At Last! I Managed a Fall and Winter Garden This Year!

It was really hard, but I finally did it.  I got a fall and winter garden planted this year, my most challenging gardening year to date. It’s been so challenging that I broke down and bought some winter starts last week at Home Depot. 

I was in there after fasteners and thought, you know? Why don’t you just wander over to the nursery and see if they have any, by chance. And they did! I bought arugula, kale and pac choi starts. I’d have purchased lettuces starts as well, but they were a little old. 

When it comes to growing for the winter months, when they tell you to start in mid-July, well for some things, they really do mean mid-July.  So that’s what I did. This summer was also one of our hotter summers, so there was that challenge. How do you keep cool weather crop seedlings cool in the hottest part of the year?

When I built the beds in late spring, I included frames around the tops with the intention of covering them in greenhouse plastic for the winter.  It turned out the frames were also a great support for laying reed fencing across to create some dappled shade for the seedlings.  It actually worked really well, and I think the results speak for themselves. Next year I want to see about cutting down the fences so that they don’t take up so much room over the pathways.

I planned one bed to be covered in plastic this winter and one bed to be exposed. Maybe next year when I have more growing space I’ll be able to devote more area outside the winter beds to plants that handle frost, like kale and parsnips. But I only had so much room, and I did what I did, so we’ll see how long the food lasts.  In any case, the bed that gets covered has beets and lettuce seedlings. 

How long the food lasts will be the ultimate test of how well I did.  I’m hoping that by growing copious quantities of greens of various kinds, I’ll be able to make the root vegetables last longer. And, I’m hoping that each of my sections has enough to last at least a month.  This is going to be very hard to do if we eat vegetables with every meal, and we do.  Fortunately, a few of the root vegetables have tops that can be eaten as well, like beets, kohlrabi, and rutabagas, so that will help.  I do not recommend eating carrot tops, no matter what that irresponsible idiot you see on the internet or TV who says you can. Carrot tops contain alkaloids and if you get enough of them you can poison yourself. Not a good idea.

We’ve started eating some of the greens already. I have a few more store bought vegetables in the fridge and I’m trying to put off both going back to the grocery store and harvesting stuff out of the garden.  But where I can make the store bought stuff last a little longer by helping it out with some homegrown, I am.  At some point, I’ll dig up the volunteer Italian chard (actually Verde de Taglio from Franchi) and replant it in the hoop house, with the hope that it survives the transplanting. If I don’t, it’ll die in the first frost anyway, so I may as well try it.

If you’ve been struggling with getting a winter garden in, I hope my success and methods give you more hope and some solid ideas for getting around the heat in summer so that you can make it happen for yourself. 

I have to say though, that finally getting one going is a really huge step for us in the quest for a year-round garden. Maybe eventually, I really will learn how to feed us from the back yard.  

That is the goal, after all.