it takes to get a good stand. For example, most gardeners have read that beets, carrots, and rutabagas should be sown directly in the garden, but I often get better filled, more uniform rows in late summer by starting seeds indoors and setting out seedlings when they show their first true leaf. If the seedlings are kept moist and shaded for a few days after transplanting, about 75 percent of them survive. If you feel the need to brush up on your seedling-handling skills, see Garden Transplanting: Expert Advice.

Here is another article from Mother Earth News, I Love Mother Earth News!

One of the characteristics of a truly sustainable garden is that it produces at least some of its own seed. This is most often done when gardeners select, harvest and store seeds until the proper time for planting the following year. But some self-seeding crops produce seeds so readily that as long as you give them time to flower and mature, and set seed, you will always have free plants growing in your garden. You can simply let the seeds fall where they are, or toss pieces of the seed heads into the corners of your garden, or whichever area you want them in — no harvesting, storing or replanting required. With most self-seeding vegetables, herbs and annual flowers, you’ll just need to learn to recognize the seedlings so you don’t hoe them down. Should seedlings require relocation, you can simply lift and move them — after all, they are sturdy field-grown seedlings.

In addition to getting all the free garden plants you need (and some to share with family and friends), nurturing self-seeders is also a great way to provide a diversity of flowers that supply pollen and nectar for beneficial insects. Self-seeding flowers, herbs and vegetables that show up in early spring include arugula, calendula, chamomile, cilantro, dill, breadseed poppies and brilliant red orach (mountain spinach). Nasturtiums, amaranth, New Zealand spinach, and even basil or zinnias appear later, after the soil has warmed.

Starting a new colony of any of these annuals is usually a simple matter of lopping off armloads of brittle, seedbearing stems in the fall, and dumping them where you want the plants to appear the next season. It’s that easy. Most of the seedlings will appear in the first year after you let seed-bearing plants drop their seeds, with lower numbers popping up in subsequent seasons.

Working with reseeding, or self-sowing, crops saves time and trouble and often gives excellent results, but a few special techniques and precautions are in order. Some plants that self-sow too freely — especially perennials such as garlic chives or horseradish — will cross the line into weediness if not handled with care.

Spring Seeds for Fall Crops

The first group of plants to try as self-sown crops — both because they’re the easiest and they’ll be ready the same year — are those that tend to bolt in late spring. If allowed to bloom and set seed, dill, radishes, arugula, cilantro, broccoli raab, turnips and any kind of mustard will produce ripe seeds in time for fall reseeding in most climates. Lettuce will take a little longer, but often gives good results in Zone 5 or warmer.

One way to encourage self-seeders is to select vigorous plants from a larger planting, and let these plants grow unharvested until they bloom and produce seeds. This will work well enough, but it’s often bothersome to have one lone turnip holding up the renovation of a planting bed. To get around this problem, use a Noah’s ark approach: Set aside a bed or row and transplant pairs of plants being grown for seed into the ark bed. As the weeks pass, weed, water and stake up seed-bearing branches to keep them clean, but don’t pick from the “seed ark” bed.When seed pods dry and begin to shatter, gather and store some of the seeds as usual for replanting next year (just in case the reseeding effort isn’t successful). Shake and crumble the rest where you want the next crop to grow, and pat the soil to get good contact between soil and seeds. Or, simply lay well-broken seed-bearing branches over a prepared bed and walk over them. This will shatter seed pods and push seeds into the soil at the same time, and the stem pieces will serve as a starter mulch. With fast-sprouting crops such as arugula, a drenching rain or good hand-watering is all it will take to bring on a lovely fall crop.

Many of the seeds that hit the ground will rot or be eaten, but hundreds will survive winter and sprout in spring. Their strength is in their numbers. When you sow a bed of cilantro, for example, you might plant between 25 and 50 seeds. But when nature is in charge, a single plant may shower your garden with a thousand fresh, plump seeds. Cilantro seedlings are easy to dig and move, and they make well-behaved “weeds.”

Managing Annual Self-Seeding Crops

Many annual crops will reseed themselves if you leave them in the garden long enough for the seeds to mature and the fruit to decompose. Annual veggies that frequently reseed and provide volunteer seedlings include winter squash and pumpkins, tomatoes and tomatillos, watermelon, and New Zealand spinach.

There are two issues to consider when managing this band of garden volunteers: disease and location. The two most serious diseases of potato and tomato — early and late blights — can actually be perpetrated by encouraging disease-carrying volunteer plants. Especially if you saw late blight in your garden the previous season, you should seriously consider breaking the disease cycle by digging up and composting potatoes that sprout from the previous year’s patch, along with all volunteer tomatoes and tomatillos that appear early in the season.

However, sometimes in late summer, I do adopt tomato volunteers that have a potato-type leaf, because I know what they are. ‘Brandywine’ is the only potatoleaf tomato variety I’ve grown in the last five years, so any potatoleaf volunteers are highly likely to be ‘Brandywines.’ You also can recruit healthy volunteer tomatillos based on their distinctive leaf shapes. I locate these foster children around the garden as single plants, spaced far from my main ripening crop. Or you can consider moving volunteers to containers and growing them outside of your garden as a disease safety precaution. With late blight, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Volunteer Veggies

If you’re growing open-pollinated (OP) varieties, it can be fun to let volunteer winter squash, pumpkins, gourds and watermelons ramble along the garden’s edge, or scramble over wire fencing. (Remember that seeds from hybrid varieties usually won’t grow “true to type.”) Check the plants weekly for signs of powdery mildew disease, which is a common problem with older open-pollinated varieties. Squash or pumpkin plants that show signs of powdery mildew before the fruits have set should be pulled out, but don’t worry if the white mildew patches appear later on when the fruits are almost ripe. The plants will still bear a good crop. If volunteer winter squash are always a part of your garden’s landscape because so many seeds survive in your compost, you can introduce powdery mildew resistance to your local population by growing OP varieties which are resistant to powdery mildew, such as ‘Honey Nut’ butternut and ‘Cornell’s Bush Delicata.’

Controlling Rampant Self-Seeders

Several useful herbs and greens reseed with such abandon they must be handled as potentially invasive plants. Plants behave differently depending on the climate, but in general, expect the following crops to become obnoxious if not given appropriate discipline: borage, chives, garlic chives, edible docks and sorrels, herb fennel, lemon balm, horseradish and valerian. Here are the house rules:

Grow only as many plants as you can monitor.
Don’t allow seeds to be shed in your garden without your permission. This is done by pruning off flowers or immature seed heads, many of which make fine cut flowers.

When experimenting with herbs from around the world, I have learned to be cautious, because one year’s seed can be many years’ weeds. Start with small plantings of nigella, perilla, and seed-producing sorrels and docks to make sure you can keep them under control. Intervene early should a reseeding plant you don’t want start popping up everywhere. Weed ruthlessly until it’s gone, because ill-mannered thug plants have no place in a well-managed garden.

34 Easy Self-Seeders

Herbs: basil, chamomile, cilantro, cutting celery, dill, parsley

Vegetables: amaranth, arugula, beets, broccoli raab, carrots, collards, kale, lettuce, orach, mustards, New Zealand spinach, parsnips, pumpkin, radish, rutabaga, tomatillo, tomato, turnips, winter squash

Flowers: bachelor button, calendula, celosia, cosmos, nasturtiums, poppies, sunflowers, sweet alyssum, viola

Bountiful Biennials Set Seeds in the Spring

If you can get them through winter in good shape (a challenge north of Zone 7), openpollinated varieties of beets, carrots, collards, kale (especially Russian strains), broccoli, parsnips and parsley can be added to your list of self-sown crops. These crops produce their seeds in the second year. Cold frames or low tunnels work surprisingly well at enhancing the winter survival of these plants, or you can try replanting stored beets, carrots or parsnips in late winter, as soon as the soil thaws.

To get prompt, strong flowering and seed production from most biennial veggies, it’s important to have nearly mature plants that have been exposed to at least six weeks of cold with soil temperatures in the 40-degree-Fahrenheit range. In the spring, warming temperatures and lengthening days trigger overwintered biennials to flower profusely, eventually producing great stalks of flowers for bees and beneficials, followed by thousands of seeds — a single parsley plant may shed the equivalent of 10 packets of seeds. You will see most of these seedlings in the first two seasons after a reseeding. By the third year, it’s time to repeat the drill.

The best time to plant biennial seeds is late summer to early fall, using the seed ark approach described above. For example, you might grow pairs of carrots, Russian kale and parsnips together, and protect the young plants through winter with a low plastic-covered tunnel. By midsummer the following year, you should have enough fresh seeds to save and scatter where you want new seedlings to grow, just in time for fall planting.

Start in spring. Potatoes take all season to fully mature, so begin this project around your average last frost date (which you can find out from your county extension agent).
Select the spuds. They grow from chunks of last year’s crop — chunks with an “eye,” or rootlet, are referred to as “seed potatoes.” Each “eye” produces a cluster of new tubers. You can find countless potato varieties in nurseries and online, and you can use any one you want, but small to medium-size ones work best in a barrel. Be sure to get certified disease-free seed potatoes, because they can suffer from nasty problems like scab.
Pick a barrel. Plain or fancy, it’s your call. Gardening catalogs and Web sites offer barrels specifically designed for growing potatoes. But they are mostly about being more attractive — not functionally better — than one you make at home out of a whiskey barrel or a common trash can. If your container has been used before, be sure to scrub it out well to get rid of fungi that might cause your potatoes to rot before you harvest them.
Drill for drainage. If the barrel doesn’t already have holes in it where excess water can drain out quickly, drill a few in the bottom and in the sides close to the bottom. Quarter- to half-inch holes are big enough.
Give it a lift. Set the barrel in a sunny spot and get it up on blocks or bricks so it sits a few inches above the ground and air can circulate around it.
Add the soil mix. Make up a soil mix by blending three parts of compost with two parts of peat moss. Fill the bottom of your barrel six inches deep with the mix. Dampen the mix.
Plant your spuds. Place the seed potatoes a couple inches apart in the soil mix. Keep the mix moist but never soggy (which can cause the potatoes to rot).
Cover after sprouting. In a week or so the seed potatoes will have sprouts about six to eight inches tall. Add more soil mix to cover them up to their bottom leaves. Again, keep the mix moist, but not soggy. Repeat the process of allowing the sprouts to grow, adding more soil to cover the sprouts and moistening the soil until the barrel is filled to the top.
Keep the moisture constant. Remember to keep the soil damp but not wet. Feed the plants with liquid fish and seaweed fertilizer (available at nurseries and home centers) weekly or biweekly until you see little white or yellow flowers on the vines, which indicate that the new potatoes have begun forming.
Dig for buried treasure. At the end of the growing season, the vines turn yellow and die back. The potatoes are fully grown. Carefully tip the barrel over, and sift through the soil for the potatoes. Brush the dirt off them (don’t wash them until you’re ready to cook them), and store them in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight.

Living and thriving off the grid!

Very Helpful!

In a recent study, researchers found that watching videos about wind farm-related illnesses made par...

More than a decade ago, my wife, Michelle, and I moved from a busy suburban street to 150 acres in the Ontario bush, where our nearest neighbors are three miles away. Ditto for the nearest utility pole. We'd transitioned to living off the grid with little knowledge about renewable energy — or electricity, for that matter — and had to quickly put into practice our home-schooling mantra of “lifelong learning.”

To say that the learning curve was steep is an understatement. Back then, there were no good books on the subject of renewable energy for homes, and the information you could find was pieced together by pioneers who were learning as they went along. Consulting with any local electrician was a waste of time, so we learned by the seat of our pants. Luckily, we developed a network of helpful and skilled friends along the way. We came to realize that the more things we learned to do ourselves, the more independent we would become, which is the theme of the book I’ve just written, Thriving During Challenging Times: The Energy, Food and Financial Independence Handbook.

As we begin to experience the converging challenges of resource depletion, climate change, and the ongoing financial crisis, we need to make ourselves more resilient to shocks to the system.

If you do decide to go off the grid, generating your own electricity from the sun and wind provides an incredible sense of well-being — not only from a sense of independence, but also from the realization that you aren’t using any electricity that comes from coal. Powering your home with renewable energy is a huge step toward reducing your carbon footprint. We started with a fairly small solar-electric system that the previous owners of our home had installed, and we’ve steadily added more panels. As we learned more about peak oil, we were determined to reduce our use of nonrenewable fossil fuels for both cooking and powering our gasoline generator; there are times when there isn’t enough sunlight or wind to charge our off-grid batteries, so we use a fossil fuel-powered generator as a backup.

Wonderful Wind, Super Solar

When we moved in, there was an old wind turbine on a 60-foot tower on our property, but several years ago we decided to replace it with a new Bergey 1-kilowatt turbine on a 100-foot tower. We are surrounded by forests (not optimal for wind generation), so putting up a 100-foot tower set the turbine about 30 feet above the trees to capture some of the stronger winds. We decided to film the installation process and sell a video of it via our publishing company, Aztext. I’m a visual learner, and if I could have watched a video of the process of putting all the pieces of our off-the-grid system together, it would have made our efforts go more smoothly.

The new turbine required us to upgrade our battery bank from a 12-volt to a 24-volt system, so we also upgraded our inverter and added more solar panels. In the previous year, we ran our backup generator about 15 times. In the year after we put up the turbine and added solar panels, we ran the generator just twice. This means that, on many days, we now have extra electricity to use for cooking, offsetting our propane use.

Most people who move off grid just move onto propane, substituting propane for all their major heat loads, such as cooking and heating water. We already heat with wood cut sustainably from our property, so using the electric stove helps reduce our propane use as well.

The biggest drop in our propane consumption came when we installed our solar hot water system. It uses solar energy to heat water we use for washing and bathing, and should offset about 60 percent of water heating costs. For most people, this should be the first solar panel they put on their roof, because the payback is much faster than that of photovoltaics. There’s nothing nicer on a cold winter evening than soaking in a bath with water that was heated all day by the sun. After the system is paid for, there are no additional costs, and there are no carbon dioxide emissions created by the energy that heats the water. It’s an incredible, guilt-free luxury.

Many utilities now offer incentives to integrate renewable energy technologies, and with faster paybacks on your investment, you can take the savings from these systems and pay down debt. This was one of our keys to being able to move where we did. We scrimped, saved, and paid off our old mortgage before we left the city. Financial independence allows you to capitalize on the opportunities that will present themselves in the future.

Generous Gardens

Living off the grid is just one way of becoming independent, but even if you are connected, you can still make yourself more self-reliant. The final step on our path to independence was creating a vegetable garden. We have sandy soil, but discovered that the area around the old barn foundation had good topsoil. I started by turning over pieces of sod to create the garden, but eventually got smart and purchased rotten hay that I spread on the areas where I wanted to expand the garden. The hay killed the grass, and as it rotted, it added organic matter to the soil. After six to nine months with the hay on the soil, I could rototill the hay in and be ready to plant.

Most people have a sense that the money they spend on food continues to go up, and even though Americans only spend about 10 percent of their income on food (versus up to 90 percent in other parts of the world!), the percentage continues to rise.

We continue to increase the amount of space we devote to potatoes in our garden. The United Nations declared 2008 the “Year of the Potato” because potatoes provide exceptional nutrition and are a rugged plant that grows well in most places.

We have a neighbor who keeps us supplied with extra horse manure to supplement the garden, but there’s no reason you can’t do just as well in the city. Most municipalities now have pickup for grass clippings and leaves, which are a fantastic source of free organic material. You just need a wheelbarrow on the night before garbage day to retrieve some for composting.

Last year, after upgrading our electrical system, we added a new 10-cubic-foot freezer, which is a big step for someone living off the grid. Luckily our basement isn’t heated, so the freezer is in a very cool environment and doesn’t consume much electricity. Over the winter, when we’re making less electricity from the sun, the basement is so cool that the freezer rarely turns on.

As we’ve upgraded our system, we’ve moved more of our cooking requirements to our free homemade electricity. It started with an electric kettle and toaster. Then we added a convection toaster oven, and recently an induction burner, which uses significantly less electricity than a typical resistance electric burner. There’s something extremely liberating about cooking your food without a bill from a utility or a grocery store.

Peace of Mind

As I look to the future I see a more carbon-constrained world, especially as several billion people in China and India get off their bikes and into cars, so this year we purchased an electric bike. Its lithium-ion battery gets me into town and back on a single charge, without any pedaling. It helps us offset one of most country dwellers’ biggest carbon contributors: their personal transportation.

Learning to live off the grid has been a tremendously challenging experience. I would never pretend there haven’t been times of extreme frustration and anxiety. But getting over the speed bumps makes the times when things run smoothly all the more gratifying. On a cold winter night with a full moon, it’s wonderful to skate on the pond and look back at the house to see the light beaming from the windows, using electricity that was created during the day by the sun or by the wind. The house is warm, heated by wood cut from our property and burned in an EPA-certified woodstove that ensures minimal emissions. And there’s no feeling like pulling a wagon full of vegetables from the garden late in the summer, knowing that much of it will be stored in our root cellar or freezer and will keep our stomachs full all winter.

A few generations ago, this is how many Americans lived. Today, most of us have traded our independence to pay someone else to keep our homes warm, keep our lights, on and keep our stomachs full. I think this is becoming an increasingly unstable proposition.

The technology exists for us to reduce our impact on the planet, and at the same time make us more independent and resilient to the shocks coming our way — and you don’t have to live in the country to do it. Don’t wait. Pick up a shovel and get started on a garden. Pick up a phone and call a solar dealer. Pick up that stack of credit card bills and vow to pay them off and stay out of debt. The rewards are infinite. Peace of mind comes from independence.

Melons grow from homemade self-watering containers on a Chicago rooftop. Using the instructions provided in “The Urban Homestead,” members of the organization Green Roof Growers built these self-watering containers from recycled kosher pickle buckets donated from the Chicago restaurant Vienna Beef.

These containers make it easy to grow vegetables in pots. They are ideal for apartment gardening, but are so useful that everyone should consider using them to maximize their growing space.

The problem with growing food in pots is that pots dry out quickly and it’s all too easy to forget to water. Irregular watering causes all sorts of problems for sensitive fruits and vegetables. Container gardening is also water-intensive. During a heat wave it may mean visiting the plants with the watering can two or even three times every day — obviously not a practical scheme for someone who works away from home, or someone with any kind of life at all.

An elegant solution exists in the form of self-watering containers. Rather than having a hole in the bottom of the pot, a self-watering container (SWC) has a reservoir of water at the bottom, and water leaches upward into the soil by various mechanisms, keeping it constantly moist. The top of the pot is covered with a layer of plastic that discourages evaporation. Depending on how deep the water reservoir is, it’s possible to go about a week between fill-ups. This arrangement, combined with the plastic layer, prevents both over-watering and under-watering that can occur with conventional pots. In other words, it takes the guesswork and anxiety out of watering.

The 5-gallon size described is good for one big plant. Try a basil plant in it, especially if you like pesto. Basil thrives with the steady moisture, as does Italian parsley, so both herbs grow huge in SWCs. Or plant a tomato, but be sure it is a small tomato. Look for types designated “patio” or “basket” tomatoes. These are bred to perform well in tight conditions. A 5-gallon container may seem big, but tomatoes have some of the deepest roots of all vegetables. If you plant an ordinary tomato in a SWC, its roots may find their way into the reservoir, and then it would become waterlogged.

For your next project, we recommend that you visit Josh Mandel’s PDFs for instructions on how to construct a larger, slightly more complex container out of 8- to 10-gallon storage tubs. That size SWC is good for growing a little salad garden, a stand of greens, a patch of strawberries or even a blueberry bush.

5-Gallon Self-Watering Container Instructions

It all starts with providing a water reservoir at the bottom of your container. You can do this either by nesting two containers together (the top one holds soil, the bottom one water), or by making some kind of divider that sits toward the bottom of a single container and holds the soil above the reservoir. However you construct it, the barrier between the soil and water should be full of small holes for ventilation.

The water is pulled up from the reservoir and into the soil by means of something called a wicking chamber. This can be a perforated tube, a basket, a cup or anything full of holes that links the soil to the water. The soil in the chamber(s) becomes saturated, and it feeds moisture to the rest of the soil.

The reservoir is refilled by means of a pipe that passes through the soil compartment down to the very bottom of the container.

The last essential element is a hole drilled into the side of the container at the highest point of the reservoir. This is an overflow hole that prevents you from oversaturating your plants.

Materials:

2 food-grade, 5-gallon plastic buckets (if possible, one of them should have a lid)
1 16-ounce plastic drink cup, or a 32-ounce plastic yogurt container, or anything similar that you can punch holes in (a plastic bucket of similar size would work, too)
1 bucket lid (can substitute a plastic garbage bag in a pinch)
Plastic twist ties
17 inches of 1-inch-diameter PVC pipe, copper tubing, a bamboo tube or anything similar
A big bag of potting mix

Tools:

Drill
Keyhole saw, safety knife or saber saw

Instructions:

1. Find two food-grade, 5-gallon plastic buckets. A good source is behind restaurants and doughnut shops. If they once held food, you know they aren’t going to be toxic (but do wash them). Don’t source your buckets off of construction sites!

2. Cut a hole right in the center of the bottom of one of the buckets. The yogurt container or whatever you are using is going to sit in this hole, so it hangs down into the water reservoir below (the bottom bucket), and act as your wicking chamber. Do this by tracing an outline of the cup on the bottom of the bucket, and then cutting a little inside the line. Use a safety knife, or a keyhole saw for this. It doesn’t have to be pretty.

All you have to make sure of is that your wicking chamber will fit in that lower bucket. If the chamber is too tall, you won’t be able to fit the two buckets together. This is something that is easy to adjust as you go, but just keep it in mind from the beginning.

To give you an idea of sizes, we have one SWC made from two 5-gallon Kikkoman soy sauce buckets. For that one the wicking chamber is a 32-ounce yogurt container, and it hangs down 3 1/2 inches into the reservoir.

3. Cut another hole in the bottom of the same container, anywhere near the outside edge (anywhere but the center). This hole is for the pipe that will refill the reservoir and should be sized accordingly. Again, just trace around one end of your pipe and cut.

4. Now drill a bunch of 1/4-inch holes in the remaining real estate on the bottom of this same bucket. The exact number or spacing does not matter; these are ventilation holes. Go for a Swiss cheese effect, but don’t get too carried away. Leave the other bucket intact.

5. Now turn to your wicking chamber — the drink cup or yogurt container. Punch or drill a bunch of random 1/2-inch holes all over the sides of the cup, but not the bottom (the soil would fall out if the bottom were open). These big holes will allow water to seep into the soil in the chamber and thus be drawn into the soil above.

6. Attach the wicking chamber to the bottom of the top bucket. This is a very loose affair, consisting of four twist ties. Just drill holes at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock positions just below the top edge of the cup, and drill corresponding holes near the edge of the large hole you cut in the middle of the bucket. Thread plastic twist ties through these holes to secure the wicking chamber so that it hangs beneath the holey bucket.

7. If necessary, cut the pipe that feeds the reservoir to a good length. You want it to poke out of the top of the container for easy watering. Seventeen inches is just about right for this project. Cut one end of the tube on the diagonal, and put this end down in the bucket. The angled end will allow water to flow freely out of the tube and into the reservoir.

8. Place the bucket fitted with the suspended wicking chamber into the untouched bucket.

9. Make your overflow hole. Figure out where the bottom of the top bucket sits in relation to the bottom bucket. Try holding it up to strong light, or employing a ruler. Drill a 1/4-inch hole in the side of the lower bucket (the previously untouched bucket), placing the hole just a little beneath the bottom edge of the inside bucket. This hole will serve to spill off overflow from the reservoir chamber. You want the top bucket to be wicking water, not sitting in water.

10. Finally, insert the watering pipe through the hole you drilled in the bottom of the inner bucket. Be sure to put the pointy end in the bucket. The flat end will stick out the top.

11. Fill your new container with potting mix. Note that you must use potting mix because regular garden soil doesn’t work very well in SWCs. Fill the container all the way to the top, moistening the soil as you go.

12. Plant your plant, dead center.

13. Make a circular, shallow trough around the perimeter of the plant, and sprinkle about a cup dry organic fertilizer in the trench. Then cover the trench up with a little soil so the fertilizer is just slightly buried — don’t work the fertilizer into the soil. You must be careful with fertilizers and SWCs because they are closed systems. Excess fertilizer doesn’t drain away. So always keep it at the top off the container, where it will work its way down gradually.

14. If you’ve got a lid for the bucket, and your plant is small enough, go ahead and cut a hole in the center of the lid for the plant to poke through, then ease the lid into place, threading the plant’s leaves through the hole. The lid will help retain moisture. If you don’t have a lid, or if your plant is too big, cut an X in a plastic garbage bag and lay it across the top of the pot, securing it around the sides with a length of tape or string, or if you have a lid for the bucket, you can cut out the center and use the rim to secure the plastic. A how-to video can also be found on this website, Root Simple.

Winter Gardening Tips: Best Crops and Cold-Hardy Varieties

Car tips for prepping and survival for driving in extreme winter weather.

When we think of eating homegrown food during the cold season, we often think of staples such as potatoes squirreled away in the root cellar, or of vegetables such as winter squash stashed in a cool, dry place. But many gardeners are discovering the joys of harvesting fresh produce all winter long, which allows for feasts of cold-hardy crops that are just-picked and just right for the time of year. According to Jodi Lew-Smith of High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott, Vt., the seed-buying season used to be January, February and March. “Now there’s also a surge in June, July, August and into September for fall-planted crops,” she says. Eating from the garden is just too pleasant to give up simply because the temperature — and the snow — may have fallen.
I don’t mean growing tomatoes in January. Fruiting crops no doubt need long, sunny days and warm conditions to complete their delicious arc of softening, deepening in color and perfectly ripening. Winter fare is about leaves, stems and roots, which mature more and more slowly as the weather cools and the days shorten. Better still, winter vegetables sweeten with the cold. If you’ve ever tasted a winter-pulled carrot or winter-cut spinach, you’re familiar with the treasures winter gardening can bring.
With my husband, Eliot Coleman, I run Four Season Farm in Harborside, Maine, where winter production is a key part of our business. Over the past two decades, we’ve built, trialed and collected data on many hoop house designs and crop-protection methods. We’ve also tested many crops — and multiple varieties of those crops — to discover what grows best in winter.

Climate Considerations

So, should a winter gardener grow different crops depending on her climate? Not necessarily. Winter has always been a good season for a wide array of crops in the southern states, and in the northern tier of the United States, you can grow the same crops if you use a winter-protection device to broaden your garden’s productive season. This might be a cold frame, a simple greenhouse, the quick-hoop system, or just a layer or two of floating row cover, often called Reemay. All of these season-extension devices capture some of the earth’s natural warmth, especially at night, and block the chilling, drying effect of wind.
At any latitude in the United States, there’s enough daylight to grow a wide range of winter crops. A recent MOTHER EARTH NEWS survey on winter gardening turned up a surprising number of cold-season gardeners in places where weather would present a challenge, such as Ontario and Wisconsin, as well as many in unsurprising locales, such as Texas and Southern California, where an outdoor garden can keep on truckin’ with a simple shift of the planting scheme (see Real-World Gardening Tips for tons of advice from our survey-takers). While in the Northeast we think of the year’s “second spring” starting around August, warmer southern areas can shift that date by a couple of months to around October, when fall temperatures will still be high enough to achieve germination and allow plants to reach maturity.

Winter growing has taken off in the commercial sphere, too, which helps farmers with short growing seasons make a living year-round. But home gardeners have an advantage: They don’t have to produce uniform, cosmetically perfect vegetables on any set schedule for a competitive market. In short, home gardeners can better roll with winter’s punches than large-scale producers can. Home-scale winter growers can experiment with the timing of their crops, sowing new ones whenever a space, no matter how small, becomes vacant. They can try lots of varieties until they find the ones that grow best — and taste best — for them. The seven well-tested crops and varieties illustrated here are some of my absolute, tried-and-true favorites.

Leafing Out

When you’re choosing winter crops and their varieties, you’re obviously looking for cold-tolerance, but the plant’s growth habit and schedule should also influence your selection. Spinach, for example, is a hardy winter annual, which means that it germinates in fall, grows during late fall and winter, and then goes to seed in spring. Because it continually puts out new leaves, you can pick it all winter. Cold-hardy Brussels sprouts and broccoli, on the other hand, stop producing after a certain point (although their leaves are a tasty bonus you shouldn’t miss). Here are some of the best leafy winter crops to try.

Spinach. This crop wins my personal gold medal in the winter leaf-crop category. Sown in late summer, it survives our coastal Maine winter in an unheated greenhouse, under just a layer of row cover. The increasing day length in spring is the major factor in spinach bolting (going to seed). Of the available varieties, ‘Space’ has done best for us — it’s very hardy and slow to bolt in spring. Lew-Smith’s trials favor ‘Giant Winter’ spinach. Well-known seed breeder John Navazio of the Organic Seed Alliance in Washington likes ‘Winter Bloomsdale,’ and is developing a superior version called ‘Abundant Bloomsdale.’

Lettuce. Although not as frost-tolerant as spinach, lettuce does prefer cool weather and is a great fall and spring crop, even in the coldest climates. Leaf lettuce is hardier than full-head types, especially at “baby leaf” size (closely planted and cut at 3 inches tall), and works great as a crop that can be cut multiple times. Among the cold-hardiest lettuce varieties are ‘Red Oak Leaf’ and romaines such as ‘Winter Density’ and ‘Rouge d’Hiver.’ ‘Five Star’ lettuce mix from Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine is mildew-resistant — an important trait if you grow in the wetter, more humid conditions of a greenhouse.

Arugula. Increasingly popular as a cut-and-come-again crop, arugula’s friendly bite adds pizazz to meals on cold days, without the flea beetles, bolting, or harsher flavor that come with growing it in summer. ‘Astro’ is a great performer, and ‘Sylvetta,’ which is perennial as far north as Kansas and Virginia, grows wonderfully at lower temperatures.

Asian greens. At Four Season Farm, we did a trial of every Asian green we could find — mostly brassicas — planted under row covers in a 50-foot, unheated greenhouse. The hardiest was tatsoi, which forms large heads of small, dark green, spoon-shaped, mild-flavored leaves — firm enough for a stir-fry but soft enough for a salad. Tatsoi survives winter by hun kering down, flat on the ground, like a round, green rug. As you harvest the outer leaves, new ones will grow in the center. A strong runner-up was ‘Mei Qing Choi,’ a dwarf bok choy whose upright leaves have crisp, white bottoms. I’m fond of feathery mizuna, pungent and thick-stemmed Chinese mustard, and an apple green, open-headed Chinese cabbage called ‘Tokyo Bekana.’ Impressively, Asian greens tend to be heat-tolerant as well as cold-friendly — they are even usable after they’ve bolted, offering still-tasty foliage, crisp stems and edible flowers.

Chard. Great in any season and more heat-tolerant than lettuce, chard will occasionally survive winter with no protection in my Maine garden, dying back to the ground and regrowing in spring. For winter harvest, we’ve found the most cold-hardy variety to be ‘Argentata.’

Kale. Of the European kales (Brassica oleracea), ‘Winterbor’ is exceptionally vigorous and more cold-resistant — though less tasty — than the deep blue-green Tuscan kales, such as ‘Lacinato.’ ‘Even’ Star Smooth’ kale, hardy to 6 degrees Fahrenheit, is tender and sweet. Hardiest of all are the Siberian types (B. napus), which are tender and have a milder flavor than other kales. Some of these, such as ‘True Siberian’ and ‘Western Front’ from Adaptive Seeds in Oregon, keep producing leaves all winter long.

Mâche. Too delicate to ship and scarce in farmers markets, mâche is the gardener’s reward. A winter annual, it will just sit where it’s planted after sowing until the coolness of fall coaxes it out of the ground. It is among the hardiest of winter greens, but it’s maddeningly slow to grow, with tiny heads best cut whole, at 3 inches across, and no regrowth. You’ll forgive all of that, though, because a salad of mâche is like no other, the slightly cupped leaves seemingly designed to hold a light vinaigrette. ‘Vit’ is an excellent variety for winter growing.

Claytonia. This delightful little plant is an unsung hero of winter gardening. A North American native also known as “miner’s lettuce,” it nourished prospectors during the California gold rush days. The nickel-sized, round, succulent leaves are mild in salads but too fragile for cooking. A winter annual, claytonia regrows speedily after repeated cuts in winter if protected from serious frost, and then bolts in spring in a cloud of tiny, fragrant white flowers.

Parsley. The hardiest of herbs, parsley slows its growth in winter but will sometimes survive without protection — even in Zone 5 — yielding lush, bushy greens in spring before it goes to seed. Many cooks prefer flat-leaf parsley, but curly varieties such as ‘Forest Green’ are more frost-proof. Parsley is a self-seeding biennial, so if you leave it in one spot and don’t disturb the area, you can expect it to resprout or self-sow the following year.

Rooting for Flavor

Even if you grow root crops for storage, you can treat many of them as fresh-harvested winter crops, too. In areas with minimal freezing, you can leave most of your root crops in the ground and simply dig them up as needed. Potatoes aside, this is true even for moderate freezes. (See Outdoor Root Cellars for more on storing crops right in the garden during winter.)

Carrots. I’ve seen carrots survive in Vermont under nothing but a good snow cover, though you shouldn’t depend on that. In coastal Maine, they are foolproof inside a cold frame packed with loose straw or hay, or in an unheated greenhouse beneath a layer of row cover. We make multiple sowings from late July to mid-August, but readers in warmer climates report planting as late as November. (You can plant beets on this same schedule, but they’re not as cold-hardy.) After several good frosts, winter carrots are like candy, as strong flavor compounds have receded to the background, and natural sugars — nature’s antifreeze — have stepped to the fore. Flavor declines when the day length stretches up to 10 hours, usually in late January or in February. For us, the best winter variety is ‘Napoli.’

Turnips. My favorite for winter is ‘Hakurei,’ a white, round Japanese variety. I get sweet, tender roots great for eating raw, and tasty tops if the temperature is kept above freezing. ‘White Egg’ is a popular storage variety in the South, but it can be winter-grown elsewhere. ‘Colletto Viola,’ from Italy, has pink shoulders and sweet, crisp white flesh.

Leeks. Add rich, oniony flavors to your winter salads and soups by including some leeks in your mix of winter crops. This is likely the most universally grown winter crop in European households. Look for one of the winter varieties, of which we prefer ‘Lexton.’ Leeks need to be planted early in spring for harvest in winter.

Radish. This fine crop needs protection from frost but loves cool weather. We’ve succeeded with ‘Tinto’ and ‘D’Avignon,’ a French breakfast type. Navazio recommends ‘Cherry Belle’ for flavor.

Jumping Into Winter Gardening

Winter gardening is surprisingly easy. The pace is slow, weeds are few, and low light levels cut down on evaporation and can even eliminate the need for watering from mid-November to mid-February in most areas of the country. Try lots of crops to see which work best for you. With each, start with the least protection you might need (some crops may surprise you), and then decide how accommodating you’re willing to be. Experiment with timing to find a rhythm that works, putting in new crops wherever you see an empty space. Make lots of compost to give your crops an extra boost. Also, keep in mind that you should fear heat more than cold. Remember to vent cold frames, quick hoops and greenhouses on sunny days, lest you trap hot air inside and then prematurely “cook” your greens.

Keep an eye open for new varietal entries in this ever-growing field. Johnny’s Selected Seeds, High Mowing Seeds and Territorial Seed Co. have many of the best varieties. Some of the most exciting seed breeders in the country are at work improving winter crops, and they’re doing so in a way that avoids the narrow base of most modern genetic breeding. As Navazio points out, these improvements help with variability of climate from year to year. The result of seed breeder Frank Morton’s brilliant work can be found in his Wild Garden Seed catalog. Find organic farmer Brett Grohsgal’s wonderful varieties — bred by subjecting crops to cold outdoor conditions in Maryland — in the catalogs of Fedco Seeds and Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. Uprising Seeds, Adaptive Seeds and Siskiyou Seeds are smaller, innovative companies to watch. And for the best adventure of all, save seeds from your own top-performing plants, year after year, until you’ve tailored each crop to the winter conditions in your garden. (You’ll find seed-saving advice for many vegetables in our Crops at a Glance Guide.) You, too, may well turn out to be a winter gardening pioneer.

Readers’ Top 5 Crop-Protection Techniques

We surveyed thousands of gardeners about their winter gardening habits and tips, and received more than 1,200 responses. For many more reader tips on winter gardening — organized by region — see Real-World Winter Gardening Tips From Your Growing Zone. These are readers’ top-rated methods for protecting their crops from the cold:

• Use low tunnels made of plastic pipe bent over beds and covered with plastic sheeting.
• Cover crops heavily with straw or leaf mulch.
• Grow in a greenhouse (many said a greenhouse had been their best garden investment).
• Cover crops with blankets, old sheets or row cover draped over stakes.
• Put hay bales on the sides of a planting bed and cover the area with old windows.

Straw bale Gardening vs Traditional Gardening!

Straw Bale Gardening vs. Traditional Gardening

Market Farming Success (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013) is the go-to guide to market gardening for those in the business of growing and selling food, flowers, herbs or plants. In this new and expanded edition, learn how to find land, which crops to grow, how to market your produce and more. Author and editor/publisher of Growing for Market, Lynn Bycynski’s expert advice will help beginning farmers advance confidently through the learning curve of starting a farming business. In this excerpt from chapter one, “Getting Started in Market Farming,” find out the earning potential of market gardening, whether you garden full time or part time.

You can purchase this book from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Market Farming Success.

How Much Money Can You Make?

Even if you accept the fact that farming is not a high-paying occupation, even if money is not highly important to you, you still have to think about it when you’re starting out. You need to know how much it’s going to cost to get started. You need to know how much you can potentially earn once your farm is established. You especially need to know whether to hang on to another job in the meantime. As you develop your new farming business, you should make financial viability one of the tenets of your planning. A business can be sustainable only if it makes enough money to meet your financial needs.

Financial needs differ from one farmer to the next. A family of five has different financial needs than those of a couple without children. Someone who wants to make his or her entire livelihood on the farm will have a different perspective on profits than someone who views farming as a sideline. I’m not going to tell you how much you need to make to be considered a success. That’s entirely up to you. Over the years, my definition of a “sustainable farm” has broadened, and I now think that the person who keeps farming obviously has achieved a satisfactory measure of financial sustainability.

In my role as editor and publisher of Growing for Market (GFM) magazine, I have discussed finances with a large number of market gardeners. Some have been willing to share financial statements with GFM readers, and others have told me their income but didn’t want it published. As a result of these discussions, I have developed a clear picture of the earning potential of market farms.

Farmers who are successful — that is, making enough money to keep farming — can have an operation of any size, from a tiny, part-time start-up to a large, established business. They are growers who have achieved a balance between income and expenses, carving out enough to pay themselves fairly while building equity in land, buildings, and equipment.

At one end of the scale are growers who pay themselves the same wages as their employees, sometimes as little as minimum wage. At the other end of the scale are people who net $100,000 or more per year — but often that represents the work of both spouses, so the per-person income in even the high-end situations is modest, though certainly adequate.

However, market gardening clearly offers something that money can’t buy, because none of the veteran market gardeners I have interviewed expressed any interest in quitting to take a more lucrative job. For most farmers, the financial goal is to make enough money to live on and put a little away for retirement, while doing work they love, spending time with family, and making a contribution to the community.

In the sections below, you will read more details about finances on several different types of farms. The variables from one farm to another are numerous, so it’s not possible to state unequivocally that if you follow one model you will make a certain amount of money. Length of growing season, proximity to markets, growing expertise, marketing skill, weather disasters, and many other factors influence revenue on individual farms. The dollar amounts in the examples listed below represent what is possible on farms that are well managed by experienced growers, in hospitable growing conditions. I will group them by the previously mentioned categories — fewer than 3 acres, 3 to 12 acres, and more than 12 acres. These are just approximate sizes for purposes of discussion; there are always going to be exceptions to every category.

For the purpose of applying other farmers’ numbers to your own farm, the two most important figures are the gross revenue per acre and the margin, which is the percentage of revenue that is left after expenses. The gross per acre multiplied by the number of acres farmed provides gross revenue; that, multiplied by the margin, provides the net income. On a family-owned farm, net income is the same thing as the farmer’s pre-tax salary.

Full-Time Farming

If you want farming to be a full-time livelihood, you need to have realistic expectations about your earning potential. Start by calculating how much you need to make to provide for yourself and your family. The descriptions below will help you determine what scale your farm should be to meet your income goals.

Fewer than 3 acresA rule of thumb in market gardening is that one person working full-time can handle about 1 acre of intensive production. In this model, at least one person, and often two, work full-time on the farm with little or no hired help. They grow a wide array of crops, but with a particular focus on high-dollar crops, such as salad mix, heirloom tomatoes, and cut flowers; and they sell in diverse markets, including farmers markets, to restaurants, and through a community-supported agriculture (CSA) component.

The amount of money that can be earned per acre on this type of farm varies considerably, based on the length of the growing season and differences in management practices. It could be $20,000 per acre for mixed vegetables to $35,000 an acre or more for high-dollar salad mix, herbs, or cut flowers. Whatever the per-acre revenue, the margin on this type of farm consistently runs at about 50 to 60 percent, which is considered a very good margin. At this scale, farmers rarely hire labor, preferring to do the work themselves rather than managing other people. They purchase only basic tools and equipment. The bulk of expenses on this type of farm are for seeds, plants, and supplies.

3 to 12 acresMany growers who started with just a few acres soon find that they need to grow more to earn enough for a full-time livelihood. It’s impractical to grow more than 3 acres of produce using just hand labor, so farmers invest in labor-saving equipment, which means higher capital costs, depreciation, maintenance, and repairs. Hired help will also be necessary.

The amount of revenue generated by this size farm depends tremendously on the grower’s energy and marketing abilities. To sell more than 5 or 6 acres of vegetables at retail prices is a feat requiring attendance at numerous farmers markets each week, or an on-farm market. For most growers at this scale, wholesaling to grocery stores, restaurants, and institutions is part of the marketing mix.

More than 12 acresAt this scale, mechanization is essential, and the gross per acre is much lower than on small farms, simply because production isn’t as intensive. Plants need more space to allow tractors, transplanters, cultivators, and harvesters to get through, so the number of plants per acre is smaller than on a hand-tended vegetable field. In addition, the greater the production on large acreage, the less likelihood the farmer can sell it all direct to the consumer at retail prices. Revenue per acre may be as low as $10,000, but with 12 or more acres in production, the gross revenue is high.

But is the net revenue any higher on these farms than on the small, intensive farms? Often, it is. On most of the larger farms I have visited, profit margins range from 10 percent to nearly 50 percent. In addition, most of these larger farms are more meticulous in their record-keeping than smaller farmers and have already deducted depreciation and taxes as an expense before they cite their net income, so they have a more accurate figure for their personal earnings. More on those considerations later.

The Sideline Farm

Many market gardens are operated as part-time enterprises, with the farmers holding other jobs either on or off the farm. Because growing produce and flowers requires a high level of attention, it’s difficult for the part-time farmer to be as efficient and productive as the farmer who is always present on the farm. As a result, gross revenue per acre will be somewhat less than that earned by the full-time farmer. And expenses will probably be higher, because the part-time farmer will have to hire help to get the work done.

Despite those constraints, it is not unusual for a part-time farmer to gross $10,000 to $15,000 an acre on produce and flowers and to net about half that amount. Net revenue on the start-up farm is a nebulous figure, however, because many growers just plow their profits right back into the farm. For the first few years, and maybe for much longer, the part-time grower realizes that he or she isn’t big enough, and so reinvests the farm income in greenhouses, tractors, tools, land, marketing aids, and experimental crops.

And that’s as it should be. Debt can sink a fledgling farmer who has a bad year, so it’s advisable to grow the business slowly until all the pieces are in place. Once a grower has experience and skills, it may be time to take the leap into borrowing money to scale up the business.

Read more: For more tips from Market Farming Success read Pricing Strategies for Selling Your Produce.

Whether your farm has acres under cultivation or a vegetable patch on the back 40 – feet, that is – by tending to your soil’s needs over the cold months you can reap rewards that grow year to year.

Think of it, soil experts say, as putting the garden to bed. While there’s a lot more sweat and planning involved in winter soil care than in, say, one night’s reading of Goodnight Moon, tucking in a child and tucking in a garden are a lot alike.

Good soil care, year after year, is as important as consistent child-rearing. At Howell Living History Farm in Lambertville, New Jersey, the scars of plowing practices that promoted erosion in the 18th century are still visible.

“We’re plowing less than they did on our farm in 1880,” farmer Rob Flory says proudly. That plowing is done with horse or oxen teams. Excess rainfall that once carried soil out of tilled fields is now borne by grassed waterways, slowly across gentle slopes, running clear into a stream and a pond on the property.

It’s just one way the historic 130-acre farm, owned and operated by Mercer County, cares for its most precious resource.

“We’re not going to sacrifice our soil,” Flory says.

Laying out the future

Preparation to put a garden – or farm fields – to bed takes planning. Knowing what crop will be planted helps direct decisions about where it will be planted, and how you’ll want it to look. Think of it as laying out a child’s clothing for the next day.

At the Seed Savers Exchange Heritage Farm in Decorah, Iowa, gardens are always rotated into and out of pasturelands. Shanyn Siegel, collection curator, says new plots are carved from ground where cattle kept weeds in control and contributed manure; older plots are returned to grazing.

“And the gardens that we take from a space that was formerly pasture, those are the Cadillac of gardens,” Siegel says.

At Howell, a traditional eight-year schedule is in place for field crops: hay, then corn, then oats, and then a wheat/timothy/clover combination, on which hay will be cut for five years, allowing that field to be unplowed for that stretch of time.

Crop rotation, whether it’s as simple as avoiding planting tomatoes in the same raised bed year after year, or something on the scale of Howell’s orchestrated grain dance, discourages both disease and some insect pests. So it’s worth taking the time to sketch out a plan for your particular space, noting what worked well and what didn’t in the most recent harvest and any problems in need of solutions. Come spring, it can be too easy to forget what went where and what results were obtained. (G RIT ’s Food Garden Planner now includes a crop-rotation feature that does the thinking for you.) It’s also a good time to hit the books or the county extension phone line to get answers – or a soil test (see “The Report Card: Soil Testing”). If, like Seed Savers, you plan to create a new garden out of pasture, consider removing or tilling in the current vegetation and applying any needed amendments tailored to the patch’s future.

Growing a great vegetable garden involves juggling the needs of dozens of different crops. Now figuring out when to plant what – and where – just got easier. With the help of our interactive Food Garden Planner, you quickly can get the information you need to design your best garden ever – and you can try it free for 30 days!

Cleaning up

With your garden’s future laid out, there’s now some cleanup involved – just as you would have a child wash face and hands and brush teeth, maybe even take a bath.

You’ll want to remove any plant material that showed a hint of disease. While it’s possible to compost such debris at high enough temperatures to kill some pathogens, it’s likely not worth the trouble. Some gardeners remove all nightshade plant debris on principle to deter blights and viruses.

Overall, your cleanup strategy will be particular to your area and the crop. For example, on eastern Colorado’s High Plains, farm consultant and state fair vegetable judge Larry Propp recommends leaving old squash vines or other stubble on the fields to help hold snow in place. That’s because the area is subject to whipping winter winds that easily carry off precious moisture.

Soil-amending season is a fine time to prune any damaged tree limbs and uproot anything you don’t want self-seeding next year. If you till in the spring, remove and inventory trellises, cages, temporary fencing and plant markers, and check the condition of infrastructure. One last weeding before the snow flies can pay off well too.

Bedtime snacks

Soil experts agree there is nothing like manure – nothing in the world.

Abundant manure, whether spread with a turn-of-the-century manure spreader or dropped as the cattle graze, is the uniting force of soil fertility. You could call it the Force. The biochemical duct tape that holds great soil together. Top Dung.

“Cow would be No. 1,” Propp says. “And after that, horse.” Sheep is fine, he adds, but can be difficult to obtain. If you have sheep for neighbors, count your blessings and find ways to ingratiate yourself with their shepherds.

“A lot of people spend a lot of money on bagged manure in the spring, but if you can get the stuff locally and spread it in the fall, you’ll be way ahead in the spring,” says Joel Reich, Boulder, Colorado, extension soil scientist.

At Howell, “the manure spreader really does get a workout,” Flory says. Because the farm’s livestock – cows, horses and oxen – are stabled at night in winter and during the day’s worst heat, collected manure is always in abundant supply, not to mention what’s dropped in place.

“The first principle,” Siegel says, “is to return to the soil what you take out of it.” Manure from grazing animals does just that.

In the kitchen garden or vegetable patch, Reich recommends spreading a 1-inch-thick layer of manure. Then he likes to sprinkle blood meal, a nitrogen supplement available at most garden stores, on top.

nto that 1-inch layer also can go kitchen or garden waste, or compost – thoroughly chopped – as long as it’s nothing from the nightshade family. Bags of crushed fall leaves can join the mix, and so can chopped straw, if you’ve got it.

A trip to the comfort station

Remember that child who just wouldn’t stay down for the night? Who kept popping up for one more glass of water – or potty trip?

If you’re in a dry area – or one that’s suffering from a temporary or extended drought – treat your composted or manured plot to a nice long, slow drink. The worms, bugs and bacteria that break down compost’s nutrients into smaller and smaller chemical bits, making it available to plant roots, need moisture to do their work. If you’ve turned off or removed drip irrigation, wet your amendment-covered garden down with a sprinkler.

“Lay it out and wet it down,” Reich says, but “don’t firm it – let the water settle things.”

And if you’re in an area with dry winters, a soaking every month or so can’t hurt. Sometimes, that child just stays thirsty.

The blanket

Once you’ve laid down that manure layer and given it a drink, tuck it in with a blanket.

It can be any kind of covering you can muster, says Reich – space being the only real limitation. You can use tattered old bedsheets, tarps or row covers; Reich has even used large, flattened cardboard boxes, obtainable at appliance stores, well-wetted and held down with rocks or pavers. (In some soils, the cardboard itself will break down to add organic matter.) He’s also used old sheets of plywood: “Reusing is an even higher purpose than recycling.”

What you’re doing, he explains, is creating a compost pile in the soil. “When it’s freezing, when it’s 20 degrees, that garden patch will heat up because it’s bioactive,” Reich says. “You’ve added food with the leaves or manure, nitrogen with the blood meal, and water. That’s your six-month winter compost.”

With the blanket in place, nitrogen added to a covered bed will be consumed and excreted repeatedly, remaining in the soil, Reich says. “In fact, it’s broken down into more and more plant-available forms.”

At Howell, the kitchen gardens are covered thickly for the winter with straw – grown on the farm itself – that is later raked up and added to the compost pile. “It keeps the earthworms really busy in the winter, so they help turn the soil for us. It makes digging really easy in the spring,” Flory says.

Blankets by the acre

Another version of the blanket for larger gardens or field crops is the cover crop, utilized to protect beds, exclude weeds, prevent erosion or provide nitrogen; different cover crops can achieve different combinations of these purposes.

Typical crops are seeded in late summer or early fall to overwinter, then tilled into the soil two to three weeks before vegetables are seeded. But the choice of the crop itself should be carefully contemplated.

In Propp’s region of Colorado’s eastern plains, where annual rainfall is usually only 14 to 18 inches, cover cropping often isn’t recommended because that crop consumes scant and precious soil moisture, then exposes more soil to dehydration when the crop is tilled.

In less arid regions, cover crops are hailed. Seed Savers’ farmers are still testing ways to schedule cover crops.

“We’re in as early as the soil can be worked, usually mid-March,” Siegel says, and harvesting up to frost and past frost. That makes timing tricky. Small vegetable farmers are in a similar dilemma.

Between the farm’s long isolation tents are often wide, unplanted areas. “We’ve been experimenting with annual rye grass, which can handle the foot traffic, just to not have bare ground,” she says.

In Siegel’s own home garden, her cover crop for areas she just hasn’t had time to plant is a tasty one: dill. “It’s something I can save seed from and reseed easily, and if I don’t want it anymore, it’s easy to pull out.”

The Report Card: Soil Testing

Annual soil tests — plus pre-testing of any new garden beds you’re planning for next year — are a good idea. Contact your county or state extension office, or a university with an agriculture department, to find out where to have one done. You’ll be able to check nitrogen levels for vegetables, usually for a fairly small fee. Other chemical tests may be advisable depending on how the land was most recently used, and these may cost extra. If your future garden is near a livestock area or is a former stock area, be sure to ask about salt levels.

At Howell Living History Farm, Rob Flory says the field-crop acres are tested about every eight years; the vegetable garden, about every three years. Based on such tests, the farm’s crews have added lime or calcium or even borax, the last when a clover crop had done poorly and the staff wanted to know why. Soil tests also can reveal problems with pH, salts, low nitrogen or low organic matter.

A soil test usually involves taking a group of soil-core samples, scattered throughout a plot of soil that will have a particular use — mixed vegetables, for example, cut flowers or alfalfa. The samples are mixed and allowed to dry for a minimal amount of time: enough to remove the moisture, but not enough for the nitrogen to decompose. That’s about a day or two for most samples. You’ll usually fill out a form about the field or garden’s history and current use, and choose from among a variety of tests.

The accuracy of over-the-counter soil test kits is notoriously low; it’s worth it to pay the nominal fee for more scientific tests.

No to Nightshades

The nightshade family of plants (Solanaceae) consists of more than 2,500 species and includes eggplant, tomato, potato, capsiucum peppers, tobaccos and petunias, as well as the highly poisonous belladonna, jimsonweed, henbane and mandrake.

Plant Garlic in the Fall for a Larger, Healthier Crop

If you’ve tried growing garlic and your bulbs turned out small, it might be because you planted it in spring. If you want full-sized bulbs bursting with great garlic flavor, plant your garlic in the fall and harvest it the next summer.
Garlic is a cold-hardy root veggie, and in most climates, you’ll get much better results with fall planting.
Try to plant your garlic about a month before your ground freezes, so the plants have time to get established. During winter, the crop will go dormant; then once spring and warmer temps roll around again, your plants will experience a burst of growth. By summer harvest time, you’ll marvel at the success of your crop!

This photo illustrates the size difference between spring-planted garlic (left), which pales in comparison to the impressive fall-planted batch (right).
For more information about planting and growing great garlic, see All About Growing Garlic.

Real-World Winter Gardening Tips
From Your Growing Zone

Grow food year-round by following these winter gardening tips from backyard gardeners in your Growing Zone.
Growers in all types of climates can grow a productive winter vegetable garden. In some areas, this requires the protection of a low tunnel or greenhouse, but in warm climates, winter is the easiest and most abundant time of year in the garden.
In June 2013, we sent a winter gardening survey to thousands of readers all over the United States and beyond, asking growers about their best strategies for growing food in winter. This page includes a large sampling of the responses we received, organized by Growing Zone.
Go to this USDA Hardiness Zone page or check the map below to find your Zone. You can click on your Zone in the list right below the map to be taken to the tips that came from readers in your Zone.
We didn’t receive any responses from you determined growers in icy-cold Zones 1 and 2, or in steamy-hot Zone 13, so if you grow food in one of those areas, leave a comment on this page and let us know your winter gardening tips.
For those of you with cool winters, check out Best Crops and Varieties for Winter Gardening to see which veggies may thrive best where you live.

Zone 3	Zone 7	Zone 11
Zone 4	Zone 8	Zone 12
Zone 5	Zone 9
Zone 6	Zone 10

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 3

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

Mulch and leaves.
A cold frame, hay or nothing for the hardiest crops.
I use clean straw.
I use greenhouses with small heaters to keep the plants from freezing.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Choose your crops depending on your area and typical weather. Plant in a place that isn’t accidentally going to get worked in the spring (which happened to me this year ... oops).
I try sowing some things in fall so those crops can start early in spring at their own convenience.
I grow a lot in cold frames inside my greenhouse under my regular benches.
Spend as much time in your garden as you would in the summer.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

Watch the weather forecast for snowfall and drops in temps.
Observe results of trial and error, and learn to count backward!
I start in the first week of November while there is still a bit more warmth and sunshine to give the plants a head start for the colder, darker months ahead.
As winter can and does start as early as the first killing frost in fall, I do not plant a winter garden. We only have June, July and August in which to grow a garden, and this year my last killing frost was in June. The killing frost last fall was in September.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 4

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

I use a lot of mulch and hay.
An unheated greenhouse, and extra cloth coverings when temps in the greenhouse go below freezing at night.
Leaves, and then other mulch.
I have used regular plastic on PVC for at least the past six years. I tried a number of different small commercial greenhouse kits with mixed success. I also currently use a 12-by-20-foot hoop house with small raised beds.
I have the best luck with my two cold frames. We have too much snow load for hoop houses, in my opinion. My chard, kale and collards have gotten crushed for the past three winters despite design changes each year.
I grow food in the house basement in large containers under lights.
I use a cold frame and floating row covers. They both work well.
Try a high tunnel, but you have to keep the heavy snow off.
Any of the commercial fiber coverings work, along with old sheets, etc.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Colorado sun can make the greenhouse too hot for late summer/early fall planting of some greens, but if started too late plants won’t get large enough before growth slows with short days. So, I start many outside where temps are cooler, and then transplant into greenhouse before the first hard freeze. This works well for most greens, broccoli, cauliflower, parsley, cilantro and snow peas.
My greens look fairly wan in dead of winter, but perk right up at the barest hint of spring. By then I am very eager for fresh, homegrown greens and welcome the abundant harvesting that lasts through to the first flourishing of my spring plantings.
My winter garden consists of many containers in the basement under lights, and we eat well all winter!
Try growing things indoors in sunny windows with supplemental fluorescent lights.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

Seed every two weeks in late summer/early fall to find out what timing works best. If a crop fails, try again in late winter when days start to get longer again. Many fail due to low light not cold temps.
Start everything inside.
Getting the hoop house up and anchored before the wicked April winds!
With global warming, our season seems to be extending beyond what we are used to. It is by feel and guess … and by golly.
It’s too cold to winter garden without cover. I only plant garlic in the fall to restart growing in spring.
Since the weather is so inconsistent here in Wisconsin, it is basically listening to the predictions or going with your gut feeling and hoping for the best.
I have to start my late crops in the second half of July for them to get a good start. We’re in the mountains and have a short season with big temperature swings from day to night.
I recommend a high tunnel or greenhouse. Here, 20 miles from Canada, it gets pretty nasty.
Keep yearly records and consult the long-range forecast.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 5

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

I have stone raised beds (which retain heat) and I put Reemay-type fabric over them in winter.
We have very large cold frames built from old windows.
I grow in an unheated hoop house and also an unheated glass house made out of old windows. When the weather is very cold, I put row covers over the crops inside the greenhouse thus enabling the greens to stay alive.
I use 6-mil fiber-reinforced greenhouse cover over a raised bed with a frame.
Straw mulch (though there is a risk of the straw harboring field bindweed). It’s still the best cover for plants I may want to dig in January, such as carrots.
Plastic over hoops.
Frost blankets if needed.
Low tunnels.
We have an unheated poly-tunnel. We cover rows with another layer of poly during January and February.
I made a cold frame from leftover wood and greenhouse “glass,” which is not really glass, but corrugated plastic — the kind with the channels running in between two flat sheets. I also made a 4-by-6-foot box out of old 2-by-4s and put another piece of the greenhouse plastic on top of the frame; it sits just high enough off of the ground for mâche and spinach all winter long. In late winter (February or March), I can start chard or lettuces under it, and by the time the plants are too tall, it is time to remove the cover anyway. The cold frame is great for taller things like arugula. I also have a greenhouse shed combo and I can start all my brassicas in there with no added heat in mid-January.
I use a direct cover of floating row cover on the plants and then a layer of clear 6-mil greenhouse plastic over hoops for the low-tunnel beds. I have had the best luck with the cole family: kales and collards and even cabbage and kohlabri over-winter from the summer planting and continue to produce. I’ve also had good luck with a variety of chards and lettuces that will survive through the winter.
Cold Frames work the best for all the vegetables that I grow in the winter months. I can grow salad greens all year long.
I put bales of straw over the tops of my carrots before the first freeze. Then, I just dig the carrots as I use them.
I have a greenhouse with polycarbonate construction. When it is really cold, I add two layers of plastic, creating a kind of tunnel inside the greenhouse.
I use a cold frame covered with glass (it’s actually an old aluminum porch door hinged on the wooden frame), and then covered by transparent plastic when temperatures start to stay in the mid to low 20s at night.
I use 6-mil clear plastic held above pants by ribs of black plastic water pipe.
Low plastic coverings seem to give the best protection. This setup seems to hold the heat overnight better. I don’t use glass as the next big snowfall around here may break it.
I use a strawbale surround, and put greenhouse plastic on top in the winter, and change to shade cloth when it gets warmer.
I build a simple A-frame out of wood and toss clear plastic over it and weigh down the edges with bricks. Parsley, garlic and scallions I cover with leaves from the yard.
I have used a hoop house, and in Zone 5, it was not completely adequate. I will add another layer of protection this year. The soil, however, was dramatically better in the hoop house; it remained unfrozen for longer, retained moisture and was much more workable than the soil outside of the hoop house. I used straw on the inside around the plants, and will use even more next time.
I mulch with 1 to 1 1/2 feet of dry autumn leaves, and sometimes use large plastic pop bottles like cloches.
I don’t have a true winter garden because I don’t have a greenhouse, but I do start earlier than most in the spring and harvest later in the fall. I use old sheets to protect plants from frost that can come at any time of the year here, even in summer. Sheets can be left on for extended periods without danger of overheating. They don’t freeze at the contact points like plastic does, either. And they protect to a lower temp than floating row covers. I also use “Wall O Water.” They protect plants even when the water in them is freezing.
For root crops, I use straw covering. For leafy plants, I put up wire supports for covering with old sheets or other fabric.
We have good luck with Flower House covers, with zippered openings, that fit right over the raised bed and attach to the wood. Covering with a floating row cover on the coldest nights protects those plants closest to the outside edges.
I just use plastic I find at work. This recycles the plastic and works very well. I also use re-bar for the framing with clothes-pins to secure the plastic.
We use small cold frames surrounded by dirt heaped around the bottom. Wind breaks of fencing or straw bales on the north side help. We’ve used blankets to insulate the windows when it gets below zero. Our garden slopes slightly towards the south, too. Water sparsely and only on sunny mornings.
We use a greenhouse. There’s a hard freeze/snow cover in December through February. Kale and chard can be kept in-ground if surrounded by water-filled milk jugs and mulch and covered.
I just use a tarp draped over straw bales.
I have a hoop house and I mulch with pine shavings that have done duty in my chicken coop. It helps with moisture retention and insulation into the winter.
Portable cold frames and multiple layers of plastic (at least 5-mil) clipped over bent rebar and/or PVC pipe. Once it gets below around 60 degrees, you’re not usually worrying about pests. You just have to ensure that things that can’t stand freezing weather are protected. A deep mulch of hay will keep collards, kale and chard good through the entire winter, and can allow you to leave carrots in the ground, as well.
I use mini-greenhouse boxes and/or cold frames. They work for all months but January and February here in northern Illinois.
Crops are lined with straw bales and covered with old storm windows.
We use a white fiber blanket, and a few bricks to hold it down.
I add 6-mil poly over the hoop house, black plastic bottles of water and straw bales inside to warm, cover and provide extra insulation during times of killing cold.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

I spread horse manure over my beds in late autumn.
Making sure plants get the moisture they need and vented air on nice days to avoid heat damage.
I’ve had really good luck with kale. Just plant it and pick leaves into winter. Frost improves the taste.
Keeping the chickens out of the garden. They got under my plastic covering and nearly destroyed my winter garden this year!
Put an automatic venting arm on your cold frame so you don’t cook everything on a sunny day.
Lots and lots of mulch. We’re high desert with hot dry days and cool nights. Mulch keeps soil temps even. Deep, less frequent watering seems to let the roots establish at a deeper level. Sow seeds as early as possible and protect against frost/freeze, rather than waiting to sow until soil is warm enough. I’ve found it’s easier to heat soil up than it is to cool it down.
Use common sense. Only open/uncover the plants on calm, sunny days and close them up as soon as you harvest what you need.
Covered “hot beds” work as well as covered hoop houses.
Try to keep the beds out of any strong winds. And make sure the beds are well-drained to avoid the buildup of ice after snow melts.
Plant as late as possible to allow seed germination without heavy leafing during the late summer heat. I keep some brassicas going in shade during the late summer and keep the side shoots going; the late fall/early winter harvest can go on in the garden through the first killing frost.
A hoop house is the best thing I’ve ever built for my garden. I’m almost to the point where I can grow year-round.
Most of my planting is done in raised beds that are completely full of screened and composted soil. The clay in Missouri can become so water-logged, and freeze the roots, that planting in raised beds surrounded by concrete blocks allows the soil to remain healthy and warm enough to grow year-round, with a bit of covering.
My best advice for winter gardening is to invest in a greenhouse someday!
I use leaf mold mulch to grow in and only water in the fall to get the crops established. Once it begins to freeze, I discontinue watering. I only use rain water from our rain catchment system.
Try underground solar heat tubes.
I find that winters with heavy snow cover keeps the garden healthier. Insect damage occurs in years with low snowfall. Also, letting chickens free range keeps the soil looser and healthier. Low paid and low maintenance chickens are worth every penny to keep my garden healthy.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

If plants are well-established before the cold is insistent, they are much more likely to survive the unpredictable, often extreme, Iowa winters. Amazingly, just protection from the wind gives them a huge advantage even when it is below zero outside.
Plant sooner rather than later. You plant too late and the plants will survive, but they will be so small that you can’t really harvest until early spring when they start to take off.
Try putting in multiple plantings spaced two weeks apart, and keep good records.
Most of my chard and lettuce I just overwinter the last fall planting. You need to get them in early enough to have sturdy plants going into the cold months.
When I am harvesting late tomato crops from the main garden, I start the winter salad bed.
Plant cold-weather stuff when the maple trees blossom, plant the rest when the peonies bloom, and then plant a second crop in late September.
It’s difficult to predict the timing of freezes here. Good coverings and a watchful eye on the weather is a must.
Thus far, I have simply kept planting (mostly salad greens) and harvesting until hard freezes and/or snow killed off the garden. Leeks and Brussels sprouts stay until I get around to harvesting, and are all the better after some frost.
For me, it’s best to grow a variety of greens indoors in pots, although I’ve also grown cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and even cucumbers indoors in pots in winter.
I start the seeds inside and only plant seedlings, and I make sure to cold harden the seedlings off before planting them out under the frost blanket.
I use the Almanac as well as talking to older gardeners and farmers. Their expertise is invaluable.
We try to plant in September, while we still have a couple of months of warm weather and plenty of sunshine. We harvest into January, when we get tired of salad.
Make sure to shade leafy greens during the late-summer seeding.
I use a white sun tarp over my hoop house and that keeps the hot summer sun at bay. I also have misters that keep the temps down. I plant spinach, romaine, rocket, and the like in mid- to late-August, and by the time the plants are up, September is here and the nights have started to cool down considerably. By October, I’m picking salads daily and I progressively close up my hoop house and keep my winter crops going until at least Thanksgiving.
Pay close attention to the Farmers’ Almanac long-range estimates. They’re usually around 80 percent accurate. If you plant too early, the heat will decimate plants, and if you plant too late, the plants can’t overwinter. I also recommend portable cold frames to cover plants if snow/frost comes early.
Wait until the nights begin to be cooler — usually the end of August, or early September. Be sure to water well to aid in germination, and remember that many winter crops don’t germinate well until the temps are cool.
I usually use the wild plants which are well-established in this area, so I don't have to fiddle with timing. I watch them to see when they flower and when the baby plants come up. So if the wild rocket drops seed in September, for example, and baby plants start coming up in early November, I just get seeds from the wild plants and plant directly into my garden.
Keep a record of soil temperature.
I just plant winter crops when I find the time. I make sure it has not frosted yet and I plant them in the areas of my garden that get the most sun in winter.
Mother Nature plants these crops for me. I sow the seeds in late May and I always get a second crop from letting the dormant plants overwinter under leaves or straw castoff from my chicken coop and the plants produce early spring veggies.
If you use coverings and mini-greenhouse boxes or cold frames then the timing is less relevant.
Ensure the plant is almost fully grown when the first hard freeze hits. The unheated hoop house in a hard winter should be considered more of a refrigerator for preserving foods than a place to encourage active growing. Even with extra protection, there is a period of dormancy when greens die back unless they are packed with extra insulation. Root crops and leeks continue to be harvestable throughout.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 6

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

Straw for things I may want to pick in the winter. Clear plastic for things I just want to overwinter but not harvest.
We use a high hoop house covered with 4-mil plastic and several smaller moveable hoop houses with plastic. We also use cloth or fabric row covers as a secondary cover during colder weather. Last year we tried something new by placing a large candle at both ends of the high hoop house. This was very successful. We are going to try to grow the tomatoes through the whole year this year by using the candle and double or triple covers.
Low tunnels.
I made a hoop house with PVC pipe over a raised bed that’s 4 feet wide and 15 feet long, and covered it with 6-mil plastic. I used black landscape fabric around the plants to retain the heat. The sun was the only heat source. The raised beds are on a steep southwest-facing slope, and we average a little warmer than the valley. I think our low temperature for the winter last year was -4 degrees Fahrenheit.
Instead of plastic, I use old blankets to cover crops.
I use a hoop house for root vegetables and an unheated mini- greenhouse for most others.
I use row covers over collards, kale, pac choi and mizuna. The collards and kale survive the whole winter.
I grow under glass windows formed together to create an A-frame.
I use standard, plain-old row covers. If it gets really cool (below freezing), I will add a layer of plastic if needed.
I cover my raised beds with horticultural grade greenhouse plastic over pvc hoops. Works great.
Shredded leaves are wonderful. They provide protection and break down into compost for later on. Just don’t pack them tightly.
A seed house or Plexiglas A-frame is the cheapest way to go. You can improvise with a cheap wire frame and some plastic sheeting from Lowes. You have to water it though, as it will be enclosed.
My first option is a cold frame made from windows over straw bales; my second-best option is heavy clear plastic above a metal frame.
I construct a lean-to hothouse from recycled materials: clear plastic, sturdy limbs, rocks for anchors, etc. I cover my Brussels sprouts, and my late crop of turnips and cabbage, and open the ends if the temperature reaches about 35 degrees.
I have two unheated greenhouses (small); they just have drums of water on the north side.
Medium-weight cotton coverings work for us. Weather here jumps right from snowy and stormy to bright, beautiful sun. There isn’t much transitional time, so we stand ready with coverings on cool nights but also for those too sunny days for seedlings.
I use a standard 10-foot-by-25-foot plastic sheet of medium thickness. I put 12-inch rebar in the ground and cut half-inch plastic electrical conduit into 5-foot sections, and bend them over to make hoops. This costs approximately $15 to $25 for each bed.
I make an igloo-like cover over my 4-by-4-foot raised beds using PVC and heavy white garden cloth.
Agribon 19 on outside hoops, and then a double-layer of agribon 19 on inside hoops. This coming year I plan on adding a layer of polyethylene plastic on the outside hoop over the agribon 19 when temperatures go below 25 degrees. I think I will be able to keep more crops alive then.
I use PVC pipes with a double layer of plastic over them.
Agribon for things outside. I also have a small greenhouse and can grow most things in there over the winter with no other protection. I have more problems with it getting too warm on sunny days for the cold-loving things.
We have raised beds that my husband built wooden-framed greenhouse toppers for. He uses glass windows and/or plastic sheeting secured to the wooden frames.
Low PVC frame with plastic attached with spring-loaded clamps. I plant in low raised beds with very well-amended soil.
I use two layers: plastic greenhouse covering over the raised beds with Reemay over the bed, too, when temps drop to the mid-20s.
I like 6-mil plastic over hoops made of field fencing.
We found giant foam cubes at a farm equipment store that they were going to get rid of. We put these around raised beds and covered them with windows and glass doors. Old sleeping bags go over these when there’s a hard frost or snow. We remove the coverings when full sun is out.
We use a high tunnel with a low tunnel inside of it.
We used cold frames made of plastic decking material, with clear plastic corrugated roofing panels for the lights. We later added a sheet of translucent plastic to the inside to give a second layer.
I have a portable quilted greenhouse from Gardeners Supply that has windows in case it gets too warm. And when the dead of winter comes, I cover it with a heavy cover and plastic.
I use straw for most things, woven cloth covers for crops such as mustard and leeks, and grow boxes in the greenhouse for lettuces.
I grow some things in my greenhouse, which is made of Plexiglas and recycled glass: lettuce, bok choy, scallions, herbs of all kinds. Outside, I use only a frost blanket over the spinach, if I remember. Otherwise, I use my frost blankets in the early spring over peppers and tomatoes if needed.
We used 1-inch-thick PVC pipe we bought at a resale shop that supports Habitat for Humanity. Five pipes secured over the top of the raised bed were then covered in translucent plastic sheets. We secured the sheets with large plastic clips, which made it very easy to reposition for weeding, watering and monitoring.
I have only planted very cold-weather crops here in southwest Pa., but I’m working on a modified “walpini” this summer, using the back foundation of our old fallen barn along with hay bales and some old windows that were laying around. The roof will probably be cattle panels covered with heavy-duty plastic. The front faces south and that’s the angle the roof will face, so hopefully it will hold heat!
Row cover cloth is sufficient for root crops. Greens need hoops or a cold frame.
I use raised beds made from the clay blocks of the foundation of a house that burned down. I have high tunnels over some of them, and others I just have portable row covers for. I have one bed that is about 25 feet long that I cover with some old Plexiglas sheeting, to create a hot house.
Snow fall! I have much better luck when we have a good blanket of snow. Then I pick during a thaw.
I use a 6-mil polyhouse, with bales of straw along the base of the polyhouse on the windy sides (north and west).
We have a 14-by-24-foot hoop house. Inside, two beds are covered with low hoops made from concrete reinforcing wire. When gets below freezing, these can be covered with plastic when temps are in the low 20s. I add blankets (purchased from yard sales or Goodwill) if colder, and will even add another tarp on top if needed. More blankets could be added if it’s below zero.
I use old recycled storm windows and straw in my beds that I plant in the spring. I keep most of my herbs going through winter this way. I keep rosemary, sage, oregano, chives and parsley going year-round. If I am lucky, I can keep mint, cilantro and basil going until early December.
I use a dome tunnel with a light bulb inside.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

If a big freeze is coming, harvest like there’s no tomorrow.
I have been gardening for a long time but only just started experimenting with winter gardening, as I recently moved to Klamath Falls. In general, for any season, good rich soil is the key. I use chicken manure as well as organic fertilizer and apply and work into the ground before planting, and then again as the plants start to produce. A close eye on the garden to scope out pests is also critical, especially with organic pesticide techniques, as they work best when applied before an infestation becomes large. I have had problems with aphids under my hoop house, surprisingly, as I thought the colder weather would discourage them. I use Safer Insecticidal soap, which has worked well. I also smash the aphids when I see them.
I use cold frames for spinach, lettuce, mizuna, and mâche. All but the mizuna make it the whole winter, although growth slows down to a crawl in the coldest part of the winter.
The biggest issue for me is not temperature, but protection from wind.
We find that the more we cut and use the kale and spinach, the more they continue to produce. Bonus!
I’ve been mounding soil up around the base of my chard in late fall. This seems to help the plant handle the cold winter.
Winter-hardy ground cover like clover is a great idea. It doesn’t mind being stepped on repeatedly and it fixes nitrogen. Always cycle nitrogen fixes through each garden spot before putting in heavy feeders. Add some manure and compost tea (even though it smells like armpits!) to liven up the soil. Allow diversity.
Get plants growing before the first frost, watch the temperature, and keep out the rabbits.
Don’t forget ventilation on sunny days. Sow quick-maturing veggies (lettuce, spinach, etc.) several times.
For the times when temperatures are below 25, I fill gallon jugs with water and alcohol, paint them flat black, and allow the liquid to heat by daytime ambient thermal radiation. I place the jugs in my growing lean-to overnight to act as heaters. I also mature several compost piles over the summer and use it with my winter plants.
Try a high tunnel for items you want to harvest during winter, and use a low tunnel for things you want to overwinter and harvest in spring or late winter.
I plant spinach and carrots before cold weather hits, and in the spring they are ready to eat. I have found carrots are sweeter if they are in the ground through the winter.
I plant garlic and potato onions in the fall to overwinter for harvest the next year. These do well without any covering at all. I’ve been using the hardiest varieties I can find, and I try to keep all the plants in good air circulation and dry if it gets to wet.
Don’t water too much, as tunnels hold moisture and condensation
We use late winter to start seeds in the basement grow-center we have set up. If we start our peppers, tomatoes and cruciferous vegetables the last week of February or first week of March, the seedlings get a good head start to producing much more. For example, we had nine cuttings on our broccoli last year.
Lots of compost and mulch. Things don’t grow much, but they do stay alive waiting for some spring warmth. It stays cold here in Eastern Washington in the winter for a long period of time. The ground freezes hard!
I like biochar techniques. Mixing charcoal into the soil tends to prevent the soil from freezing solid.
I use the “cut and come again” process for most of my lettuces and other hardy greens.
Egyptian onions can be harvested year-round and no cover is needed for them. You can use the tops for chives and the bottoms for cooking or salads. Great year-round plant!
We start plants from seeds in our basement under grow lights. When plants are big enough, we move them to a small greenhouse or cold frames. You will fail sometimes, but don’t give up!
Start with a thick, rich bed of rotted manure. Water well before it gets too cold to open the frames. If needed, water during warm spells mid-winter, as it can get dry.
Some of my best harvests are cut-and-come-again greens.
Let mâche go to seed in order to make it a winter “weed.”
As long as I can get my plants in early enough and keep them covered, mostly to protect from rabbits, I can get lots of great harvests all the way through February.
I make sure the crops I plant will get the most sunlight available during the winter days, without any shade. I also make sure there’s protection from the wind and that the covering is weighted down to keep it in place to protect my plants.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

For my cool weather crops, I try to gauge when the really hot weather is over. I try to have spots cleared and amended a few weeks before I want to plant.
I shoot for planting the first of September with most plants. The weather does a lot of the dictating as to when the planting is done.
Take the soil’s temperature often.
Light seems to be the limiting factor for broccoli, so it does best if it gets in in time to form florets. The spring lettuce and arugula reseed themselves, as does the parsley. I have not had to plant any for several years; I just let it go wild.
Try to remember to get the fall and winter crops in on time while embracing the summer harvest.
I don’t worry too much about timing in my area. If it is a cool-weather crop, it will still grow pretty well in this area in winter.
I try to watch the temperature. Last September was actually too hot; I ended up replanting.
I try to base my fall plantings on when the plant would naturally seed itself and, if using starts, planting when the young plants would be up. Planting too early for a fall crop, that you’ll keep going in winter, can be inhibiting due to heat and water stress.
Plant in waves. Even try to plant winter hardies like Russian kale mid-winter. They do actually grow sometimes. For the shoestring budget, find discarded scraps of Plexiglas and carefully bend over heat into an A-frame to cover rows during sprouting. Keep these covers on until the final frost, and you’ll have a big head start on the growing season.
Count down to your first frost days. Start seeds early enough to get sizeable plants and cover them before hard frost/snow.
Have a good idea when the first frost will happen. Make sure your plants have had time to root well and are hardy enough.
If planting by seeds, leave time for the seeds to germinate to get a little growth. Seed sowing in early- to mid-September works for me. If planting transplants, go with early October.
Try to get most plants up and growing well before we go below 10 hours of daylight. Sometimes it is too hot and I can’t plant in fall.
Use a calendar to help remember which tasks to do when.
Keep an eye on the weather. If it’s cool, plant early to get a head start. Kale and carrots are good all through the winter here in Kentucky without cover. Everything else needs to be covered. Eat the lettuce first.
Use the estimated first date of frost for your area and count back eight to 10 weeks.
Wait for periods when weather records suggest that rain is likely.
I use a chart from Johnny’s Selected Seeds that tells me my frost dates.
We grow all of our cool-weather vegetables in late winter/early spring in a raised bed with a greenhouse topper. I find that if we plant at the end of spring, plants will die from the shock of a really cold night, but if you plant towards the end of winter, the weather will only warm up from there, so the plants are much more tolerant.
Don’t be afraid to vary your approach by how the year is going ... things that have worked well in one year won’t always work the next.
Make sure to plant so that your veggies are at full maturity by October. Add two weeks to the maturity date on each seed packet.
Read everything you can on the subject. Start early (late summer) for seeds when growing second crops. Collect all the covers before you start fall and winter gardens. Collect freeze coverings for early spring. Also, expand your taste buds! We are missing a lot of produce we could be growing just because we were not raised on this or that green leaf.
Work with Mother Nature, not against her. Don’t use the calendar; use the weather.
Plant before your first frost, but not too early. If you know you usually have a warm spell later, it will help the plants get well-established before cold sets in.
Make sure to build shade covers for plants you have to start in the heat of July or August!
Know your weather patterns and use tunnels. I use tunnels and row covers and raised beds with old windows in the spring to get an early start. I also have a greenhouse that I use to grow food all year. Most veggies are easily forced and so are strawberries.
Planting depth is key. The soil has to be warm enough to start and support the seeds.
Plant late enough to get good germination and early enough to let the plants get big enough before winter.
It all depends on our weather, so I try to just play it by ear. We have had Septembers that were still very hot and some where it is the perfect weather for planting.
Try several small rows at different times and always document your timing.
Plant small amounts, but do it many times, spread out over several weeks. Mother Nature doesn’t follow a calendar, so you have to hedge your bets. And plant winter crops in a bed that you don’t need in early spring. It’s fun to see that the plants will do when the weather warms up. Have you ever seen the blossoms on Red Russian kale? Very striking against the dark leaves, and the bees are very thankful that you allowed the time for it to bloom.
We seed endive/escarole in late August.
I plant twice: after school starts for the new year and just before Halloween.
People may laugh, but I swear by the old Farmers’ Almanac!
I plant according to the weather. Cool, rainy days are best for me.
Read the package for days to maturity, and then experiment.
We have south-facing rock walls with rock rose and we put arugula and baby leaf lettuce mix seeds into it in late September. The rocks keep it protected from freezing. After the frost, we re-seed for early spring harvest.
I keep a journal of the different crops I have planted, when I planted them, how they have done, and what type of covering was used to protect them.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 7

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

We usually have mild winters, so on hard-frost nights I cover with a sheet of plastic that my husband rigged up for my beds.
I have been using low tunnels covered with Agribon AG-19. I spend a lot of time removing and replacing it when the weather gets too warm. But it has saved my plants when it gets cold. I have also added extra layers when it gets below 20 degrees. I only cover the lettuces, spinach and half of the broccoli.
I use glass jars as cloches when needed.
One of the best covers I ever used was when we cleared brush. I ended up putting the brush over the green beans (it was during fall) and they lasted through several frosts — ha! Other than that, leaves.
White floating row covers supported over the plants by a wire frame and anchored by rocks so the wind doesn’t blow it over and the snow doesn’t collapse it.
Reemay-type covers (some are thinner and allow more light; see Territorial Seed catalog). Plus, a large hoop house. In the Pacific Northwest we get a lot of rain — 50 inches where I live. Keeping the plants dry helps them not to “decay” in the wet. However, purple sprouting broccoli works best if left out in the rain.
I use Wall O Waters.
I use PVC pipe covered with a large white tarp.
Concrete reinforcing wire quonsets with Reemay row cover pinned over.
I use cardboard as mulch, covered with chipped Cypress. If necessary, I cover plants with plastic milk cartons or cat litter buckets.
I plant mainly in my high tunnel, but kale and arugula will do well out in the garden — but of course that depends how mild the winter is.
We use row covers for the wide rows. I also use homemade milk jug containers for crops like broccoli and cauliflower. The fruit of these tastes so much better in cool weather and we do not have to deal with nearly as many insect pests.
I throw old sheets over crops during freezing periods.
I have old windows that work as a cold frame.
I don’t need or use coverings here.
Persistent winter rains and occasional snowfalls beat down lots of plants, so we mostly grow in an unheated greenhouse.
I use newspaper covered with lawn clippings. The newspaper makes the setup easy to uncover, and the clippings keep the paper in place.
PCV hoops with plastic covering.
I mulch with whatever is at hand: pine straw, dead leaves, etc., and toss an old tarp over the garden boxes when needed.
I use row covers over a wire frame, with the addition of plastic (thin painter’s plastic on a roll) that is used about once a year, when the weather gets too cold.
We use a pop-up greenhouse.
Reemay and 4-mil plastic on low hoop houses.
Agribon fabric over pvc hoops.
I bring container plants into a covered screened porch when it’s too cold.
I use half-inch PVC pipe bent into hoops, then covered by 6-mil clear construction film from Lowe’s. I plant in raised beds and secure one side of the film to the bed and anchor the loose side with 8-foot landscape timbers, and the ends with 4-foot timbers.
I try to use simple arched pieces of aluminum strips (from a hardware store) to support plastic sheeting. There is always a problem if rain gathers in droopy places in the plastic and squashes some plants.
Floating row covers over hoops on top of raised beds. I use Gardeners Supply Company’s Garden Quilt.
I use Agribon cover cloth exclusively now for the fall and winter. It holds up better than the other brands.
We have a cattle-panel hoop house covered with 6-mil plastic.
Plastic sheeting
Hay bales on each side of a row with storm windows on top.
I have tried a light-weight commercial cover for winter hail and heavier snows. It mostly helps for easy picking in my lettuce bed. Before using it, lettuces survived under snow blankets but stopped growing until exposed to the sun again.
I use compost on everything. The plants become well-established and I don’t need to put plastic covers on things.
I have a cold frame made from old sliding patio doors on hinges that I put over one of my raised beds.
I put plastic covers over tomato cages, laid on their sides, held down with rocks on the edges.
During the winter I leave the beds uncovered unless the temp drops to the mid-30s. If the temp drops below 20, I cover beds with a heavy-duty plastic tarp.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Remember to water even though it has gotten cooler or is winter. Because it isn’t hot, it is easy to forget to water when it is dry.
Making sure the plants are near harvest-ready by the time your garden reaches the point of getting less than 10 hours of sunlight and/or the worst of your cold season (see Elliot Coleman’s books). This is except for items that won’t start to grow much until spring, like overwintering onions, peas, and some broccoli and cauliflowers.
When fertilizing, do not overuse nitrogen in particular as it reduces cold-hardiness. Extra K and Ca help for a stronger plant wall. Keep plants growing slowly until they go into stasis.
I usually let my spring crops go to seed and replant themselves. This is how I seed my winter crops.
Leave your winter crops uncovered as much as possible. Good air circulation makes for healthy plants.
A heat/grow lamp works well if it stays cold for more than a couple of days. I put mulch around all the fruit trees, grapevines, strawberries and vegetables in the garden boxes — just whatever I have available — to keep the ground warm and protect the roots.
I think the most important thing is to choose cold-tolerant vegetables.
Continuously harvest leafy crops such as lettuce, spinach, collards, etc. Make several sowings of carrots, radishes, and turnips so you always have more on the way when the first crop is fizzling out.
I am planning to grow some crops under netting (before plastic cover is needed) to keep cabbage moths away. Cabbage moths seem to be my only bug problem in winter so far.
The best luck I have is keeping the vegetable bed covered with a good layer of leaf mulch. When I hear there is hard freeze coming, I cover the plants with plenty more oak leaf mulch. When it warms up, I move it off the plants.
Row covers and planting cold-hardy varieties are the only techniques I use.
Fertilize heavily when planting, water as needed and keep the weeds out.
Allowing the greens I like best to volunteer in the summer always produces my best winter crops.
Situating the winter garden bed where it can get maximum sunshine is important. Also, ensure good drainage in the garden beds.
I put winter vegetables in the sunniest locations in my garden.
I open the plastic covers on sunny, warm, winter days. I have had spinach and greens as late as Christmas, and beyond.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

I direct sow early so growth is good before it gets really cold.
Paying attention to the weather. Things have changed climate-wise here and the old stand-bys of “plant this at this time” don’t necessarily apply anymore.
Follow the suggested planting dates put out by Clemson.
We stay warm long into fall, so I start my winter plants indoors in August and then wait to see when the temp will consistently start dropping. That could be anywhere from September to November.
It’s hard to get the timing right with the weather so changeable. What works well one year is a disaster the next. Timing the lettuce is important. Plant too early and the more mature plants are more sensitive to the cold, but too late and it will not grow enough to be useful.
Use a calendar, counting backwards. Use an app with info about daylight hours.
I plant turnips and greens on the second Saturday in August.
For me, one key is remembering that the frost will come usually around the end of October. When it is so warm for so long and many times we have a lingering summer, it is easy to forget and think that the frost time has also been pushed back. But it usually hasn’t; it is relatively the same whether it has been a cool or a warm fall.
Planting during the second half of August works well for most people around here.
Try to plant after the last heat wave and before the first frost. Sometimes I end up sowing twice to get it right.
Regional seed catalogs like Territorial and Johnny’s have great information on winter gardening. Do several plantings a couple of weeks apart and keep records of what timing worked best. Other variables impact timing considerations like weather and level of protection provided to the crop. Keep a watch on the weather and provide additional protection measures as necessary.
Keep a detailed garden journal.
I time things so that plants are 80 to 90 percent mature by Thanksgiving.
Follow your state extension’s guidelines for planting. We have been doing organic veggie gardening on this property for over 30 years, so I can judge areas where I can “fudge” the planting times a bit. We are the byproduct of using MOTHER’s gardening techniques all this time.
Since crops grow more slowly in fall, you need to allow more days to harvest than is indicated on the seed packets. Since it is hot in August, some fall and winter vegetables are best started inside (or out of direct sun if outside).
Plan every detail ahead of time. Jump right in after early crops are finished, add some compost, and plant your cool-season veggies soon after so weeds don’t have a chance to take hold.
Sow multiple plantings beginning in early September.
I usually wait until the first part of October to plant my winter garden. September can still be pretty hot in Tennessee and seeds don’t germinate as well.
In Oklahoma, we have some leeway for fall planting. Wait until summer heat appears to have subsided. Protect crops if there is threat of early frost.
Plants in this area need to be pretty big by Thanksgiving — then I feel that I’m really just preserving them outside to keep them fresh, since there isn’t much actual winter growth. So, the best bet is to try to get them going while it’s still warm and hope they don’t bolt before the frosts set in!
Watch the weather trends for that year and the time to maturity. Try to strike a balance between soil temperature for maximum sprouting and time to frost vs. days to maturity.
In my mountain/forested garden, I’m learning to let arugula, bok choys, green onions, and parsleys self-volunteer for winter crops. Those succeed much better than when I plant seeds in late summer.
I try to follow local gardeners’ advice. Right now we live in a climate where the growing season is all year around with micro-climates, so you can grow almost anything you wish. Greens are my favorite crop.
I plant various greens whenever the tomato and melon plants die back.
My biggest tip is to get organized in advance, in the spring when you are all excited about gardening.
I began starting indoors, planting four seeds every two weeks, and transplanting all seedlings outside when the weather was right. I kept notes on which ones produced the greatest yield and had the least amount of pest problems. After a few years of this trial and error, I created my own plan for my area, and it works most of the time. Now and again, Mother Nature throws a curve ball, and if you have seedlings started at different times, you should have a few times that work, no matter what surprises Mother Nature dishes out.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 8

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

I use builders’ plastic over an A-frame that’s 24 inches tall. I have to clear it when it snows heavily to prevent tearing. Last year I used a crop cover cloth on a wire tunnel, and the snow collapsed it and tore the fabric.
PVC hoops and plastic over raised beds.
I have not gotten enough frost to kill my winter plants yet. Collards, broccoli, lettuce, and spinach grow like weeds here right up until the heat of summer. The only thing I have lost to frost yet is my Siberian tomatoes. That was one of the rare years it got down to 20 degrees.
Covers are rarely necessary, but I use old sheets occasionally.
We don’t usually get hard enough frosts to need protection, although if the threat exists, I’ll give the garden a good soaking to keep temps from dipping too low.
I have only used thin plastic in low row covers, which has worked well.
In this area, we usually don’t need much protection other than sheets on really cold nights.
I don’t use coverings consistently — only when I expect a hard freeze and I’m growing more delicate crops. I have used greenhouse plastic sheets from Lowe’s, held down on the edges with boards.
I use a plant blanket when it is going to freeze.
I use Agribond 19 and 20, as it’s light enough to protect from frosts but still has good light transmission.
Cold frames facing south work well.
For my winter lettuces, I plant them in a raised bed with hoops so I can cover them by using a variety of fabric row covers with different weights depending on the nighttime temps.
I use Agribon 19, which allows 85 percent transmittance. If I need extra temperature protection, I double it over.
I don’t cover, as by doing so I have a bigger problem with summer insects wintering over.
I have bent pieces of rebar over my beds. They are spaced about 4 feet apart from each other. I cover this with Reemay and weigh it down with rocks, which I leave nearby. This probably only needs to be used in 29-degree weather and lower.
The only “protection” I use is nice, aged horse manure. As it breaks down over winter, it keeps the soil from freezing and heaving, and provides early nutrition in the spring.
Straw sprinkled on the crops. It is easy to remove, allows ventilation, keeps snow raised off plants, and can be rearmed if another frost or snow is predicted. At the end of the season, it is ready to be turned under with the chicken manure.
Use a light frost cloth if it’s going to get seriously below freezing, but this is not necessary most years.
Row cover is usually all we need for our winter vegetables.
Rice straw is best or hay for outdoor beds to prevent excessive evaporation. Frost-sensitive plants I grow in the greenhouse most of the year.
I have a portable plastic greenhouse that covers the beds that I use when there are freeze warnings.
We don’t need them where we live.
Last year, I had hoops and plastic prepared, but it was really too warm to use them. (Every year is different.)
I currently have a raised bed cold frame with a plastic tubing frame that I cover with plastic sheeting. It is OK, but access is a pain. I am building a cover with hinged access. When the night temperature dips below about 15 degrees, I cover the plastic with a couple of old blankets.
I use cold frames with brick sides for the radiant heat.
I rarely use a cover. To save spinach, I sometimes use hay/ straw. I plant things that benefit from frost. I live in northeast Georgia, and our winters have been erratic the past few years. Even the veterans are baffled. I have used blankets for ice storms.
If needed, I use shredded leaves or burlap cages.
I dig 2 feet down in the garden, and then add 3 inches of chicken poo, 3 inches of horse poo, two inches of goat poo, and 6 inches of soil on top. I put black 1-gallon pots in a row around the bed, and set old windows on top of them. I have started seeds in January this way.
I cover the lemon verbena and the tarragon with burlap. That way the plants can breathe, but they’re safe against frost. Same for greens.
Raked up leaves around plants and then a thin film of plastic on top. I use bamboo stems to keep plastic off of the plants. I only do this if the temp is going down to 20 to 22 degrees. This is just for lettuce. My other greens have survived 6 to 10 inches of snow.
At most, I use a light covering of leaves or partly composted wood chips in the week of January when we have real winter temperatures.
The only coverings I’ve ever used are leaves, because they are free and most people don’t spray their trees with chemicals. So we glean the big bags of leaves that my nincompoop neighbors are throwing out in fall. We have a huge compost pile, but might use some of the leaves in the garden to cover things, but only if the weather is going to be severe — like a freak ice storm or lots of snow. Otherwise, all the crops we put in are fine through the winter.
We have only used mulch to keep the ground warm enough for the garden, using whatever materials are at hand: straw, leaves, etc. The young collard seedlings were able to winter through in an uncovered cold frame.
If it is freezing or below, I cover my crops with hay.
I use rebar on either side of the rows with old shower curtains or other transparent plastic over top. For carrots, I use Johnny’s row cover for germination.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Cut greens instead of pulling the plant up. We get many cuttings in the fall and winter.
Lots of compost to soften soil and mycorrhizae to make roots stronger. I did a test to see how much the mycorrhizae worked. The plants that didn’t get inoculated with it were much smaller.
Use lots of well-composted manure when prepping your bed.
Broccoli is my favorite plant to grow in winter around here. I planted mine in September, and harvested it up until March of this year. I also had onions in my winter garden.
depends on seasonal temps- covering helps from too much frost
Covering winter crops protects them from wind, cold, and, especially in the Pacific Northwest, excess dampness. Excess water is the real enemy in the Puget Sound area.
I use Christmas lights in the hoop house if I need additional heat to keep plants from freezing. It works like a charm!
I plant fall tomatoes if we are having a moderate winter. I had tomatoes until mid-February in 2012. I covered them when I needed to.
Try deep watering before freezes, and cover the crops for extreme evenings.
I only plant food crops in raised beds and containers during the colder months. The crops are much easier to cover and I can move the smaller containers into a part of my yard that receives the most winter sun (such as it is in Seattle).
We continue to sow seed all winter long. In Texas, except for the panhandle, most winter crops will still germinate in December and January. My growing season actually goes from the end of the heat, in early September, until the beginning of the heat in early July.
The south side of your house is a great place to plant as much as you can. It can mean a difference of 10 degrees. In Texas, winter gardening is the best time to garden; there’s more rain and fewer pests. The covering often only needs to be done if the temperatures are going to stay below freezing for a number of hours.
Keep using your greens. They grow all winter here if you keep harvesting them.
I am realizing that I can sow more generously than I used to. My chickens can always eat any over-abundance. I keep my collards and such in the garden past their prime, overwintering them and letting them bloom; the florets are a lot like broccoli rabe, and I love them. If I miss the floret stage, the immature seed pods are great in stir-fries. (The yellow flowers are pretty, too!) I don’t pull them up until some of my spring plantings are starting to yield (peas, lettuce, radishes).
We grow a variety of micro-greens on our south-facing, enclosed front porch from saved and purchased seeds. We sprout alfalfa, lentils, wheat berries and others.
A second application of compost should be added in fall for winter growing.
I choose varieties developed for my region.
Harvest diligently, experiment and don’t take it too seriously. After all, it should be fun. Live and learn. Stick with what works. Pay attention to weather forecasts and especially local lore. For example, sayings like “we’re having a blackberry winter.” Spring crops often bolt here as it gets hot quickly sometimes, so fall planting and winter growing are very important. Sow at intervals to increase your chances.
We plant most of our winter crops near a south-facing brick wall. This provides some radiant heat during the winter, and protects against cold winds and somewhat against frost.
Depends on the weather. Our last two winters have been mild. Three years ago, everything except collards and kale died. A number of things such as mustard, radishes, and broccoli do well into December, and then winter-kill. I have greens all winter and into May or June from collards, kale and turnips.
Mulching is one key, but keep watching for slugs. They love living in mulch, no matter the season.
Be sure to water when the day is warm enough. It is rarely below freezing all day long in my Zone.
Remembering to water during dry spells is paramount as the moisture will help insulate the plants and their roots from temperature extremes.
Find and know your micro-climates. You may have to put your winter garden in a place separate from your summer garden, to get maximum results.
Make sure to regularly harvest to reduce stress on plants.
Containers are great for starting things in the shade in the late summer, and moving them to full sun in the fall/winter.
When I was zone 4, I was used to planting on Memorial Day and harvesting the last of it around Labor Day, but I have found that because it is so hot and humid in my current Zone 8a, my winter garden is much more productive than the rest of the year. It required a shift in my thinking and planning. My compost is started in fall with the neighborhood leaves and is ready by the next fall to put on the garden. Planning is the key. We are urban and have eight chickens in the backyard, so their manure goes in with the leaves, yielding dark, lovely, rich soil.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

Here in Texas we have to wait for it to cool down, which can start in late October or early November, before attempting to plant anything. Otherwise, it’s too hot.
Start seeds sets both for an early and later planting. Plant lettuce in several different plantings through November and starting again in late February.
Make multiple sowings a week apart.
Down here, just wait for the worst of the 90 to 100 degree temps to end. I have planted as late as November with great results. The winter is my best growing season. Summer here is hot and brutal on most plants.
We have a long, warm fall, so planting through November is not a problem.
I go by the Farmers’ Almanac.
My local extension suggested August plantings for many crops like carrots, lettuce and beets that turned out to be too early. The soil was still so hot the seeds would not germinate well, so I did better waiting until September. If the winter is mild, just about any winter crop will grow well, but there have been a few unusually cold winters where I live. I find I have to watch the weather forecast carefully for more delicate crops.
Let things reseed themselves and they will grow and do much better than you trying to do it.
I plant in Grow Boxes, which can be moved to a more protected area for winter. Just moving my summer crop of chard into the greenhouse extends the season very well.
I go by the Florida Vegetable Gardeners Guide. Your list of planting dates leaves out several good months for Florida gardeners. Between January and June many vegetables can be planted.
Greens and other vegetables need to be nearly mature when the weather starts turning cold, so count backwards from your first frost date to know when to sow seed in your area. Grow enough for the entire winter, because most crops don’t start growing again until the temperatures start warming up in the early spring, and then they bolt fairly quickly as temperatures rise.
Wait until it’s cool to plant everything, except for tomatoes. For those, plants need to be in the ground by late August.
Since most of what I “grow” during the winter months are cover crops to enrich my soils, the main challenge is to be able to complete harvesting of food crops with enough time to plant the cover crop seeds and have them germinate and start to grow before the temperatures drop too low. So I tend to plant crops that need a short growing season and I don’t plant warm-weather crops after mid-July.
I target the first frost date as the plants-are-at-three-quarter maturity date. So, for a 90-day crop like mustard greens, I’ll plant the seeds 10 weeks prior. Most winter crops store better in the garden than they do in the fridge.
I get my seedlings started in plugs or pots in half-day shade or in a sunny room in my house. I put them out when the temperatures have dropped at least 5 degrees. Texas has long HOT summers. Our summer is our winter as far as intensity goes.
Winter is our spring here in southern Texas.
Watch the frost dates, and watch the night temps. It it’s too hot here at night, nothing works regardless of when the first frost date is.
I usually follow package directions for best timing, and grow most of my greens in the greenhouse. Root vegetables and squash I grow in garden beds in full sun, starting in late spring or early autumn.
Always use locally adapted seeds or transplants.
Check with your local county agricultural extension agency, state-specific gardening magazines or websites, or a national seed purveyor with a planting calendar by growing Zone on their website.
Early fall planting works best for me. The bug population is dropping, but the days are still warm enough for the plants to get a good start.
Using starts, but I'm trying seed this year
Use inter-planting techniques. I plant my winter crop in the fall around whatever is left of my summer plantings.
Micro-climates exist all over the Northwest where I farm. You might have them, too, so beware of applicability of weather reports and frost dates, and keep your own data. Invest in frost cloth, soil warming/weed cloth, read/research online, and look to reliable supply houses such as Johnny’s for special varieties and techniques.
Keep a journal of when things go in the ground each year, and when and how much they produce.
One year something will do really well, and then the next season it won’t. We are in between the mountains and the foot hills. We’re at about 1,500 to 1,700 feet, so winter gardening conditions are never the same.
Get plants in so they mature before the heat sets in. It’s a small window for planting most cool-weather crops.
Pay attention to what is selling in nurseries in your area.
I look at the NOAA long-term forecast for precipitation and temperature.
Check the Farmers’ Almanac. It’s surprisingly accurate for trends when whether will cool off (so lettuces will germinate and not bolt too quickly) as well as frost dates for harvest.
I moved from zone 4b to 8a and had to get used to planting fall crops in very warm weather that still feels like summer. It is still blazing hot here in September when I need to plan for fall and winter growing. I do companion planting and succession sowing, so I have to keep putting in seeds every couple of weeks.
We are an urban garden. Our challenge is getting our soil thoroughly prepared for the root vegetables. We garden all year and our winter greens thrive, as long as they are mulched against winter gusts.
Consult the Texas Gardening Fall Planting Guide.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 9

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

I cut up milk jugs to make mini-greenhouses.
I made tunnels out of leftover wire fencing. I then covered the wire tunnel with 6-mil plastic sheeting that I had left over from a small business I once owned. The mild winters in the central valley of California allow for perfect conditions under the tunnel. It was like a miniature rain forest of lettuce, radish and carrots!
I use a white screen I bought from greenhouse supply, and this lets me grow all season. Keeps the cold out enough to keep all salad greens growing without freezing.
I don’t cover things. They need the rain and it just doesn’t seem to get cold enough here to matter.
I use straw, but it’s for weed control as opposed to cold-protection.
In Zone 9b, we don’t need coverings/protections. Our biggest winter problems, especially in a wet year, are snails and bottom rot on lettuce. Articles say to avoid overhead watering near harvest, but in a wet year, you can’t control that. Using raised beds helps, so that the water drains better. We don’t lose as many heads. If I was going to use protection, it would be to protect the lettuce crop from too much water in a very wet year.
Covering crops tends to be more of a worry in SUMMER than winter for my garden, and I recommend shade cloth and choosing crops that can live in a Mediterranean climate.
The only protection that I use at the current time is planting in my raised beds on the south side of the house. This warms the beds up in the sunny winter days and keeps the cold north wind from blowing over the tops of the newly planted seeds.
Coverings are not needed except to protect crops from birds.
I grow large tomatoes in fall and use frost blankets on very cold nights. For cole crops, I cover with Reemay fabric to prevent cabbage worms.
I use light-weight row covers if needed.
Here, we only need coverings/protection on below freezing nights. Last year we had only six below freezing nights and I used large pool towels to cover crops.
I use a double-layer of cloth (one of them being quilted if possible). Plants seem to go unscathed better with this arrangement. But this is for warm-weather plants growing in my garden. I do not use covers for any of the cool-weather plants in your survey.
If the weather is forecasted for below freezing temps, I use old sheets supported by bamboo stakes to save my plants from severe frost damage. Arizona’s winters are mild in the valley, so luckily freezing temperatures aren’t much of a problem here. But having a greenhouse really helps protect tropical and young plants. I use a small portable heater to keep my greenhouse warm when it gets below 40 at night.
I use sheets and frost cover if we have frost over my peppers, eggplant, okra, etc. Our winters are usually mild.
We only need coverings for our “summer” crops.
I use a simple four-man camping tent with low tables inside to set the pots on. It works.
I rarely have to protect cold-weather plants, but for non-hardy plants like peppers I do the following: For potted plants, I group them together and throw a tarp on them (maybe a blanket too if it will be that cold). If I have warm-weather crops still in the ground and it will be just an isolated freeze, I usually turn an empty pot onto them and add a tarp only if it will be really cold and if the plants are grouped together.
I have a lean-to greenhouse in my garden. I would recommend anyone interested in serious year-round gardening invest in a greenhouse.
Light Reemay (floating row cover) is all I ever use when it gets really cold, but most years I don’t even need that.
In the past, we have used hoops with row cover plastic on them. However, now I just choose varieties that can take the winter conditions without any extra help, and let things grow as they may.
I don’t use any cover unless it freezes. We had a week of freezing weather last winter and all I did was cover the plants with tarps at night.
I only cover my orange tree.
I put 5-gallon buckets over young plants if I need to.
The only time I cover my garden plants is if the weather is expected to be below 25 degrees, and that happens so seldom here that I just use old sheets.
I live in the humid South, so I don’t have to protect my winter garden at all.
I don’t use any. I am planning on trying to cover my tomatoes and basil to extend their growing season, but the winter veggies do beautifully without any protection.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

I use local seed companies that trial for my area. Renee’s has trial grounds about 45 minutes from me, and they sell seeds targeted to do better than average in my area. Yields are amazing. Also, you can contact local Master Gardeners to see if they have a list of vegetable varieties that grow better in your area. Finally, never underestimate soil preparation.
It’s summer and not winter that is the biggest crop-killer for me.
Plant the varieties that more adaptable to the area. Here in the Mojave Desert, the winds and sun can be brutal, but the winter is a great time to grow a table full of greens. I always garden in raised beds and containers, because of the birds looking for any morsel of tiny green sprouting from the ground. I grow all of my greens in newspaper pots until they are at least three inches high. I use a greenhouse next to the house with minimal covering. I want the seeds to be accustomed to the temperature and climate when they are placed in the garden. So the seeds are grown near the east side of the house, protected from cold north winds, then planted into the raised beds located on the south side of the house for the winter months.
Make sure to provide protection from drying winds
Heavy Mulching still works best for me
Plant tomatoes in pots so you can move them to the best sun exposure as sun drops further south. I have had tomatoes ripen year-round that way.
Over watering can be an issue during the fall and winter, especially on cool days. I make sure to monitor my watering schedule to make sure the roots get enough oxygen and are not water-logged. Applying a generous application of organic compost seems to also help and get the root zone off to a healthy start and in turn keeps your plants more healthy. Timing is the number one tip to winter gardening success in my opinion. Getting your plants in the ground while the soil is still warm enough to promote root growth is crucial to your plants growing steadily through the cool months.
Make sure you fertilize. It makes a great deal of difference in the produce.
Constant watering, as the winters are very dry. Try an underground, timed watering system.
Rototilling in compost and garden soil is key, as we are all sand here in Palm Springs. I will add aged manure this fall too.
Our fall and winter are our best growing seasons because our summers are so harsh.
Starting with purchased seedlings is often the best option, because it can still be 105 degrees here in mid-October, which makes it hard to keep seedlings alive.
The best advice would be to choose vegetable varieties that are specifically bred for overwintering. In coastal Zone 9a, we are limited more by winter rain than by cold, so we can grow almost all year. I have had a lot of success with vegetable varieties from England (broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower especially), and grow almost exclusively heirloom varieties. My biggest tip would be to experiment! If you have your heart set on a particular winter crop, then try several succession plantings, try protecting some of your plants and leaving others to the elements. Try a few different varieties and see what works in your unique garden location and what doesn’t.
Water often. Most individuals do not realize how dry the plants can get in the winter.
I like to let whichever plants that can go to seed and sow themselves. For example, parsnips. They go to seed in August, and I plant the seeds into a row in August or September, to be harvested in December. I always leave a few in the row to make seed for the next year.
The raised bed behind our retainer wall stays warm. Probably could grow most everything almost year-round. I plant tomatoes in February. Tomatoes hang on here until early January — so it’s almost year-round.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

Paying attention to what the wild life is doing. I really watch the geese. Until they fly north again, there is a chance it will be too cold for some things to sprout.
Protect your crops from small birds that arrived in late winter. They love greens.
Because growing conditions over Tucson can vary so greatly, I refer back to my notebooks of experiments. I’ve been in the same place for almost 10 years, so it’s a helpful guide. I suggest taking lots of notes.
We’re pretty spoiled here and can grow most things year-round, so I haven’t had to pay too much attention to when I get things in the ground.
In south Florida we grow most things in the winter. I usually plant after the end of September.
Broccoli, I start in July and harvest by December. We start peas in early November.
I follow a guide printed by my local extension service specifically for the valley where I live. So far, it has proven to be a successful tool to planning the garden and planting at the right time. Some years are variable, as is life, and we must learn to go with the flow of nature and its tides.
Keep a close eye on the weather. In my zone 9b, a cold spell that then moves back to warm will cause many things to bolt.
I wait until there is a consistent downward change in daytime temperatures before planting. Some years, I can start in October, but most years I have to wait until November. Soil temperatures have to go down before some of the winter stuff will germinate!
Making sure the soil temperature is right so your seeds have the highest possible germination rate, and having nighttime temps that are below 60 degrees really help to reduce transplant shock. Also, keep in mind the length of time it takes for your plants to mature before the first frost date.
Start plant in semi-shade while temps are in the 90s and 100s, and then transplant on the first of October.
I can plant almost year-round when it comes to any of the cool-weather crops. I live near the coast in San Diego. It is the summer crops that get powdery mildew and are hard to grow.
I have to start broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts in late June.
We are in a weird area. It can be 110 in summer and 25 in winter. But many of the cooler-weather crops can be planted in September/October, and then again in January/February.
I am experimenting. My garden planted between late August and October managed to live over winter, though we do get occasional snow. My kale planted in May did as well as the plant I put in last September or October. For lettuce and peas, I planted seed in February, and they have been dynamite! The parsley I planted in August overwintered.
Succession plant every two weeks starting in late summer and see which time period seems to be the most successful for your location. Grow from seed so that you can access a much wider selection of vegetables from similar climates to your own, and also so that you have complete control over your planting timetable.
I try to plant after the bugs go away. They usually eat on my seedlings, but as soon as it gets a little cooler, they go away.
It is pretty easy to grow winter vegetable in the Sacramento valley. The hard part is pulling up the summer vegetables that are still bearing to make room for the fall crops. I find the local Master Gardeners to be a helpful resource.
Let the plants re-seed on their won. They know when they want to grow.
Keep notes year by year of daily temperatures and weather. The best time to plant in your yard may differ from the area around you depending on what micro-climate exists in your yard. I also plant lots of native plants in and around my garden. Keeping track of when these are coming up has helped me time my own planting appropriately as well.
Gulf Coast winters are extremely mild. I usually try starting in November.
Take note of where the sun is going to be in the winter versus the summer and plant accordingly.
I used to be able to start the winter vegetable garden right after Labor Day, but September has become so hot that it is extremely difficult now. Some lettuces and cilantro will go to seed and will not produce when planted that early. So I am always holding my breath and analyzing the weather patterns. I will start planting anywhere between early and late October. The plants need to be established before it cools off in November but they don’t like a lot of hot weather either. Additionally, some crops, such as carrots and parsley, I can grow year-round. Others, such as peas, I can only grow in the winter.
Timing it so that the soil is still warm when the seedlings sprout, yet cool enough when the plants are maturing. Where I live I like to time the seedlings with the coming of the winter rains. The temperatures where I live are perfect for winter gardening. I plant all winter long.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 10

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

In the winter, the most I’ll do is throw some towels over the tomatoes if we approach freezing temps. It’s a very rare occurrence.
I use old window screens to keep the birds from eating the sprouts and the critters from digging in my beds.
I plant delicate plants near other hardier plants for wind protection. I don’t cover usually, but will use straw if we’re going to have a possible freeze.
I have to use sheets and blankets every few years.
I only use a tarp during the coldest nights to keep off frost. Otherwise, I don’t use coverings.
We just mulch with straw and other plant matter.
I have some strawbale cold frames.
None needed here.
I live in southern California, so no coverings needed. We rarely get frost. If predicted, water the plants at night or place blankets on top.
If I use anything, it’s floating row covers.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Vertical gardening to get more out of the space.
Thinning sprouts and enjoying a micro-greens meal.
I’ve found that I can do anything with cabbage all winter. It just keeps on coming!
We have clay soil, so adding vermiculite and peat moss every five years or so helps. Also, constant watering here in California if it gets too warm.
Be sure to know your sun patterns. Half of my garden is shaded during the winter months, so I don’t plant there.
Placing solar lamps in my beds adds warmth and light and extends the life of the veggies.
Timing is everything here in the high desert.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

Plant as soon as the summer rains subside and the soil is workable.
What is this “winter” you speak of? Our farm is south of Miami.
Feel it out. With the weather here in southern California, it is about learning that the weather is always changing. Pay attention to la nina and el nino.
My crops go in when I get to it. The local weather is so mild that it doesn’t really matter.
Read the seed packages! Figure out when you want to harvest your food, then count backwards using the “days to harvest” number and direct-sow seeds then.
Bay Area weather can sometimes be fickle. I like to start seeds in the greenhouse, nurture them, and then transfer to raised beds equipped with solar lights.
I plant winter crops when summer and fall crops are ending.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 11

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

Aged horse manure is the closest thing to “coverings” that I use, strictly to keep the moisture in.
Winter coverings are for insect protection as insects are not killed off well. It’s not cold enough.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Bagrada bugs and aphids are the biggest threats to my “winter” harvest. An abundance of lady beetles helps with the aphids, but I haven’t found a way to control the bagradas.
I’ve learned that I can’t grow Brussels sprouts because it’s just not cold enough.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

I try to plant seeds indoors for brassicas and leeks in August, so I can transplant at the end of September.
All brassicas, root crops and lettuces do very well in our winter climate.

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 12

What coverings/protections work best for you in your winter garden?

I do not have to use any coverings whatsoever, as we have no frost or snow.

What other winter growing techniques work best for you to get the biggest, healthiest harvests?

Don’t try to grow “cold-snap” crops. It’s too hot.

What are your best tips for getting the timing right when planning and planting a winter garden?

In Hawaii, just wait until the summer heat cools off and you should be fine growing almost anything. The only problems come from attempting to grow crops that require cold snaps.
My garden is mostly a self-sown garden, with basically only lettuces and parsley that are grown from bought seedlings. Timing is not an issue here.

Map From USDA

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/winter-gardening-tips-zm0z13onzsto.aspx#ixzz2k6Dax9uf

Roof Gardening!

Egyptian onions and marigolds growing on a rooftop

There are plenty of reasons to get excited about a green roof. They can offer expanded outdoor space without requiring more land. They provide a fabulous place to grow food and help manage rainwater.

Workshop Description

Rooftop agriculture is taking root in cities across North America. This talk will explore the four primary rooftop agricultural production strategies: container gardening, raised bed production, row farming and hydroponics. Case studies and photographs will illustrate this burgeoning movement.
Speaker Bio
Lauren Mandel, MLA, ASLA is a project manager and rooftop agriculture specialist at the Philadelphia-based green roof firm Roofmeadow. She designs green roofs around the country and oversees green roof construction. Mandel is a contributing writer for Urban Farm and Grid magazines, and author of EAT UP: The Inside Scoop on Rooftop Agriculture, the first full-length book about rooftop food production.
Visit www.eatupag.com for more information.

Fall Garden With Cold Frame And Vegetables

With tomatoes, peppers and melons now hitting their late summer stride, it’s easy to forget that autumn and early winter can be as abundant as spring and summer. Those who seize the opportunity for a second season of growth will find the planning and planting well worthwhile.
The steps to a bountiful fall garden are simple. Choose crops suited to fall growing conditions (see the list of crops and recommended varieties at the end of this article). Ensure your chosen site has organically enriched soil and adequate water. And start now. If you don’t have seeds on hand, use our online seed finder.
You can replace spring-planted lettuces, peas and brassicas (broccoli and its relatives) with new plantings that mature in fall. Seeds and transplants will take off quickly in the warm summer soil. They’ll appreciate cooler nights, too.
Look forward to peak flavor and performance for many crops that do not prosper in summer heat. Lower temperatures are ideal for producing crisp lettuces without the bitterness or bolting that can occur in hot weather. Frost-kissed kale, Brussels sprouts and cabbage have a special sweetness. Carrots, beets and turnips also thrive in the fall garden and, after harvest, can be kept in a pantry or root cellar so you can enjoy their goodness well into winter. Collards, mustard and other greens also like cool weather.

Favored Crops for Fall

When deciding what to plant now for fall harvest, gardeners throughout most of the country should think greens and root vegetables, advises John Navazio, a plant-breeding and seed specialist at Washington State University and senior scientist for the Organic Seed Alliance in Port Townsend, Wash., which conducts annual tests of crops and varieties to evaluate their cold hardiness.
Leafy greens (such as lettuces, spinach, arugula, chard and mâche) and root veggies (such as beets, carrots, turnips, radishes and rutabagas) as well as brassicas (including broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, kale and Chinese cabbage) and peas will all thrive in the cooler weather and shorter days of fall. In many regions, some of these cold-hardy crops will even survive the winter to produce a second harvest in spring. (See “Stretching the Season,” below.)
If you garden in the South or other areas with mild winters, you can grow all of those crops as well as heat-loving favorites. “Here, we can set out tomato transplants in late August,” says David Pitre, owner of Tecolote Farm, a certified organic farm near Austin, Texas. Pitre also plants okra, eggplant, peppers, winter squash, cucumbers and potatoes in August and September for winter harvest. Plant cool-season crops in the garden after temperatures cool — late September or later.
Fall is also prime garden season in the Pacific Northwest, where abundant rain and cool (but not frigid) temperatures are ideal for growing brassicas, root crops and leafy greens planted in mid- to late summer. The hardiest of these crops often hang on well into winter if given protection, such as row covers or cold frames.
Plastic-covered tunnels supported by hoops are also excellent for stretching the fall growing season into winter (and also for getting a jump-start in spring). See details on building and using low tunnels.
Master gardeners Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch in Harborside, Maine, give greens, broccoli, carrots, beets and other cool-weather crops a double layer of protection from the cold by growing them in a cold frame inside a high, plastic-covered tunnel.
Coleman estimates that “each layer of covering is equivalent to growing your plants one and a half USDA zones to the south.” Thus, for Coleman in Zone 5, a single layer moderates the temperature to that of Zone 6-plus; a double layer moderates the climate to that of Zone 8.
For more on the topic, see Garden Know-How: Extend Your Growing Season.
These tips should help you see that your garden’s useful time is only half over at summer’s end. Don’t miss one of your garden’s most productive seasons!

After you’ve decided which crops to grow for fall harvest, zero in on specific varieties. “There are big differences in cold hardiness among varieties,” Navazio says. “Some are better able to photosynthesize at cooler temperatures.”

For the past several years, the Alliance has been conducting trials of as many as 170 varieties of 11 different crops for their quality and performance in fall and winter. Among them, kale, radicchio and Swiss chard have been tested extensively and confirmed cold hardy to 14 degrees Fahrenheit with no protection. Several varieties stood out for the Alliance and market gardeners.

Broccolis. Opt for varieties that produce plenty of side shoots, rather than a single large head. “‘Diplomat’ and ‘Marathon’ can survive the heat of late summer and thrive when cool weather arrives in fall, producing a second cutting as late as Thanksgiving,” says Elizabeth Keen, co-owner of Indian Line Farm, a 17-acre organic operation in Great Barrington, Mass. In Austin, Texas, Carol Ann Sayle, co-owner of Boggy Creek Farm, grows ‘Packman’ and ‘Diplomat’ for harvest by Thanksgiving and cuts ‘Marathon’ by Christmas.

Carrots. Consider storage ability when choosing carrots for your fall garden, says Thomas Case, owner of Arethusa Farm, a certified organic farm near Burlington, Vt. Both Keen and Case like ‘Bolero’ for fall growing and winter storage.

Lettuces. Whether you garden in the North or South, lettuces are a mainstay of the fall garden. Several European heirloom varieties are especially durable: ‘Rouge d’Hiver’ (a flavorful romaine whose leaves blush red in cool weather), ‘Marvel of Four Seasons’ (also called ‘Merveille de Quatre Saisons,’ a sweet and tender butterhead with red-edged outer leaves) and ‘Winter Density’ (also called ‘Craquerelle du Midi,’ a compact bibb type with deep green leaves) are good bets. Even in Zone 5, these lettuces will hang on into December and, with the protection of heavy mulch or a cold frame, will often return with renewed vigor in early spring.

When the lettuces go dormant in winter, you can count on mâche to fill your salad bowl. Mâche (or corn salad) is delicious and will survive and continue to grow in colder weather longer than any other salad green, says Eliot Coleman in his classic book Four-Season Harvest. In his Zone 5 Maine garden, Coleman seeds mâche inside a cold frame from September through early November for harvest until April, when overwintered lettuce resumes its growth.

Kale. Of the popular Lacinato-type kales, ‘Black Tuscan’ consistently rated best in the Alliance tests for cold hardiness, vigor, flavor and stature. The Alliance also recommends ‘Winterbor’ (a tall Dutch kale), ‘Red Russian’ and ‘White Russian’ (two tasty Siberian kales). It’s hard to go wrong with kale in fall, no matter the variety: All have superior flavor when temperatures drop into the 20s or below. “Sugar is the plant’s natural antifreeze, so as the temperature drops, more starches are converted to sugar, sweetening the flavor of kale and other brassicas,” Navazio says.

Radicchio. Still considered a specialty vegetable by many, radicchio thrives in the cool conditions of fall and offers a wealth of possibilities in the kitchen. Of the more than 20 varieties tested by the Alliance in the past two years, a few Italian open-pollinated varieties proved most cold-hardy. ‘Variegata di Luisa Tardiva’ and ‘Variegata di Castlefranco’ produce upright, variegated heads similar to romaine lettuce, with beautiful hearts and radicchio’s signature bitterness.

“Grown in cool weather, they are delightful, with a mild spicy flavor,” Navazio says. Although some of the plants’ outer leaves were “toasted” at 14 degrees in the Alliance trials, you can strip off any damaged leaves and enjoy the tasty interior.

Navazio suggests slicing the heads, then wilting the leaves in a pan with cipollini onions, as cooks do in Italy, or dressing the heads lightly with olive oil and roasting them on the grill or a campfire. For cold hardiness and flavor, Navazio also recommends ‘Rossa di Verona’ and ‘Grumolo Rossa.’

Swiss Chard. The Alliance has found that chard hardiness generally corresponds to leaf color. Green varieties tend to be most cold hardy, followed by gold, then pink, magenta and red varieties, which tend to be the least tolerant of cold. “Old-fashioned ‘Fordhook Giant’ is very cold hardy,” Navazio says.

Based on their most recent (2009) trials — which evaluated vigor, stature and flavor — the Alliance staff also recommends the following varieties for fall.

Arugula: ‘Astro,’ ‘Sputnik’

Beets: ‘Chioggia Guardmark,’ ‘Red Ace,’ ‘Shiraz,’ ‘Touchstone Gold’

Collards: ‘Champion,’ ‘Flash’

Spinach: ‘Olympia,’ ‘Space,’ ‘Tarpy’

See the complete 2009 Organic Seed Alliance vegetable variety trials report.

The Matter of Timing

Right now — late summer — is prime time for starting your fall garden. To determine starting dates for each variety you plan to grow, first check the “days to maturity” listed in the seed catalog or on the back of the seed packet. Add an extra week or two to factor in the shorter day lengths of fall, which delay plant maturity. Then count backward, subtracting that number of days from your average first fall frost date.

Find your average frost date by visiting the National Climatic Data Center website’s U.S. Climate Normals Freeze/Frost Data. Keep in mind that these dates are based on meteorological data recorded at weather stations around the United States from 1951 to 1980. The NCDC is developing new frost/freeze maps to reflect more recent data and hopes to have these maps available by the end of the year. “We are seeing a general warming at a lot of our stations and are recomputing the ‘normals’ for fall frost dates,” says Anthony Arguez, a physical scientist for the NCDC in Asheville, N.C.

Sow and Grow

Start seeds of broccoli and cabbage in flats or pots indoors (outdoor soil temps may be too high for good germination), then transplant the seedlings to the garden about four weeks later, when temperatures are cooler and seedlings are large enough to compete against weeds. Direct-seed carrots, beets and other root crops, as well as greens, into prepared beds.

Because you’re likely planting your fall crops in soil that has already fed a spring planting, be sure to replenish the beds with a generous helping of organic fertilizer and/or compost before planting. “People often forget you need to prepare the soil and you should do it a little earlier than you think,” Pitre says. He mixes compost into fall garden beds a few weeks before he plants.

Sayle reshapes her farm’s beds in fall, using a hilling disc to move soil from pathways up onto the surface of the raised beds. “We hill the beds higher in fall to improve the drainage of our clay soil during the cooler, wetter fall and winter conditions,” she says.

Before fall planting, incorporate soil amendments, such as sulfur and gypsum (as needed), as well as compost.

Seeds and transplants take off quickly in the warm soil if they have adequate water. To help retain soil moisture, surround seedlings with a thick layer of mulch. Finely shredded leaves or straw will keep soil moist while slowly contributing organic matter to the soil as they decompose.

Keep plants growing strong as temperatures drop by giving them a mid-season nutrient boost. Sayle makes her own foliar fertilizer by mixing 1 tablespoon each of fish emulsion, seaweed and molasses in a gallon of water, then sprays it on using a backpack sprayer. A spray bottle works, too.

Elizabeth Keen of Indian Line Farm simply side-dresses plants with compost. “With brassicas, especially, the compost really helps,” she says. “We’ve found the best time to apply it is when plants are in the teenager stage — about four weeks after transplanting. It’s foolproof.”

Another tip for your most bountiful fall garden: Harvest early and often. Frequent cutting stimulates continual new growth and gives you plenty of chances to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Stretching the Season

Extend your fall harvest an extra month or more by shielding plants from hard freezes. Simple methods include blanketing low-growers with a thick layer of straw mulch or leaves (pull it aside during the day), a clear plastic tarp or a floating row cover. Lightweight floating row covers protect crops down to about 28 degrees; heavier-weight covers will protect to 24 degrees. Go further with a simple cold frame, like the one shown in the Image Gallery. See a reader’s simple cold frame warmed with a birdbath heater or crock pot, or paint gallon jugs black and tuck them inside your cold frame to absorb warmth during the day and radiate it at night.

Plastic-covered tunnels supported by hoops are also excellent for stretching the fall growing season into winter (and also for getting a jump-start in spring). See details on building and using low tunnels.

Master gardeners Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch in Harborside, Maine, give greens, broccoli, carrots, beets and other cool-weather crops a double layer of protection from the cold by growing them in a cold frame inside a high, plastic-covered tunnel.

Coleman estimates that “each layer of covering is equivalent to growing your plants one and a half USDA zones to the south.” Thus, for Coleman in Zone 5, a single layer moderates the temperature to that of Zone 6-plus; a double layer moderates the climate to that of Zone 8.

For more on the topic, see Garden Know-How: Extend Your Growing Season.

These tips should help you see that your garden’s useful time is only half over at summer’s end. Don’t miss one of your garden’s most productive seasons!

Breed Your Own Fall Garden Superheroes

Create more-cold-hardy varieties by growing different open-pollinated varieties of the same crop in your garden, then saving the seeds of the best performers, suggests John Navazio, of the Organic Seed Alliance.

“After you find the most cold-hardy varieties of the same crop, give ’em hell — don’t use any row covers — then save the seeds of any that survive 14 degrees Farenheit freezes” (about the coldest temperature most cold-hardy plants will tolerate without a cover).

Get A Seed Saving Guide for Gardeners and Farmers, a free publication about selecting plants for your conditions and saving seeds.

Seed Sources

Suppliers:

Gourmet Seeds International (GSI)

High Mowing Organic Seeds (HM)

Johnny’s Selected Seeds (JSS)

Seeds from Italy (SI)

Seeds of Change (SC)

Territorial Seed Co. (TSC)

Uprising Seeds (US)

Arugula:  ‘Astro’ (HM, JSS, US);  ‘Sputnik’ (SC)

Beets: ‘Chioggia Guardmark’ (HM, JSS);  ‘Red Ace’ (HM, JSS, TSC); ‘Shiraz’ (SC); ‘Touchstone Gold’ (HM, JSS, SC, TSC, US)

Broccoli: ‘Diplomat’ (JSS); ‘Marathon’ (JSS); ‘Packman’ (TSC)

Carrots: ‘Bolero’ (JSS, TSC)

Collards: ‘Champion’ (HM, JSS, TSC, US);  ‘Flash’ (JSS, TSC)

Kale: ‘Black Tuscan’ (GSI, US); ‘Red Russian’ (HM, JSS, SC, US); ‘White Russian’ (HM, TSC); ‘Winterbor’ (JSS, TSC)

Lettuce: ‘Marvel of Four Seasons’ (GSI);  ‘Rouge d’Hiver’ (HM, JSS, SC); ‘Winter Density’ (HM, JSS, SC, TSC)

Mâche: (GSI, JSS, TSC)

Radicchio: ‘Grumolo Rossa’ (GSI, SI); ‘Rossa di Verona’ (GSI, SI); ‘Variegata di Castlefranco’ (GSI, SI, US); ‘Variegata di Luisa Tardiva’ (SI)

Spinach: ‘Olympia’ (TSC); ‘Space’ (JSS, TSC);‘Tarpy’ (HM, SC)

Swiss Chard: ‘Fordhook Giant’ (HM, JSS, SC, TSC)

Read more: http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/fall-garden-zm0z11zmat.aspx#ixzz2kB1Wij9d

Heirloom Radish Varieties

Learn about heirloom radish varieties, how to grow them and why they used to be served with every meal.
September 19, 2013
By William Woys Weaver
Heirloom Vegetable Gardening by William Woys Weaver is the culmination of some thirty years of first-hand knowledge of growing, tasting and cooking with heirloom vegetables. A staunch supporter of organic gardening techniques, Will Weaver has grown every one of the featured 280 varieties of vegetables, and he walks the novice gardener through the basics of planting, growing and seed saving. Sprinkled throughout the gardening advice are old-fashioned recipes — such as Parsnip Cake, Artichoke Pie and Pepper Wine — that highlight the flavor of these vegetables. The following excerpt on heirloom radish varieties was taken from chapter 31, “Radishes.”
Buy the brand new e-book of Weaver’s gardening classic in the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Heirloom Vegetable Gardening.

'Black Spanish Winter' Radish
'China Rose' Radish
'Early Purple' Radish
'Early Yellow' Radish
'Madras Podding' Radish

'Philadelphia White Box' Radish
'Rat-Tailed' Radish
'White Icicle' Radish
'Wood's Frame' Radish
How to Pickle Radishes

To locate mail order companies that carry these heirloom radish varieties, use our Custom Seed and Plant Finder. Check out our collection of articles on growing and harvesting heirloom vegetables in Gardening With Heirloom Vegetables.

A Brief History of Heirloom Radish Varieties

Radishes are now more popular in Oriental-style cooking than in mainstream American cookery. This is a vegetable that formerly played an important role in our diet, only to be relegated today to the status of a garnish, like sprigs of parsley and bits of sliced olive. Yet radishes once appeared on the early American table at every meal. I can recall many old Pennsylvania Dutch relatives who lamented the fact that people had stopped serving radishes for breakfast. A glance at seed lists from the nineteenth century would certainly support this, for there were radishes for every imaginable culinary situation, including a whole class of radishes bred exclusively to withstand the summer heat.
Radishes are grouped botanically under Brassicaceae, and are therefore part of the same vegetable clan as cabbages, turnips, watercress, rocket, and garden cress. All of these plants have very similar seed pods, so the logic for this grouping is probably more obvious to gardeners than to people who only see the vegetables in markets. Anyone who frequents American farm markets will notice immediately that the greatest variety of radishes will be found in the Asian section, even though we have a large and impressive list of our own heirloom varieties to draw on. Unfortunately, growers have not yet rediscovered them, and I think they would be quite surprised to know that the list of surviving heirlooms is huge, so choices are not limited. Best of all, since radishes are short-lived annuals, they will thrive in most parts of the country regardless of extreme winter or summer temperatures. They are also one of the easiest vegetables to grow in home gardens.
The oldest documentation of the radish takes us back to Asia in the form of literary references and archaeological remains in North China. From Asia the radish gradually moved westward, more or less following large human migrations. Ancient Greek travel writer Herodotus planted the long-held belief that the early Egyptians grew radishes, but Egyptologists have exploded this for several reasons. Herodotus could not read hieroglyphics, and if he could he would have been hard put to find one for the radish, or for radish used in the context of the inscription he claimed to have seen on a pyramid. The word forradish did not exist in Egyptian until the radish was introduced to Egypt by the Greeks. In all likelihood, the Greeks came in contact with the radish via India or with trade across the Black Sea. They were well acquainted with it long before the Egyptians and recognized many distinct varieties.
Galen of Pergamon (A.D. 129–199) wrote that radishes were eaten raw with salt and vinegar, and that the poor cooked the stems and leaves. The codex of Dioskorides, which I have mentioned many times already, contains the earliest surviving botanical picture of a radish, a long-rooted sort with fully developed seed pods. It is not surprising that physicians like Galen or Dioskorides would take note of the radish; it was considered a very important food with high medical value. It is now known that radishes are rich in vitamin C (the leaves even more so), which would explain why radishes were used to prevent scurvy or eaten as a remedy for colds. This medical theme was carried down through the Middle Ages. In the Anglo-Saxon leechdoms of England, there were over twenty references to the medical uses of the radish, including its efficacy in warding off a woman’s chatter and for depression. The superne raedic often mentioned in that period is thought to be a large white variety something akin to the daikon radish of today, or more likely, to the white-skinned form of Long Black Spanish.
The small, round radishes that are now common in supermarkets are not of ancient origin. Even in the 1500s, when radish culture began to shift to newer sorts, the most common varieties were the old large-rooted ones, shaped like elongated beets. The Long Black Spanish is a survivor of this older type and is definitely of medieval origin. By the late 1500s small, round varieties began to appear in Holland and Italy. A white variety bred by the Dutch became very popular in many parts of Northern Europe as a winter radish. The Philadelphia White Box Radish is a direct lineal descendant of this old Dutch sort. Out of Italy came the round red radishes that are associated with late spring and early fall planting.
The long, fingerlike radishes, sometimes called icicle radishes, were developed in the 1600s and first appeared in physic gardens rather than in vegetable gardens, so their dates of introduction are quite well documented in period medical archives. A long purple and a long red variety appeared in the 1670s, and by the 1680s they were being grown in Scotland and England. The Early Scarlet Short Top traces to this period and was a radish of choice among the wealthy because it could be grown in large numbers under cold frames. The long, narrow shape permitted kitchen gardeners to pack the plants close together, especially if they were grown in heavy sand. White Skinned Radish

The Abbé Rozier discussed numerous eighteenth-century radishes in his agricultural encyclopedia, dividing them out by shape, color, and place of origin. He followed the French practice of identifying radishes by the provinces or towns where they were most extensively cultivated or were presumed to have originated, with a very large division between the types of radishes grown in the Midi and those cultivated for market around Paris. There were also certain noblemen who tinkered with horticulture and who perfected radishes in their châteaux gardens. These popular French varieties carried aristocratic names that were quickly dropped during the French Revolution. All of this adds up to chaos when trying to sort out which radish was which and how they may relate to later sorts. However, when the radishes crossed the Channel and acquired English names, the work of identifying heirloom sorts becomes much easier, since the English names were also used in early America.
The lists of radishes found in our early seed catalogs are quite extensive and reveal a heavy reliance on England for seed. Pragmatically, a kitchen gardener could maintain three types, a spring, a summer, and a fall or winter radish, thus supplying the table over the course of the season. The yellow radishes (all shapes) were most generally grown for summer use because of their slowness to bolt. E. G. Storke’s Family, Farm and Gardens (1860, 130) selected six of the many varieties of radish then available because they were considered best suited to small kitchen gardens. I have listed them below in Storke’s order of preference. The comments are mine.

Early Scarlet Short Top, a long, narrow variety popular for its earliness.
Early Salmon Short Top, a pink variety recommended by Amelia Simmons in 1796.
Red Turnip, the round type most common today. It was preferred in this country because, true to its ultimate Italian origin, it would bear the heat better in late spring and early summer.
White Turnip, the round white type of Dutch origin, almost exclusively a winter radish.
Yellow Summer, a round yellow variety still available.
Black Winter or Spanish, a long-rooted, coarse radish that withstands frost.

Growing Radishes

H. L. Barnum’s Farmer’s Own Book (1836, 73) offered this practical suggestion for growing radishes:
They should be sown every two weeks, from April to August, to insure a succession of crops. They may be sown broadcast, or in drills, not too thick, as the tops would run up too much, and the roots be stringy. They should stand from two and a half, to five inches apart, the seed should be covered from half an inch to an inch deep, according to the weather or season. In dry weather, water them freely — this swells the roots, and makes them crisp. To prevent worms, take equal parrs of buckwheat bran, and fresh horse dung, and mix well with the ground — in forty-eight hours fermentation, and a crop of toad stools will be produced. Dig the ground over — sow the seed — they will grow rapidly and be free of insects. Leaves of radish are often used as salad; and the green pods are pickled, as substitutes for capers. Old radishes are indigestible, and render the breath bad.
It is rare to find so much useful information on radish culture condensed into such a succinct snippet, and odd as it may seem, Barnum’s enthusiasm for fermenting dung to sterilize the soil is brilliant, cheap, and effective. It will work for any root vegetable, not just radishes. While radish seed can be planted broadcast on well-worked, well-raked ground and patted smooth with a shovel, the plants themselves cannot be crowded. Seedlings must be thinned to at least 4 inches apart. The beautiful radishes depicted in the photographs were not accidents. They were carefully spaced so that they would develop good form and color. This is especially important for market radishes. However, radishes may be sewn broadcast among onion sets with several positive results. They will not compete with the onions, so two crops can be extracted from the same piece of ground, and because of their shape, radishes will loosen the soil. Since the radishes are pulled before the onions form bulbs, the loosened soil benefits the onions just at the time when the bulbs begin swelling. Best of all, the onions discourage many of the insects that would otherwise attack the radishes.
Radishes can be harvested at any time once the roots are well formed. Europeans prefer to pull them young; Americans often wait too long, and the radishes are either pithy in the center or cracked. Heavy rains will also cause radishes to crack, so it is better to pull them before a storm than to fret over the ensuing waste. Once radishes crack innumerable insects will find the openings, and the roots will become meals for the millions. For seed saving, select out the twelve most perfect radishes, dig them up, and plant them where they are to flower. Stake the flower stalks so that they do not fall over and touch the ground, for this will ruin the seed.
It will be obvious when the radishes are in bloom because their flowers are attractive to insects, and butterflies will be everywhere. At this point the roots are no longer palatable, but the seed pods are. They were used extensively in early American cookery both raw in salads and pickled. The pickled pods make delightful garnishes. The Madras Podding Radish was imported to this country specifically for this purpose.
While the radishes are in blossom, observe the flowers. Radish flowers produce many slight variations from one variety to the next, and these variations are important markers when looking for unwanted crosses. If one radish produces flowers with pink flecks while all the others of that variety produce white ones, there is reason to pull up the plant even if the root appears true to type. I make color transparencies of the flowers so that I remember the correct flower for each variety I grow. Do not rely on memory, since shifts can take place over the course of several years, and the results often show up when one least expects them. This precaution is especially appropriate where the purity of heirloom strains is an object. Furthermore, radishes cross readily. They are outcrossing, like all brassicas, so several plants are required for the transfer of pollen. If more than one variety is cultivated, bring them to flower at different times many weeks apart; otherwise, they must be isolated by a half mile. I have use of ground at Oaklands, an estate about a mile from me, where I grow out varieties I need to isolate from the ones at Roughwood. Similar arrangements are recommended for serious gardeners. Since radish seed remains viable for five years, it is possible to maintain as many as fifteen varieties, allowing three growouts per season.

Seed Saving

Radish seed is ready to harvest when the pods are dry. Snip off the pods into a brown paper bag, label and date the bag, and set it away in a dry room away from heat and sunlight. In about a month, the seeds will have matured enough to remove them from the pods, a job that is a lot easier when the pods are completely dry and brittle. In order to remove the seed, the pods must be split open and the seeds picked out — they do not fall out on their own. This work can be tedious, especially since the dry pods are pointed and sharp, but there is an easy way. Put the pods in a coarse sieve or strainer and gently crush the pods between the fingers, rolling them so that the seeds come loose. If this is done over a large work bowl, the seeds will drop through the sieve and thus become separated from the debris. Sift the seed from the chaff, and winnow outdoors. Since radish seeds are heavy (unlike lettuce seeds), winnowing is quickly accomplished. Always mix the seed from the various plants to maintain genetic diversity. While a dozen of the best will supply seed enough for one garden from season to season, twenty radishes will provide a better hedge against unforeseen seed damage and at the same time increase genetic diversity in the stock. All of the radishes listed are members of the same species regardless of root color, root shape, or intended use of pod. They will cross readily with one another.
'Black Spanish Winter' Radish
Raphanus sativus
The Shakers distributed seed for this radish through their vast seed network in the nineteenth century. This was one winter radish every American farmer could rely upon, and since it was well known since the seventeenth century, its merits needed no recommendation. What this radish lacked in physical beauty — it has the appearance of old rubbed tar — it far exceeded in practicality. It is so hardy that in Pennsylvania it is only necessary to throw some straw over it to protect it during the winter. Parsnips and Black Spanish radish were the first root vegetables of early spring among the eighteenth-century farmers in my part of the country.

The root is indeed long, somewhat carrot shaped but thick, ranging from 7 to 12 inches in length and 2 to 3 inches in diameter, tapering to a point. This strain, with the pointed tip, is later and more pungent tasting than the variant form with a rounded or blunt end. The pointed sort is the older of the two and was the most commonly cultivated type in this country.
There is also a small, round form called Turnip-Rooted Black Spanish in old horticultural books. It is still available and was first mentioned in 1768 by English gardener Philip Miller. The skin of the radish is charcoal black and somewhat rough, due to tiny wrinkles; the flesh is clear, crisp white. I have an old round, black variety from Turkey that is indistinguishable from this one. It may point to an eastern Mediterranean origin for this type. In any case, its small size, about 3 inches in diameter, made it popular as an inexpensive grade of winter radish, reliable for its hardiness. Philadelphia seedsman Robert Buist (1847, 107) recommended sowing seed in August and lifting the radishes in October. They can be stored in sand for use over the winter.
Since the flavor of this radish is somewhat harsh, it was common practice to shred it and marinate it in salted water. After a few hours of marination, the radish was drained, pressed dry, and served as a salad with vinegar and oil. Minced fresh herbs were sprinkled over the top.
'China Rose' Radish
Raphanus sativus
China Rose is believed to have evolved directly out of the wild radish of Asia rather than out of a garden form under long cultivation. Its distinctive leaves and flowers point to its primitive origin. The radish was under cultivation in Europe many years before it was introduced into the United States. China Rose Radish

It was grown in France in the late 1840s and soon thereafter depicted in the Album Vilmorin(1851, 2). It was known to Fearing Burr through the Vilmorin-AndrieuxDescription des plantes potagères (1856), and by 1864 seed was being offered on a regular basis by James J. H. Gregory of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Gregory claimed to have introduced the radish to American gardeners, but this has never been verified.
The radish is vivid rose pink, about 4 to 5 inches long, and shaped somewhat like a short, stumpy sausage. It is often more swollen on the root end than at the shoulders. Historically, this radish was raised as a fall or winter radish, for it is best in terms of sweet flavor and snappy texture during cool fall weather. It will withstand a hard frost without damage. There are also pure white and solid purple variants, known respectively by their French names radis blanc d’hiver de Chine and radis violet d’hiver de Chine. All three forms are ideal for raising in cold frames.
'Early Purple Turnip-Shaped' Radish
Raphanus sativus
This is the round or top-shaped violet version of the common red radish, and was mentioned as a good hardy sort by cookbook author Amelia Simmons (1796, 13). The advantage of the turnip-shaped varieties, as they were called, was that they overwintered well, especially when covered with straw or when raised in cold frames—a vital source of vitamin C not overlooked in colonial times. This radish was also popular due to its intense color, beautifully depicted in the Album Vilmorin (1863, 14). The handsomest form to my mind is the radis ronf violet à bout blanc, which is identical except that it is white on the root end. This color contrast seems to make the radish more visually appealing. Early Purple Radish

Due to its hardiness, the violet turnip-shaped radish was grown by market gardeners all year around and sold in radish “bouquets” of several colors, using whatever colors were then in season. The violet was always a good counterpoint to the red, white-tipped red, deep scarlet, solid white, and summer yellow variants. Such colorful radish mixtures are also quite striking when used at table.
The Purple Olive-Shaped Radish (SSE Radish 163) is the same color, but in spite of its name, it is shaped more like a small plum. I inherited this eighteenth-century variety in my grandfather’s seed collection and gave seed to Seed Savers Exchange. It is only available from me or from the members of Seed Savers Exchange who now grow it. Even though Thomas Mawe mentioned the radish in Every Man His Own Gardener (1779, 483), it seems to be a hardy variety that dates back to the seventeenth century. It is best planted as a late fall or early spring radish. If grown in warm weather, the radish acquires a hot, mustardy taste, almost like horseradish. Touched by light frost, the radish mellows in flavor and becomes sweet. A hard frost will destroy the plant; as a winter radish it must be grown in cold frames.
'Jaune hatif' or 'Early Yellow Turnip' Radish
Raphanus sativus
There are several heirloom yellow summer radishes, but the basic division falls into two categories: long or carrot-shaped and round. Alzbeta Kovacova-Pecarova (Betty to me), a seed saver in Kosice, Slovakia, has graciously shared with me some of the oldest yellow radish varieties presently in my vegetable collection, including jaune hatif, as it is known in France. The Abbé Rozier (1785, 534) noted that this round yellow radish was one of the most commonly raised varieties in Dauphin, Savoy, and in the vicinity of Lyon. Summer Radish

However, documentation for yellow sorts prior to 1700 becomes murky. From a genetic standpoint, the yellows are the product of a pigment mutation in the red varieties, just as with tomatoes. Thus, the yellow radishes may be viewed as red radishes with missing genes. This natural deficiency is counterbalanced by a greater resistance to heat, allowing the yellow sorts to be planted late in the spring and enjoyed through the early summer — the reason for the hatif in the French name. In terms of flavor, this variety is not ranked as high as the white and red sorts.
On the other hand, climate often plays the high card, and where radishes are concerned, the very reason the yellow sort was popular in the hotter sections of France also made it popular in colonial America. The round yellow variety was well known in this country as early as 1800, and it seems to have been a consistently listed type throughout the nineteenth century, not just for its ability to withstand our sultry summers but also because its color was quite striking at table, especially when mixed with white, red, violet, and even black sorts. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, a golden yellow radish became popular due to its more delicate flavor and finer texture. It is still available, but should not be confused with the earlier sort, nor grown to seed at the same time, lest unforeseen crossing occurs.
'Madras Podding' Radish
Raphanus sativus
This radish variety originated in India, where it has been cultivated for centuries. It was introduced into the United States from England in 1859 by one Isaac Buchanan, Madras Podding Radish

but the circumstances surrounding its introduction have not yet come to light. This much is certain: the radish was cultivated exclusively for its pods, since the plant does not form an edible root. Through years of careful selection, the mild-flavored pods remain crisp and tender for a long time — as much as two weeks — rather than turning tough and woody within a few days as they do for most other radishes. Furthermore, the Madras radish thrives in hot weather and therefore can be grown during July and August when most other radishes are prone to bolt. Due to its long flowering season, which only stops with the frost, this radish should be pulled up before fall radishes are allowed to flower for seed-saving purposes. The flowers of the Madras radish are distinctive: pale pink with purple tips on the petals.
The following recipe for pickling radish pods is taken from Ella E. Myers’s Home Cook Book (1880, 71). Her expression “to turn on” means to pour over. Her suggestion to pickle the pods while still on the stems is a good one. They do look nice that way.

How to Pickle Radishes

Gather the pods while quite small and tender. Keep them in salt and water, till you get through collecting them — changing the water as often as once in four or five days. Then scald them with hot salt and water, let them lie in it till cool, then turn on hot vinegar spiced with peppercorns, mace and allspice. The radish tops, if pickled in small bunches, are a pretty garnish for other pickles.
'Philadelphia White Box' Radish
Raphanus sativus
Hovey’s Magazine of Horticulture (1843, 98) noted the introduction of a new radish called Long-Leaved White Turnip Radish, a top-shaped fall radish that had been introduced in France in 1841. Out of this French variety, David Landreth & Sons of Philadelphia created the Earliest White Forcing Radish, which the firm introduced in the early 1880s. This strain came to be known as the Philadelphia White Box Radish among market gardeners, and this name began appearing as such in the seed catalogs of William Henry Maule during the 1890s. The popularity of the radish was nationwide, for it was considered the most delicate and quick growing of all the white winter radishes. It was even cooked as a vegetable. Perhaps the ultimate compliment to this radish came in 1909, when it was featured in the frontispiece to volume 4 of L. H. Bailey’s Cyclopedia of American Horticulture, the book that eventually became Hortus Third.
The radish is small, round, and has very small leaves. The lack of large leaves makes it ideal as a forcing radish for cold frames. While it is best and most delicate when grown under glass, this radish can be raised in the open ground as a fall radish. I have found that it performs best in light, sandy soil. Radishes harvested late in the season can be stored in cool, damp sand and used over the winter. They will retain their crisp freshness until the following spring. Since they are extremely mild, the radishes can be used in cookery like baby turnips.
'Rat-Tailed' Radish, 'Purple-Podded' Radish, or 'Japan' Radish
Raphanus sativus var. caudatus
The opening of Japan by the American navy in the 1850s gave American seedsmen an advantage over Europeans in getting first dibs on many rare plants and seeds. Several of our seedsmen set up factors in Yokahama to deal exclusively in horticultural material. One of the curiosities to appear on our market as a result of this trade was the rat-tailed radish, or as it was referred to in the nineteenth century, the Japan radish. Rat Tailed Radish

This radish was introduced commercially in this country in 1866–67 primarily by James J. H. Gregory of Marblehead, Massachusetts, although there were several other American seedsmen who carried it. The American introduction was brought directly from Japan. However, the radish had been introduced somewhat earlier in England under the name Mougri radish, after its name in Java. In Germany, the radish was called Schlangenrettich, or “snake” radish, in reference to the long, sinuous shape of the pod.
In spite of the exotic appearance of the seed pods that give this variety its distinctive name, the Vick seed catalog of 1872 lamented that the rat-tailed radish “may never become popular,” a sentiment echoed earlier in the August 1868 issue of the American Agriculturist. One of the initial problems with the radish lay in its taxonomy. Botanists have consistently classified it as Raphanus caudatus, thus inferring that it is a species separate from the common table radish. I do not accept this, since it crosses with every known variety of radish that I have grown. It is the true Don Juan of radishes if there ever was one, and this ability to cross and degenerate not only itself but all the radishes near it did not earn it high marks with Victorian gardeners. The only difference between this variety and the others is that it does not develop a bulbous root. Like the Madras podding radish, it was developed with other culinary features in mind.
Unlike most radishes, this variety immediately sends up flower stalks rather than developing a thick root. The flower stems may grow as high as 3 or 4 feet, and they billow with masses of sweet-smelling blossoms. The Don Juan of radishes is also crack for butterflies, which flock around the plants in the heat of summer like bees on honey. I thoroughly enjoy growing this radish for the show alone, but since it is a great attractor of pollinators during the height of summer when many flowers go temporarily dormant, it is a very useful addition to the vegetable garden.
The curious feature of this radish is that the flowers quickly develop into long, twining purple seed pods that do indeed resemble rat tails. In their young stage, while crisp and tender, the pods are perfect for salads, chopped into stir-fries, or used in pickles. When exposed to vinegar, the purple pods turn a brilliant green that bleeds into the pickling brine. Pennsylvania Dutch housewives discovered that by using the pods in cucumber pickles and other similar green pickles, they could enhance the green color without resorting to artificial means. The pods also impart a mild horseradish flavor to pickles and therefore can be used as a substitute where horseradish is not available. Dried, the pods retain their purple hue and curious shape, and are useful in dried flower arrangements.
The seed pods tend to make the plants top-heavy, especially after a rain. It is wise to stake the plants securely so that they are not blown over in a thundergust. In temperate areas of the country, it is possible to grow three crops in one season, or even more if seed is planted in two-week intervals from early spring through September. The plant itself is not damaged by light frost, but the pods are tender and will be injured by freezing.
'White Icicle' Radish
Raphanus sativus
Radishes of this much-sought-after shape are difficult enough to grow in heavy soil, not to mention that most of them are no better tasting than the small, round sorts. White Icicle Radish

Why do we bother? Because there are consumers who do not know enough about food to detect the difference between quality and caprice. I resist growing these sorts of radishes, but in all fairness, if long they must be, then make them white. There is good reason for this. The long, narrow, white varieties seem to be less prone to difficulties and the most consistently sweet and mild, regardless of soil. This variety is about 6 inches in length and should be cultivated in sandy soil for best results.
Fearing Burr (1865, 72) referred to this radish as the White Naples, White Italian, and White Transparent. All are synonyms for the same thing, and unfortunately, much to the confusion of our gardeners, there are a great many more synonyms than this. In form the radish resembles Wood’s Frame, except that it is twice as long. Where the radish protrudes above the ground, the shoulders turn green. A variant form, which looks identical to this one, has shoulders that turn violet when exposed to extensive sunlight. There is no difference in taste or texture, yet the flowers are not quite identical. My opinion is that this purple intrusion is the result of an accidental cross, but seedsmen agitate against me because when they run out of seed for one, they substitute seed from the other, as though the two radishes are the same. Become a particular customer: only accept the green-shouldered ones as true to type.
'Wood’s Frame' Radish
Raphanus sativus
In many ways this is the nineteenth century’s answer to the bonsai vegetable. I happen to like the miniatures — the Tom Thumb lettuce, the gloire de Quimper pea, the Pink Pearl tomato — I guess because they are not threatening, or else because I am intrigued by their Lilliputian scale. For the diet-conscious, miniature food is not The Enemy. We eat it today because it is obviously “lite.” Victorians doted on miniature vegetables for entirely different reasons. To their way of thinking, “lite” meant sickly, so Wood’s Frame was seen only in the context of what it did for the food around it. In short, it was the ultimate garnish. Wood Frame Radish

This is a radish with pencil-thin roots 2 1/2 to 3 inches long and barely I inch in diameter at the shoulder. The skin is bright rose-red, which fades toward pink at the tip. The flesh is crisp and juicy, with a good deal of snap. Due to its small size, the radish makes an excellent addition to dainty sandwiches, one of the purposes of its development. In keeping with its small size, this radish also requires a small length of time to mature, something that takes many gardeners off guard. Twenty days, and do not forget it; 25 is too late. This is a radish that moves from perfection to flowers within a matter of days; it requires intense fussing and a commitment to cold frames. Otherwise, it is one of the easiest, one of the showiest, and one of the cheapest radishes to grow for profit. Imagine saving seeds every 40 days. The spring crop can pay for the fall mortgage. This is an heirloom that lays golden eggs.
Is it really an heirloom? Yes, it is a subvariety of Long Scarlet or Salmon Colored, one of the most popular red icicle-type radishes of the eighteenth century. Wood’s Frame, also called New London Particular, was introduced about 1845. It became popular in this country in the 1850s and was raised almost exclusively in cold frames. In order to achieve the perfect shape, the soil in which the radish is cultivated must be deeply dug and thoroughly sifted with coarse sand. Even a small pebble will cause this radish to bend or deform. But hundreds can be grown in a small amount of space, and with experience, this is a vegetable that will heed the command of the gardener and produce very respectable yields. For the home gardener who simply enjoys fresh produce, this radish will be a lesson in the value of heirlooms.
Find seeds for these heirlooms and more with our Custom Seed and Plant Finder.

Buy the brand new e-book of Weaver’s gardening classic in the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Heirloom Vegetable Gardening.

The No-Spray Way to Protect Plants

In many organic gardeners’ storage sheds lurk what look like stashes of dirty bed linens. These are actually sheets of reusable fabric row covers, which serve as barriers between plants and those creatures that would destroy them. Without ever picking up a sprayer, you can use row covers to eliminate problem insects, and they prevent browsing by rabbits and deer, too. When combined with a weed-suppressing mulch (such as straw or grass clippings spread over wet newspapers), row covers often increase yields of peppers, strawberries and cucumber-family crops by more than a third.
Unlike plastic, which blocks rain and quickly heats up in the sun, the zillions of tiny holes in fabric row covers let rain in and heat out. Perforated plastic row covers do vent out hot air through thousands of holes or slits, but they are much less durable than breathable fabric row covers, which can be reused for several years and serve multiple purposes. With fabric row covers in place over your spring salad patch, you can stop worrying about biting winds and hungry rabbits. In summer, you can sleep easy knowing your melons are safe from four- and six-legged saboteurs that sneak in at night.

Lessons In Light

Garden row covers come in different weights, with thick versions such as Agribon 50 or various “frost blankets” providing up to 8 degrees of frost protection. The density needed to retain heat comes at a cost, however, because heavyweight covers admit only 50 percent of available light. This level of light deprivation nearly offsets these covers’ insulating benefit, though thick covers are great to use in late winter to promote heavy, early production of strawberries and fall-bearing raspberries such as the ‘Heritage’ variety.
Midweight row covers, such as Agribon 19, Reemay and Covertan 17, admit 75 percent to 85 percent of available light. They also provide 2 to 4 degrees of frost protection and excellent buffering of strong winds. The fibers in midweight row covers are dense enough to provide multiseason durability, but still porous enough to admit rain and ventilate themselves on sunny days. Should a serious cold snap hit, you can simply add a sheet of plastic or throw an old blanket on top of the row cover.
As the weather cools in the fall, midweight row covers are great for wrapping around caged tomatoes or peppers that are heavy with ripening fruits, or you can use them to keep aphids, leaf miners and flea beetles from finding your leafy greens.
Very lightweight row covers give little or no frost protection, but they also retain very little heat while admitting 95 percent of available light. These covers are standard equipment for excluding squash bugs, cucumber beetles and squash vine borers from young squash, cucumbers and pumpkins, or for keeping cabbageworms and root maggots from finding your broccoli. Row covers do need to be left off some plants to allow for pollination. Most vegetables that produce flowers before they make a crop, such as squash, cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers, require repeated visits from insects to spread pollen from flower to flower. Root crops and leafy greens need no pollination, so they can be grown under covers until they are ready to pick. Last August, a featherweight row cover held in place with clothespins spooked the family of deer that had taken to eating my ripening grapes for their breakfast.
One of the disadvantages of row covers is that they become soiled and dingy. Enter wedding net, often called tulle, which is sold in 60- to 90-inch widths at craft and fabric stores. In early summer, when I switch from midweight white row covers to the ones I’ve made from wedding net, it’s as if my garden changes from peasant underwear to polished formal attire. I use the finest mesh to keep flea beetles off my eggplants, but the regular one-sixteenth-inch mesh effectively excludes the moths whose larvae become army worms and cabbageworms, flies whose offspring become root maggots — and marble-sized hailstones, too.
Little, if any, heat builds up beneath tulle covers, which admit more sunlight than the featherweight row covers sold as insect barriers. Grasshoppers chew through the netting a little faster than they make it through regular row covers, but grasshoppers are less likely to make holes in either fabric if it is held above the plants’ leaves. I also use wedding net to keep birds from taking too many blueberries. Compared to bird netting, tulle is much less likely to snag on branches or accidentally snag hummingbirds. When bushes are covered with tulle that is gathered up beneath the bushes and secured with clothespins, even the most experienced robins can’t get to the fruit.

Getting a Custom Fit

Standard row cover widths range from 51/2 to 8 feet, and wider is always better. When shopping for row cover, be sure to get widths that will match the dimensions of your beds. Row cover that’s 83 inches wide gives you 12 inches of overhang on each side when installed over a 3-foot-wide bed held aloft with 6-foot-long hoops stuck deep in the ground. Twelve inches of overhang is perfect if you’re attaching the edges to bamboo poles or weighting them with boards, bricks or sandbags. A 2-foot-wide bed could be secured beneath a narrower 61-inch-wide piece, but such a width over a 3-foot-wide bed could be raised no more than 12 inches above the soil line.
Row covers can be allowed to rest atop many plants, though peppers, tomatoes and others with fragile growing tips do better when the cover is held aloft. Many people support row covers with 9-gauge wire cut into 6-foot-long pieces (Lee Valley Tools, sells a precut package of 10 for $14.50). You also can make hoops from inexpensive plastic pipe, which costs about a dime per foot at hardware stores. The ends can be pushed into the soil, or you can slip them over sturdier rebar stakes. On one of my framed raised beds, the planks on the long sides are equipped with vertical pipe sections into which I insert hoops made from slender saplings cut from the woods. (You can learn more about using saplings in the garden by reading Make Simple, Beautiful Garden Fences and Trellises. — Mother)
You can support row covers with stakes as long as the tops are smooth rather than jagged. Rebar or plastic-pipe stakes topped with rounded end caps work well, or you can use “living stakes.” In spring, dot the bed with a few corn or sunflower seedlings, and let them lift the row cover as they grow.

Tailoring Tips

When you run into situations where your row covers’ lengths or widths come up short, you can overlap pieces (making it easy to peek inside through the slit), or you can attach pieces using an ordinary paper stapler or a needle and thread. In the interest of research, I tested the strength of seams made with basting stitches on a sewing machine, hand stitches and staples placed 2 inches apart. After abusing the samples in a bucket of muddy water and then setting them in the sun for a few days, the stapled seams showed fewer gaps and less tearing than the sewn ones. For quick jobs, simply attaching pieces of row cover together with spring-type clothespins will do.
After the row cover is on the bed, you may still need to weight the bamboo poles with bricks, heavy stones, or sandbags — a great reuse for gallon-size freezer or food storage bags. When loaded with 10 cups of sand and 3 cups of water, these sandbags weigh about 8 pounds, and instantly mold themselves to the spot where you put them, or use wire staples to hold down the poles on each end of the cover.
Under very windy conditions, it’s a good idea to further secure row covers by clamping them onto their support hoops. If you use 9-gauge wire hoops, buy a few feet of three-eighths-inch vinyl tubing, and use kitchen shears or wire snips to cut it into 2-inch pieces. Then slit each piece open lengthwise, and pop them onto the hoops after the row cover is installed. If you use flexible pipe as support hoops, make clamps from pipe of a slightly larger diameter than the pipe used for the hoops, using a utility knife to make sure, clean cuts.

Making them Last

Clean row covers last longer, because soil particles that become wedged in the fibers have an abrasive effect. Promptly gathering and storing row covers between uses will go a long way toward keeping them reasonably clean, as will using poles or weights to hold the edges rather than burying them beneath soil or mulch. Should a piece get very dirty, hang it on a clothesline and hose it down. Allow it to dry completely before storing it (I store mine in plastic dry cleaning bags). If you have several pieces, use a laundry marker to label a corner of each one with its size and type, or label the bags in which you store them. Once row covers are crumpled on a shelf, they all look alike.
After three years or so of frequent use, you can cut ragged row cover into pieces to use for smaller jobs, like wrapping individual tomato cages or keeping flea beetles from finding a short row of radishes. Cut into strips, worn row cover makes good plant ties, or you can wrap the strips around tree trunks in need of protection from winter sun or borers. Ripening melons swaddled in row cover scraps are rarely sampled by birds or mice, and young ears of corn covered with row cover bonnets held in place with rubber bands become off limits to the moths whose larvae become corn earworms. Last fall, I went out on a chilly morning and stuffed a scrap of row cover into the entrance of a badly located yellow jacket nest so I could safely harvest my butternuts. It really worked like a charm.

Row covers work great to protect your crops from a wide variety of pests, including:

Cabbageworms
Flea beetles
Squash bugs
Colorado potato beetles
Root maggots
Leaf miners
Deer
Rabbits
Birds
Cucumber beetles
Army worms
Grasshoppers
Squash vine borers

Veteran garden writer Barbara Pleasant has used row covers to add more than three months onto the growing season in her Virginia garden.

Using Leaves in the Garden

9/18/2013 8:10:00 AM

By Vicki Mattern

Tags: leaves in the garden, garden soil, compost pile, organic gardening, Vicki Mattern

What’s the best way to use leaves in the garden?
Leaves are one of the main ingredients of the dark, rich humus that covers the forest floor — nature’s compost. A gardener can replicate that humus by mixing carbon-rich leaves with nitrogen-rich manure or grass clippings to make compost.
Maintaining an active compost pile in winter can be a challenge, however. An easier alternative is to use leaves in the garden in fall, says Abigail Maynard, associate agricultural scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, who has studied the use of leaves as a garden soil amendment for more than 10 years.
If possible, shred your leaves first with a chipper-shredder or mower; the smaller pieces will break down faster. Spread the chopped leaf mulch over your garden soil, then incorporate it with a tiller or spade. “By spring, almost all of the chopped leaves will be completely decomposed,” Maynard says.
Maynard’s research has shown that amending soil with maple or oak leaves alone probably won’t boost yields the way adding finished compost does, but she says using leaves in the garden does add organic matter to the soil. Organic matter improves soil structure, holds nutrients and moisture that are released slowly to plants, and provides food for beneficial soil organisms.
Maynard suggests adding a nitrogen-rich fertilizer, such as aged manure, in spring. (Nitrogen added in fall could leach away by spring.)

Gardening With Heirloom Vegetables

As the first comprehensive garden book of its kind, Heirloom Vegetable Gardening combines thirty years of first-hand experience growing, tasting and cooking with heirloom vegetables. Author William Woys Weaver has grown all 280 featured vegetable varieties in this book and has sprinkled in his gardening advice. Novice and experienced gardeners alike can appreciate the know-how on planting, growing and seed saving, as well as old-fashioned recipes such as Artichoke Pie and Turtle Bean Soup. Below you will find select heirloom vegetables from this book with variety-specific history and growing recommendations. To locate mail order companies that carry these heirloom vegetable varieties, use our Custom Seed and Plant Finder.
Buy the brand new e-book of Weaver’s gardening classic from the MOTHER EARTH NEWS store: Heirloom Vegetable Gardening.

Heirloom Artichoke Varieties Learn all about growing heirloom artichokes and cardoons. Read more.	Heirloom Asparagus Varieties Learn all there is to know about growing and harvesting these heirloom vegetables. Read more.	Heirloom Asparagus Pea Find out just how easy it is to grow and prepare this heirloom vegetable. Read more.
Heirloom Bean Varieties Learn about planting, harvesting and saving seeds for heirloom bean varieties. Read more.	Heirloom Beet Varieties Find out how to plant, harvest and save seeds for heirloom beet varieties. Read more.	Heirloom Broad Bean Varieties Learn about the history of these heirloom vegetables and how to grow them. Read more.
Heirloom Cabbage Varieties Learn more about the history of the brassicas and all of their heirloom varieties. Read more.	Heirloom Carrot Varieties Learn about planting, harvesting and saving seeds for heirloom carrots. Read more.	Heirloom Celery Varieties Uncover more of celery’s rich history and learn how to sow, harvest and store it. Read more.
Heirloom Chayote Varieties Aside from having a long growing season, the chayote vegetable is easy to grow and even remains unbothered by pests. Read more.	Heirloom Corn Varieties Find an abundance of information on heirloom corn varieties, from planting and seed saving to harvesting and preparing. Read more.	Heirloom Cowpea Varieties See why this heirloom vegetable is a southern favorite and read about a quick easy way to serve it. Read more.
Heirloom Cucumber Varieties Learn all about heirloom cucumber varieties — from planting and saving cucumber seeds to how to pickle gherkins. Read more.	Heirloom Eggplant Varieties Find out which heirloom eggplant varieties you should plant in your garden and try a recipe for stewed egg plant. Read More.	Heirloom Groundnut Varieties Find out which heirloom eggplant varieties you should plant in your garden and try a recipe for stewed egg plant. Read More.
Heirloom Jerusalem Artichoke Learn about the almost-forgotten vegetable, the Jerusalem artichoke, as well as how to grow and prepare it. Read more.	Heirloom Lettuce Varieties See your options for growing heirloom lettuce varieties as well as helpful information for planting lettuce. Read More.	Heirloom Martynia Varieties Read about growing heirloom martynia, also known as devil’s claw, as well as a few pointers for seed saving. Read More.
Heirloom Melon Varieties Learn about heirloom melon varieties, as well as how to grow and prepare them. Read more.	Heirloom Nightshade Varieties Discover the many heirloom nightshade varieties and how to grow them in your garden. Read More.	Heirloom Okra Varieties Learn how to grow the okra plant and the history of its heirloom varieties. Read More.
Heirloom Onion Varieties Learn how to grow heirloom onion varieties and discover how these plants are cancer-fighting. Read more.	Heirloom Parsnip Varieties Learn how to grow heirloom parsnip varieties and enjoy them with a parsnip cake recipe from 1855. Read More.	Heirloom Pea Varieties Learn about growing heirloom pea varieties — one of the oldest garden vegetables in our history. Read More.
Heirloom Pepper Varieties Learn about growing heirloom pea varieties — one of the oldest garden vegetables. Read more.	Heirloom Potato Varieties Learn how to plant heirloom potatoes, ward off pests, and gently harvest your spuds. Read More.	Heirloom Pumpkin Varieties Learn how to grow heirloom pumpkin varieties along with other squash varieties. Read More.
Heirloom Radish Varieties Learn about heirloom radish varieties and how to grow them. Read more.	Cold-Weather Salad Greens See how easy it is to grow heirloom cold-weather salad greens. Read More.	Warm-Weather Salad Greens Learn how to grow heirloom warm-weather salad greens. Read More.
Heirloom Sweet Potato Varieties Learn how to grow and store heirloom sweet potato varieties. Read more.	Heirloom Tomato Varieties See which heirloom tomato varieties to grow in your kitchen garden. Read More.	Heirloom Turnip Varieties Get gardening advice for growing the heirloom turnip varieties. Read More.
Heirloom Root Vegetable Varieties Learn about unusual heirloom root vegetable varieties and how to cook with them. Read more.	Heirloom Watercress Varieties Learn how to grow your own watercress, and skip the expensive store-bought variety. Read More.	Heirloom Watermelon Varieties Discover which heirloom watermelon varieties are best to grow in your garden. Read More.
Heirloom Chinese Yam Discover the history of this “true yam,” the heirloom Chinese yam. Read more.

What to Do in Winter

Six top crops for winter harvests, plus how to build better soil and get ready for spring. garden2

Store carrots, turnips, beets and potatoes directly in the garden in rodent-proof, ventilated containers, covered with straw or leaves stuffed into plastic garbage bags.

ELAYNE SEARS

What are you growing in your garden this winter? This is not a trick question. When you work an organic food garden in ways that bring out the best in your site, your soil and your plants, winter is an interesting and useful stretch of time. In most regions, you can enjoy spinach, Brussels sprouts, sunchokes, kale, carrots, parsnips and other cold-hardy crops all through the winter.

To help you brush up on your cold-season gardening skills, let’s tick through the simplest, most sustainable ways to address the three main winter gardening tasks:

growing cold-hardy edibles
using compost, cover crops and mulch to radically improve soil quality
enhancing habitats for hard-working beneficial insects and wildlife

No matter where you live, you can make use of climate-appropriate techniques to bring spinach, kale, chicories and other hardy vegetables through the winter (see Grow Great Salads Year Round, August/September 2006). You will need an attached greenhouse in Zones 2 to 4, but in Zones 5 to 7 you can get by with a tunnel covered with one layer each of row cover and plastic (the plastic comes off easily for ventilation). Support the tunnel with an arch of heavy-gauge wire fencing to make sure it can stand up to accumulated ice and snow, like a green igloo.

Protect Fall Crops

If you have carrots in the ground, take this tip from Eliot Coleman, author of Four-Season Harvest. In early winter enclose the carrots in a cold frame, and sprinkle an inch of compost over the tops of the plants. Add enough straw to fill the frame and close the top. Pull carrots as you need them, and be prepared to be amazed at their sweet flavor — what Coleman calls “carrot nirvana.” Parsnips need no protection to make it through winter, but a thick mulch (or a garbage bag stuffed with leaves) makes it easier to find them and keeps the soil from freezing. In any climate, early winter is the best time to harvest Brussels sprouts and sunchokes, both of which benefit from exposure to freezing temperatures.

Mulched soil doesn’t wash away in heavy rain, but the biggest advantage of winter mulch is that it moderates soil temperatures, slowing the speed at which the soil freezes, thaws and freezes again. Because water expands as it freezes, shallow roots are often torn and pushed upward — a natural phenomenon called heaving. Winter mulches reduce heaving around winter crops, decrease compaction from heavy rain or hail, and enrich the soil with organic matter as they decompose. They also look nice.

Fall-planted garlic, shallots and perennial onions are priority crops for a 4-inch winter mulch of hay, straw, chopped leaves or another locally abundant material. Mulch kale, too, but wait until after the first week of steady sub-freezing weather to protect the latent flower buds of strawberries with a 4-inch mulch of hay, pine needles or shredded leaves. Shroud the bases of marginally hardy herbs such as rosemary with a 12-inch-deep pyramid of mulch to protect the dormant buds closest to the ground. If you’re really pushing your luck by growing figs or other plants that cannot tolerate frozen roots, surround them with a tomato cage and stuff it full of straw or chopped leaves. Use this technique to safeguard the graft union and basal buds of modern roses, too.

Once you’ve done what you can to maximize the productivity of hardy plants, either gather up dead plants and surrounding mulch and compost them or turn the residue into the soil. This will reduce pests such as squash bugs and harlequin bugs, which overwinter as adults in plant debris, as do Mexican bean beetles and some other pests. Old mulches can harbor cabbageworm pupae, but these and other pests seldom survive winter in the wild world of a compost heap or when mixed into biologically active soil. To be on the safe side, you can create a special compost heap for plants that often harbor pests or diseases and seed-bearing weeds.

In spring, after the heap has shrunk to a manageable size, mix in a high-nitrogen material such as manure, grass clippings, alfalfa meal or cheap dry dog food (mostly corn and soybean meal) to heat the heap to 130 degrees — the temperature needed to neutralize potential troublemakers.

With this housekeeping detail behind you, think about what next year’s garden will demand of the soil. Sketch out a plan for where you will plant your favorite crops in spring and summer, and tailor your winter soil care practices to suit the needs of each plot’s future residents.

In areas to be planted with peas, potatoes, salad greens and other early spring crops, cultivate the soil, dig in some compost, and allow birds to peck through the soil to collect cutworms, tomato hornworm pupae and other insects for a week or two. Then rake the bed or row into shape and mulch it with a material that will be easy to rake off in early spring: year-old leaves or weathered hay, for example. Spring planting delays due to soggy soil will be a thing of the past.

In the space you will use in early summer for sweet corn, tomatoes and other demanding warm-weather crops, you may still have time to sow a winter cover crop such as hairy vetch, Austrian winter peas or crimson clover (see 8 Strategies for Better Garden Soil, June/July 2007). Cover crops make use of winter solar energy, energize the soil food web as their roots release carbohydrates down below and amass large amounts of organic matter. The deep roots of hardy grain cover crops such as cereal rye will spend the winter hammering their way into compacted subsoil, and nitrogen-fixing cover crops can jump-start soil improvement in new garden beds and save time in spring.

For example, if you get a good stand of hairy vetch growing in fall, simply cut the plants down in mid-spring (or pen your chickens on the bed), allow the foliage to dry into a mat and plant tomatoes right into the mulch.

For all those “to be determined” spots, you can enrich the soil and prevent winter erosion by tucking beds in with compost, mulch or a hybrid of the method I call “comforter composting.” Piles of organic matter in any configuration will turn the soil’s surface into a compost factory. Several 3-inch layers of dead plants, chopped leaves, spoiled hay and other mulch materials will compost themselves when placed atop unemployed soil.Once you’ve done what you can to maximize the productivity of hardy plants, either gather up dead plants and surrounding mulch and compost them or turn the residue into the soil. This will reduce pests such as squash bugs and harlequin bugs, which overwinter as adults in plant debris, as do Mexican bean beetles and some other pests. Old mulches can harbor cabbageworm pupae, but these and other pests seldom survive winter in the wild world of a compost heap or when mixed into biologically active soil. To be on the safe side, you can create a special compost heap for plants that often harbor pests or diseases and seed-bearing weeds.

For all those “to be determined” spots, you can enrich the soil and prevent winter erosion by tucking beds in with compost, mulch or a hybrid of the method I call “comforter composting.” Piles of organic matter in any configuration will turn the soil’s surface into a compost factory. Several 3-inch layers of dead plants, chopped leaves, spoiled hay and other mulch materials will compost themselves when placed atop unemployed soil.If you would rather make a mountain of compost from autumn’s haul of yard and garden waste, why not locate the pile in a place where it will travel across cultivated soil as you turn it every few weeks? A “walking heap” leaves a trail of organic matter in its wake, and nutrients that leach from the pile at various stopping points go straight into the soil.

Protect Your Trees

Mulches, compost piles and beneficial bug-havens all have one drawback: They provide snug, diversified winter quarters for mice, voles, rabbits and other small animals. As these animals run short of food in winter, they often girdle shrubs and trees as they dine on the nutrient-rich cambium just under the bark. If dogs, cats, owls and other predators don’t keep damaging critters in check, use wire cages to protect fruit trees and other high-value woody plants.

Use wire hardware cloth, at least 24 inches wide (go wider in areas with heavy snowfall), to make trunk cages. Just before positioning a cage, lay down a 3-inch wide collar of pebbles or small stones around the base of the tree for an extra measure of deterrence. Shimmy the cage down into the soil. Place additional stones around the base of the cage to help hold it in place. Or, make ground staples for your cages from wire clothes hangers cut into 6-inch pieces and bent into a U shape.

Cold-Hardy Greens: Grow Great Salads Year-Round

You can grow salads even in winter by protecting your greens with simple fabric row covers.

WALTER CHANDOHA

Spring brings an abundance of arrivals and changes, from returning birds and newborn critters to bud...

Fresh greens of all kinds are a year-round staple in my family’s kitchen. We have learned to transform the traditional “lean time” of the coldest months into a time of abundance by growing hardy and semihardy greens adapted to each season and using season-extending techniques in winter and early spring. Try these techniques and you’ll be thrilled the first time you pick a fresh, crisp salad right from your back yard — in the middle of January.
Our most reliable sources of cold-hardy greens are plants that have had at least one season to develop extensive root systems. Regardless of your location, these “naturals” — cooking greens and salad plants that naturally overwinter — will always be your most reliable sources of cold-weather greens. The naturals usually can survive winter on their own with no protection in our Zone 6 region in the mountains of North Carolina, and they are the most vigorous early producers. In colder zones, you can use the protection techniques described below and enjoy cooked greens and fresh salads prepared from a variety of tasty and nutritious greens all winter long.
You may already be familiar with many of the stalwarts of winter gardens:

kale (‘Winterbor’ hybrid is among the hardiest)
collards
spinach (‘Space’ and ‘Hector’ thrive even in cold climates)
winter-hardy lettuces (‘Tango’ and ‘Brune d’Hiver’ are excellent choices for winter gardens)
salad brassicas, such as tatsoi and rape

In addition, there are two other categories of cold-loving naturals:
Self-seeding annuals that will return from year to year:

arugula
giant red mustard
mâche or corn salad (‘Piedmont’ and other large-leaf varieties produce the most greens per plant)
claytonia, aka miners lettuce (needs a little protection)

Perennial greens:

radicchios (‘Red Treviso’ lends itself to cut-and-come-again harvesting)
many other chicories (the traditional Italian cooking green, ‘Red Rib Dandelion,’ is superproductive)
French sorrel
the spinach relative ‘Good King Henry’ (aka poor man’s asparagus)

Fall Planting

From mid-August to mid-September, sow successions of the naturals every couple of weeks. The naturals are hardy enough to overwinter anywhere in the continental United States with protection. When the greens are young in the fall, simple fabric row covers that rest on the leaves will do the trick. When the plants get a little bigger and temperatures drop, you may need to add a second layer of protection with tunnels made of clear plastic suspended by hoops or wire arches and closed on both ends. If temperatures regularly drop to near zero in your area, keep some heavyweight row covers or tarps on hand to throw over the whole setup.
Plants usually won’t overheat under fabric row covers, but you’ll need to ventilate plastic covers on sunny days when temperatures are above freezing. They will need to be closed again in the early evening, but many garden supply companies offer products that make this an easy job. (If you choose to construct your own tunnels, use UV-grade plastic so it won’t degrade quickly in the sun, and if you expect heavy snows, opt for metal conduit or rebar instead of plastic pipes for the hoops.) As the temperatures climb, you’ll need to pay more attention to ventilating your tunnels. Once nighttime temperatures are consistently near 30 degrees, you can remove the plastic but keep the fabric row cover in place. Remove the fabric cover after daily low temperatures consistently are above 30 degrees.

Winter Sowing

Fall-planted seeds begin to bolt (produce seed) with the long and warming days of spring, but succession planting will ensure a steady supply of the naturals. Most years I sow these seeds during January or February, but occasionally winter’s grip holds me back until March. You also can sow some cooking greens, such as chard and beet leaves, during these mid- to late-winter plantings. For continuous harvests, sow a new round of seeds every two weeks or so. It’s best to prepare these plots during the fall and cover them with 4 to 6 inches of leaves that will insulate the soil. You also can install a plastic tunnel over the bed to keep the soil warmer.

You’ll get the best production by planting each type of green separately, but it is possible to mix them all together. Just keep a couple of plant idiosyncrasies in mind: spinach gets lost in almost any crowd; salad brassicas will overwhelm your lettuce; mustard and mizuna will quickly dominate any bed of greens; and claytonia can make even these look timid!

Come Harvest Time

Depending on weather, your location and the varieties you’ve chosen, you’ll be able to harvest some of your fall-planted greens by the end of fall. And you can keep on picking most of these right through the winter. Others will overwinter and mature as early as the first of March. But even if you don’t get any of your salad greens in the ground until mid-February, you’ll still enjoy delicious, homegrown salads by early April.

Although most of the fall-planted naturals will be bolting by mid-spring, some — particularly corn salad and claytonia — will suffer little or no loss of quality other than the inevitable decline in production. Indeed, the tender flower stalks and buds of several brassicas are a delicious treat. Arugula flowers have a sweet, mild flavor even after the flavor of the leaves has become harsh. And the stalks and buds of overwintered collard greens may even rival asparagus!

Plant salad greens for cut-and-come-again harvests by sowing seeds just a couple inches from one another. When the plants are 4 to 6 inches tall, cut the entire plant but leave about an inch of leaf stubs for regrowth. For cooking greens, just snip off the oldest leaves each time you harvest them.

Feed the Plants that Feed You

Greens are easy to grow in most soils, but will be improved by a neutral to slightly acidic soil (pH of 6.5 to 7), plus plenty of calcium (from lime or gypsum) and nitrogen. Growing nitrogen-fixing cover crops during off-seasons is a great way to enrich your soil. Try Austrian winter peas or ‘Ho Lan Dow’ snow peas (a great culinary variety available from Stokes Seeds and you’ll be able to add tender pea shoots to your salads. Harvested just as the peas begin to flower, these sweet vine tips (snipped just below the first big leaf) taste just like peas, and the texture is delightfully crunchy. Fava beans, another great cool-season cover crop, also provide succulent, edible greens.

When you turn in the cover crop, work some compost or manure in, too. If you’ve gone through the trouble of having your soil tested, now’s the time to add any necessary amendments. (For a list of soil-testing laboratories, go to www.MotherEarthNews.com/directory/soil_test. — Mother)

For cut-and-come-again harvesting, feed newly snipped plants with a misting of fish or seaweed emulsion after each harvest. Or use side-dressings of worm castings. Be sure to keep all your greens watered well, especially once you’ve removed their protective coverings.

Pests and Diseases

Your greens won’t require any pollinating, so if big pests such as rabbits or deer are a problem in your area, just leave the row covers over your greens. Switch to super-lightweight fabric covers at the end of spring. Be aware that aphid infestations can be a threat if you leave covers on as it warms up. If aphids appear, open the covers to let in beneficial insects. If slugs plague your garden, apply a thin mulch of coffee grounds to the soil around the plants.

Disease is most likely to show up on your older plantings. Your best allies in warding it off will be maximum air circulation, as much sun as possible and rotating crops to keep problems localized. Of course, the better nourished the soil, the more disease-resistant the crop will be.

Super Natural Nutrition

All greens are good for you, but consider growing greens that are especially nutritious. For instance, spinach, mustard and collards are especially high in folate; kale, spinach and corn salad (mâche) are good sources of iron; and Swiss chard, chicory, kale, spinach, mustard, collards and beet greens all rank off the charts for Vitamins A, C and K.

Winterizing Plants

Applying straw mulch is an excellent way of winterizing plants. This batch is held in place on a strawberry bed with cheap fishnet.
PHOTO: BRANLEY ALLAN BRANSON

Trees are beautiful and they are useful as sources of food and shelter, and for building and using a...

The winter of 1977/78 was a record breaker, and meteorologists tell us that we may well have to suffer through several more just like it. Last year's cold caused widespread damage to farm and nursery crops, but the harm done to commercial agricultural operations is probably only the visible tip on an iceberg of destruction. It's impossible to even estimate the damage that the bitter weather did to the countless garden and yard plants that surround private homes (and grow on small farms) across the United States.
And why did a few people's gardens and yard trees come through the long freeze with flying colors, while other houses were marked with dead saplings and denuded garden plots? The answer is simple: The "lucky" individuals gave their fruit trees, ornamentals, etc. proper preparation before the snow fell, and regular care once the white drifts covered the ground. You see, no group of plants—however "hardy"—is immune to winter damage. But if a few precautions are taken, even the more delicate species can survive a deadly cold snap. The smart gardener, then, will see to "winterizing" plants during the late autumn or early winter. The results of such an intervention will be evident the following spring.

Winter Burn

You can do a lot to prepare your yard for winter before the air is even "mitten cold." In a dry autumn, for instance, make certain that all of your woody shrubs and trees are thoroughly watered several times before the ground freezes or is locked under a season-long blanket of snow. This is especially important to evergreens, such as members of the pine and olive families. Although these trees don't actively grow during the cold months, they do transpire (give off moisture), and the chill, dry winds of winter can desiccate them. This dehydration in turn causes winter burn, which destroys tender shoots and can even kill a badly stricken tree. Conifers are so sensitive to this condition, in fact, that they should be watered all winter long—during the warm interludes that slip in between those long periods of cold.
Fall and winter watering can also be beneficial to autumn-planted shrubs, flowering trees, and dwarf fruits, even though they're in a dormant state at the time. And, while most nurseries recommend that buyers prune these species right after they're planted, my shrubs and trees show fewer signs of winter harm, leaf out sooner when the warm weather rolls around again, and are fuller and easier to shape and train if I wait till spring to cut them back. Still, even though this method has worked for me for nine years, I wouldn't swear to its effectiveness outside my own area (eastern Kentucky). If you decide to spring-prune your plants, then, remember to experiment first with a portion that you can afford to lose before you commit your whole yard or garden to the technique.

Wrapping Trees and Shrubs

Rabbits sometimes wreak terrible damage on trees and shrubs during a hard winter. When the succulent grasses and herbs that make up their usual diet are either withered or buried, these animals will depend on bark as a source of food. The long-eared pests will gnaw on branches as high as two feet off the ground, cut down young shrubs, and kill (by girdling them) ornamental and fruit trees. To prevent this destruction, wrap the bottom 30 inches of all your susceptible trees with guard paper (you can get the protective tree wrap at nurseries and garden supply stores). Small-boled shrubs and tree branches can be protected with metal foil. Chicken wire "cages" are good insurance for any plants that are too delicate to wrap.A regular trapping program, of course, can also help control rabbits. Use one of the inexpensive (or easy-to-make) live traps, and release the rodents you catch in unpopulated areas. (Be sure, though, that you don't dump your problems near somebody else's garden!)

Field mice are another kind of pest that can be a real headache in mulched areas (they create burrows beneath the straw, bark, etc. and—safely hidden—chew on the trunks or roots of the trees and shrubs). These animals, however, are easily controlled with a "trap line" of regular house-mouse traps baited with peanut butter.

Applying Mulch and Staking

Despite the fact that it sometimes shelters mice, the advantages of mulch insulation far outweigh its disadvantages. In fact, many plants (such as roses, rhubarb, strawberries, ornamental peaches, and semi hardy figs) couldn't survive a severe winter without such a covering.

Roses (and flowerbeds) can be effectively protected with a 6" layer of rotted sawdust (available from most any sawmill). Burlap bags filled with the material can be tied and staked around hardy figs to keep the cold away. Remember, though, that sawdust uses up some of the soil's nitrogen as it decomposes and is also reputed to increase the acidity of the earth beneath it. Always up fertilization by approximately 50% in the spring where sawdust was used as winter mulch. Blueberries and Juneberries, however, like acid-rich earth, so a six inch wood-chip and sawdust covering will both protect these species and condition the soil for them at the same time.Insulate your strawberries, rhubarb, and asparagus with 8 to 12 inches of sterilized (seedless) straw. This material should be held in place with inexpensive fishnet (or something similar) to keep strong winter winds from scattering it.

After and Before

In spite of all these measures, a particularly bad winter will often "burn" many plants. This damage—usually seen as dead twigs, foliage, and flower and leaf buds—can seriously delay the spring awakening of the afflicted flora. Come warm weather, many people rush out to buy plants to replace those that are cold-damaged. This is generally an expensive error, because heavy pruning and shaping—thoroughly laced with patience—will often result in the slow reemergence of healthy, vigorous growth. In the case of dwarf fruit trees, though, any new shoots that originate below the graft line will revert to the characteristics of their (usually) standard-sized rootstock. Unless you're willing to live with this change, eliminate any of these trees that are broken off or killed above the graft.Finally, quite a few winter-related problems can be prevented if you undertake a thorough autumn "garden sanitation program." All patches of weeds and other rank growths should be totally cleared away in addition to any piles of stems, leaves, or cuttings from your garden plants and trees. (Just toss them on the compost pile, if you have one.) This sort of organic "rubbish" can act as a winter reservoir of viruses, aphids, fungi, and bacteria, any or all of which may survive the cold and be ready and waiting to go to work on your plants and trees at the first green sign of spring.

Building Soil in the Fall

My garden is not big, at least not by most standards. I’ve estimated it to be about 400 square feet this year and will be expanding it to nearly double of that next year. Even at that though, it’s still not a big area that I grow on. I take a lot of care and time to look into and try out many different methods of growing in that space from using cages, to trellising, to companion plantings and all have helped in one way or another.
Still, even with all the trickery and good use of space and planning, there’s really still only one thing that has the most impact on the small scale growers productivity in my opinion: soil. I need to make sure that I not only use my soil with care in not over using it with the same nutrient loving crops over and over again in one place, but also that I give them the right amount of off time to recoup, rest and regenerate before the next season. And one thing comes to mind when I think of regenerating my garden. Can you guess?
Raised boxes in the garden

Ever walked through what is normally a lush and fertile summer forest in the fall? What do you see? Leaves. Barren trees, and lots and lots of leaves. They cover the ground, insulating it from the extremes of winter weather and snow and provide shelter and food through the winter for the worms. Worms that will, through the winter and spring, gradually bring all of that wonderful organic material back into the ground to compost and rot and become food for the plants to grown there the next year. That’s the basis of my plan for my autumn garden beds this year, to try and mimic (albeit very loosely) the way that a natural ecosystem would function. Although I took it a little further.
This year I have at my disposal something that I didn’t have last fall … chickens, or more to the point, chicken manure. As I cleaned and tucked the beds in for the winter, I not only added a lot of very carbon rich leaves to them, I added a few healthy scoops of nitrogen rich chicken manure. It takes a few months for fresh manure to age and compost to the point where it’s no longer so HOT that it will burn young plants, and tucking it in during the fall is a perfect time for that. Come early spring I’ll do a pH test of the soil to determine where I stand, and adjust as necessary.
Leaves on a new bedding area

Leaves are also being used as a final layer to a new bedding area that we just added this fall. It’s a lasagna garden – a garden bed built with different layers of organic materials designed to break down over the winter into a rich humus for planting in – and I gave it a final turn to break up the layers a little before the snow flies, and am covering the entire bed with leaves as a final step. The leaves will help insulate the bed from freezing too hard over the winter I hope, giving it a better chance at completely breaking down before I plant in it next year.
I don’t think there’s a better friend to the small scale farmer, or in my case large scale suburban gardener, than good healthy soil that is rich in nutrients and organic material. It nourishes the earth, helps retain moisture in the heat of the summer, and provides the building blocks for strong plants the next season. And of all the ingredients that I can think of to put to the most useful purposes in building that healthy soil, few can compare to leaves.

Slideshow

Crop Rotation

The traditional vegetable garden is somewhat predictable for some homesteads. Not in terms of yield — no way in terms of yield — but often predictable in the sense that the sweet corn has its place, the tomato cages seldom move from year to year, the gourds have their corner, and we ultimately find ourselves digging potatoes in the same place every year. Though that system can be fulfilling and wonderful, consider a little crop rotation moving forward, and you might be pleasantly surprised; amazed even.

One of the easiest ways to get more out of your soil is to rotate plant families from one season to the next, as best you can, so that related crops are not planted in the same spot more often than every three years or so. This rotation will help the soil maintain a healthy balance of nutrients, organic matter and microorganisms.

Take potatoes, for example. In the course of a season, the fungi that cause scabby skin patches may proliferate, along with root-killing Verticillium fungi (which also damage tomatoes and eggplant) and tiny nematodes that injure potatoes. If you plant potatoes again in the same place, these pathogens will be ready and waiting to sabotage the crop. Rotating the space to another unrelated crop deprives the potato pathogens of the host plant they require, diminishing their numbers as they migrate or die. Think of it as playing keep-away with your veggies. Most pests and diseases prefer plants of the same botanical family, but cannot hurt unrelated crops (see the sidebar at the end of this article, “Rotate Your Families: The Nine Main Groups”).

Field trials in Connecticut and Europe indicated that rotated fields produced roughly 66 percent more potatoes than their counterparts. Far fewer spuds fell prey to disease when they were consistently rotated with other crops. According to a seven-year study from Ontario, Canada, you could expect similar gains if you rotate your tomatoes. Compared to eight different rotations with other vegetables or cover crops, tomatoes had the most to gain by consistent rotation. Snap beans are another good candidate for rotation. In a recent study from Cornell University, snap bean production doubled when beans were planted after corn rather than after snap beans.

In addition to interrupting disease cycles, rotating crops prevents the depletion of nutrients. For example, tomatoes need plenty of calcium the same way beans and beets crave manganese. The exact benefits of rotations will vary according to the crops in the cycle. Broad-leafed greens are great for suppressing weeds, and the deep roots of sweet corn do a good job of penetrating compacted subsoil. Nitrogen-fixing legumes often take no more nitrogen from the soil than they replace, and their presence stimulates the growth of beneficial soil microorganisms. But in some situations, the “rotation effect” defies easy explanation. For example, we don’t know precisely why potatoes tend to grow well when planted after sweet corn, but they do.

The subject of crop rotation can get complicated so fast that it’s no wonder we are tempted to cheat. What if your garden is like mine — a collection of a dozen permanent beds that are planted with 20-plus different crops in the course of a growing season? Not only will rotations seriously improve your yields, but because you have several separate ‘patches,’ they’re easy to implement. On the other hand, these small ‘patches’ need careful rotation to stay healthy. When researchers at Pennsylvania State University tracked early blight of tomatoes grown in the same place for four years, early-season infection rates (measured when 5 percent of fruits turned red) went from 3 percent in the first year to 74 percent in the third. When they tried the same monoculture maneuver with cantaloupes, symptoms of Alternariablight (early blight) appeared earlier and earlier with each passing season.

Questioning the rules

Some organic gardeners point out that crop rotation guidelines developed for farmers don’t really fit home gardens. On farms, crop residue is often either plowed under or left on the surface to decay, which means the soil receives large infusions of a single type of plant material. Gardeners are more likely to pull up and compost spent crops, and to dig in compost or other soil amendments between plantings, which replenishes nutrients in an extremely diversified way. Biodegradable mulches offer still more variety. If you heavily mulch your potatoes with straw, shredded leaves, grass clippings or all three, certainly it makes sense to factor those forms of organic matter into your rotation plans.

But don’t think that just because we pull up plants after harvesting, that we are interrupting the food supply of soilborne pathogens to the point that you can ignore rotations. When I pull up beans, for example, only a small tangle of roots comes up with the plants; most of the root system remains in the soil, feeding microbes good and bad. If I plant beans in that row again within two years, the plants will be at risk for micronutrient deficiency and several major bean diseases. Using a three-year crop rotation radically reduces the chances that my beans will be bothered by root rot, white mold and blights. In my opinion, this increased hardiness and health is worth devising a workable rotation plan in which new plantings are helped along by the bed’s previous tenants.

The eight-crop rotation

The eight-crop rotation plan developed by market gardener Eliot Coleman incorporates decades of farm and garden research, and it’s a great place to start planning rotations for your garden. In order, Coleman’s plants unfold like this: (1) tomatoes, (2) peas, (3) cabbage, (4) sweet corn, (5) potatoes, (6) squash, (7) root crops, (8) beans. If you grow only these eight crops in eight rows or beds, you now have your rotation plan. Simply line up your crops in the right order, and shift them one space over every year.But it’s not likely to be this simple for your garden, so you will need a customized plan that relocates the main plant families from one season to the next. (Families are crops that are closely related and therefore prone to many of the same pests and diseases.) The nine plant families grown in vegetable gardens are summarized in the sidebar, “Rotate Your Families,” below, but expect to need more space for some families than others. For example, you may need a lot of space for tomato-family crops (tomatoes, peppers, potatoes) and only a little for spinach, chard or beets, and you may not be able to grow space-hungry sweet corn at all. Begin planning your rotations by making a list of your must-have crops and how much space is required by each one. Then sort them into the plant families.

It also will help to identify “crop sequences” that work well in your garden within the same growing season. For example, many gardeners have garlic in the ground from fall to midsummer, after which the area can be planted with a second crop. In my Zone 6 garden, I can grow shell beans after garlic if I hustle, which gives me a garlic/bean sequence. In a cooler climate, you might have a garlic/lettuce sequence.
Other sequences that work well for me include a snap pea/carrot sequence, an onion/leafy green sequence, and a broccoli/bush bean sequence. Add any crop sequences you often use (or want to try) to your list.

Rotation planning

One planning method that I like to use calls for two sheets of paper, scissors, and a pen or pencil. On one sheet, make a rough drawing of your garden, noting the sizes of beds or rows. Write down, to the best of your knowledge, where various crops grew last year. If you take photographs of your garden at different times during the season, it’s much easier to recall where you planted what.
Cut another piece of paper into smaller pieces that fit the rows or beds in your garden drawing, and copy the crops, the plant family they belong to, and crop sequences from your list onto these “crop markers.” In my garden, I end up with markers for 10 crops or crop sequences to rotate within my 12 permanent beds. It’s good to have a couple of beds for trial plantings and irresistible whims.
Back at the drawing board, spend some time puzzling through your plans by moving the labeled crop/plant family markers about on your garden drawing. Your goal (which may take a few seasons to implement) will be to have your plantings move in a logical order and direction, whether it’s left to right, front to rear, circular or whatever. Expect to improvise and innovate. For example, I am now growing more peas and beans to stretch out years between onion and garlic plantings, which are priority crops in my garden. When in doubt about a rotation, I slip in a crop of beans or leafy greens.

If you feel frustrated, play with your drawing and markers for a while, and then pack them up for a few days of thinking time. When you go back to the task, you will probably have an easier time finding at least a few effective rotations waiting to be put into action. After a few years of fine-tuning, the payoff for this level of garden planning can be huge — a long-term rotation plan that runs itself and benefits every crop you grow.

Barbara Pleasant always rotates the veggies in her Virginia vegetable garden.

Rotate your families: The nine main groups

• Onion family: onions, garlic, leeks and shallots
• Carrot family: carrots, celery, parsley and parsnips
• Sunflower family: lettuce, sunflowers and a few other leafy greens
• Cabbage family: cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale and many other leafy greens, as well as rutabagas and kohlrabi
• Spinach family: beets and chard
• Cucumber family: cucumbers, melons, squash and gourds
• Pea family: peas and beans
• Grass family: corn, wheat, oats and rye
• Tomato family: tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and potatoes

1 comment:

AdeleMay 11, 2020 at 11:53 PM
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Gardening (1)

Setting Up a Farmstand

Farmers Markets, Big and Small

1. Starting Seeds

2. Think Soil First

3. Try New Crops

4. Watering Fall Garden Plants: Keep ’Em Soaked

5. Go Mad for Mulch

6. Deploy Your Defenses Against Garden Pests

Fall Garden Planting Schedule

Getting the Most from Your Fall Garden

Spring Seeds for Fall Crops

Managing Annual Self-Seeding Crops

Volunteer Veggies

Controlling Rampant Self-Seeders

34 Easy Self-Seeders

Bountiful Biennials Set Seeds in the Spring

Living and thriving off the grid!

Wonderful Wind, Super Solar

Generous Gardens

Peace of Mind

5-Gallon Self-Watering Container Instructions

Winter Gardening Tips: Best Crops and Cold-Hardy Varieties

Climate Considerations

Leafing Out

Rooting for Flavor

Jumping Into Winter Gardening

Readers’ Top 5 Crop-Protection Techniques

Straw bale Gardening vs Traditional Gardening!

How Much Money Can You Make?

Full-Time Farming

The Sideline Farm

Laying out the future

Cleaning up

Bedtime snacks

A trip to the comfort station

The blanket

Blankets by the acre

The Report Card: Soil Testing

No to Nightshades

Plant Garlic in the Fall for a Larger, Healthier Crop

Real-World Winter Gardening TipsFrom Your Growing Zone

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 3

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 4

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 5

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 6

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 7

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 8

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 9

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 10

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 11

Winter Gardening Tips From Zone 12

Favored Crops for Fall

The Matter of Timing

Sow and Grow

Stretching the Season

Breed Your Own Fall Garden Superheroes

Seed Sources

Heirloom Radish Varieties

A Brief History of Heirloom Radish Varieties

Growing Radishes

Seed Saving

How to Pickle Radishes

The No-Spray Way to Protect Plants

Lessons In Light

Getting a Custom Fit

Tailoring Tips

Making them Last

Row covers work great to protect your crops from a wide variety of pests, including:

Veteran garden writer Barbara Pleasant has used row covers to add more than three months onto the growing season in her Virginia garden.

Using Leaves in the Garden

Gardening With Heirloom Vegetables

What to Do in Winter

Protect Fall Crops

Protect Your Trees

Cold-Hardy Greens: Grow Great Salads Year-Round

Fall Planting

Winter Sowing

Come Harvest Time

Feed the Plants that Feed You

Real-World Winter Gardening Tips
From Your Growing Zone