Winter Gardening in the Summer

The zucchini is starting to produce and summer salads are a staple of evening dinners. It's tempting at this time of the year to put your feet up, relax and enjoy the bounty of your hard work. Yet by November, I'm often left wishing I had put in a little more effort in during the summer so that I could harvest fresh food through the wintertime.

Summer is the ideal time to start a winter garden. A couple of weeks seeding and transplanting will result in a kitchen garden that will produce well into the springtime. The first step is deciding what to grow. No need to restrict yourself to cabbage and Brussels sprouts - fall and winter gardening can include a variety of lovely edibles:

Vegetable Type

Varieties	Time to plant
Arugula - all types	July-early Sept
Beets - Greenleaf, Winterkeeper	early-mid July
Broad Beans - Aquadulce, Windsor	Oct-Nov
Cabbage - January King, Tundra	July-mid Aug
Carrots - Scarlet Nantes, Autumn King	early-mid July
Cauliflower - Armado Series, White Rock	mid July
Cilantro - all types	July-August
Collards - all types	early-mid July
Corn Salad - all types	August-mid Sept
Fennel - any bulbing type	early-mid July
Garlic - all types	Sept-Oct
Kale - all types	early-mid July
Kohlrabi - all types	mid July-early August
Mizuna - all types	July-August
Overwintering Onions - Walla Walla, Buffalo	mid August
Pac Choi - all types	August-September
Parsnips - all types	early July
Peas - early maturing types	early July
Radicchio - all types	July-early August
Radish - all types	Sept-October
Rutabagas - all types	early July
Scallions - all types	July-early - August
Spinach - Bloomsdale, Tyee	July-August
Sprouting broccoli - Green, Purple or White	early July
Tatsoi - all types	August-September
Turnips - all types	July-August
Winter Lettuce - Winter Density, Rouge D'hiver	July-August

The next step is to find room in the garden. Although my squash plants are filling in every inch of their bed, I can usually find space where my spring veggies used to reside. Often enough, there's now room since the lettuce and early spring greens are all harvested. If it's still too early to pull out your plants, you find a small patch in the garden and start a nursery bed.

I enjoy putting all my seedlings close together like this so that I can keep an eye out on watering and pest problems. The other option is to start seeds indoors and transplant them later. If I know I won't be around to water during the day, I try to start seedlings indoors. I do get much better germination rates and it does save quite a bit of space. Once the seedlings have been started and are in place, they usually don't need any special care until about September.

As the nights begin to cool, draping some of the less hardy plants like the winter lettuce and cilantro with a floating row cover protects them from light frosts. On the coast and in mild winter areas, a floating row cover is enough to protect seedlings from mild frosts, up to about 30°F (-2° C). In colder areas, a plastic cloche or a cold-frame can be used to keep these vegetables cropping.

One thing to keep in mind about growing under plastic is that plants will require extra watering since they won't receive any rainfall moisture. Once plants like kale and cabbage are hit by a good frost, you'll notice a remarkable difference in the taste. Most winter vegetables use sugar as a natural anti-freeze. As temperatures become colder, they fill their cells with sugar to prevent water in their systems from crystallizing. It's another added bonus to growing a winter garden! For more information, visit www.tvorganics.com for Winter Gardening Kits and seed varieties.

This helpful article was provided by DoItYourself.com community member Arzeena Hamir (Terra Viva Organics). If you are interested in sharing your do-it-yourself knowledge and know-how with the DoItYourself.com's community, click here for more details.

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