Do you plant a fall garden? If you haven’t, it is not too late to get those seeds and plant starts in the ground. Here in Washington, the weather is totally mild enough to have a fall/winter garden with pretty minimal effort. With just a tad more effort, fall/winter gardening can be done pretty much in any region, though.
I really am hoping to harvest some fresh lettuce {and kale for The Girl} for Christmas dinner this year, so, even in the absence of garden space {for now anyway}, I decided to plant a mini winter garden in some containers out along the house. There are a couple of advantages to this anyway, the containers will actually keep the soil warmer AND placing them near the house will offer the plants some protection.
The key to a successful fall/winter garden start with choosing the right kind of plants. Cold hardy produce, like spinach, Swiss chard, parsnips, kale, arugula, carrots, cold hardy herbs, etc. are your best choices.
They can stand the cooler temperatures with just a little TLC. Especially when your plants are still seedlings, you will want to use a row cover or hoop house to cover them on nights where a light or hard freeze is in the forecast. If your days are still warming up nicely, make sure to take the cover off during the day, or the plants will go through temperature extremes and get angry at you.
Fall/winter gardening is a much, much slower process than spring and summer gardening. Your plants, even if they are cold hardy, will grow slower. That is totally normal. You won’t need to water as frequently as you would during spring and summer gardening, because the soil will take much longer to dry out in between waterings. Also, try to water mid-morning, if possible, that way your soil will have plenty of time to absorb the moisture without going into immediately freezing overnight temperatures {that will obviously be increasingly harder to do as the weather stays cold during the days too}.
Nothing beats garden fresh veggies–and it always blows Thanksgiving and Christmas guests’ minds when I have a freshly picked salad on the dinner table. If only they knew how little effort it really took. What do you like to grow in your fall/winter garden?
~Mavis
Carolina says
My comment has a grand total of NOTHING to do with gardening. I just want to say that you look AWESOME with your hair down, not in a ponytail. This has some positive aspects for when you move east, too. When the weather here in Northern New England gets below freezing, I take my hair out of the ponytail and wear it down, covering my ears—no hat needed. This works well down to about 0 degrees—-after that, hat needed.
Jennifer Meyer says
I’m glad I’m not the only one that came to comment on just your hair lol! It looks great down! I love it!
Candice says
This will be my first year with a fall/winter garden and am so excited. Watched Back to Eden gardening on You Tube and have implemented the practices this year. So pleased with the results. My garden still growing strong despite the heat wave we have experienced with no need to water.Weeds minimal and ones that do occur come up roots and all without effort on my part. No disease and no insects this year. Usually by this time I have had it with gardening and garden looks terrible. Not so this year. So far planted potatoes, yep potatoes, beets, giant winter spinach, Siberian kale, radishes, and of course, garlic which I remembered in time this year. Waiting for arrival of strawberry plants and purple asparagus to arrive Friday and putting in blueberries in Sept. So excited and so enjoy reading your blog daily for the past couple years. Snagged great deals, Kindle books, info, and Ms Hillbilly. She would be so fun to have as a friend and neighbor. You are blessed.
Carole says
I like the new glasses too. I have already started my fall garden. Here is south Texas you can do that if and a BIG if, you can protect your new plants from 100 degrees! If you succeed there you are good all winter. We rarely get a serious freeze and if one is expected I use my pop up green house. So I have tomatoes with blooms again, and lots of herbs, sweet potatoes and some squash. I will do leafy greens once we go below 100 for good. Too hot now for that. Basically summer here is winter for most gardeners. Too hot to do anything, like winter elsewhere, too cold. You have to change your whole way of thinking.
Barbara says
You really should wear our hair down more, and your smile just lights up your face. I dont think I have ever seen you look quite this happy.
Karin Carson says
Mavis you look amazing , can see you have lost your muffin top .
As for gardening between the heat and Forrest fires we have in BC it has taken its toll on the growing season, my beets are slow, early crops didn’t do very well either , corn is short , still hoping for tomatoes. There is always next year . We never put in fall crops as we have had -22 the first week in October.
Mel says
It’s still too hot here to plant, but I have tons of seedlings under grow lights. We plant a fall garden for ourselves, but we learned last year that collards and kale are extremely important to our beehives. Collards and kale will grow through our winters (even snow and ice) and then bolt in early spring when nothing else is blooming. When most bees are low on honey stores or only eating sugar water, ours can forage on the kale and collard flowers.
Last year was my first fall garden, and it worked great, so I can’t wait to see how this year goes. I’m trying new varieties of broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage, and I’m also giving celery and orange pansies a try.