Category Archives: Winter gardening

How does your cold frame grow?

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Here’s something fun to see. First picture(top)is October 15, 2016, second is 1/1/17, last one is 2/21/17. A simple sun box, not a cold frame, can do this for you as well. Nothing wrong with the cold frame, its just more work, more expensive, and fairly permanent. I’ve taken off the top sun box level for the last picture so you can see whats happened over the winter. Now I’ll begin to harvest whats in it. Good eating tonight!

I encourage everyone to grow their own food, even those in harsher climates that experience snow, below zero temperatures, wind chill, etc. It’s a rewarding feeling to come out after a hard winter, pull back the top and see whats underneath. I just began watering this box last week-thats 3 full months of no work! those wanting to see how easy a sun box is to assemble(and take apart), see my earlier post. So easy, and all made with wood material thats laying around the house.
Crops in this box are spinach, chard,and the lettuces of sweet repeat, allstar, and black seeded simpson.

One of the keys to growing is the soil. As I’ve said before, if the soil isn’t right, nothing else will really matter. If you live in the area and are interested in learning how to have really rich, fertile soil, I’ll be teaching class this upcoming Saturday. Composting is the answer. Once you learn the proper way to do it, you’ll ask yourself why you haven’t been doing it all along[ois skin=”3″]

Growing microgreens

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Winter can feel long, dark, and lonely.  Thats especially true if you’re a gardener, used to seeing plush green colors throughout the year.  Many folks put their gardening chores away right around the Labor Day weekend, or shortly thereafter.  Then they might start back up again in mid-March or the first part of April.  Thats 6 months!  A long time to not see green.

I like to grow microgreens all year, but I particularly enjoy it during the winter months when it seems like everything is cloudy and just brown.  I love growing them not for just the nutritional value and taste, but also because it gives me something to put on the counter during December and January thats alive and green.  They are so easy to do.  Its a great hobby and you get the reward of eating something delicious.  They require nothing elaborate, in fact, they are grown and harvested as you see in the picture-on a windowsill.  A little snip of this on top of a salad, on a baked potato, or even added to scrambled eggs will light your taste buds on fire.  Another great thing about them?  They generally only take about 8-10 days.  If you’ve never tried them you should.

In the meantime, did you see my newest ebook?  It surely hasn’t set the world on fire, probably because there’s not many places that are experiencing warm weather in January and February, so why bother?  There are plenty of us around who love lettuce all year but growing it in the gardens during summer is really hard if you live in a place where temperatures get to be 80-85 plus degrees.  If thats the case, this short ebook is for you.  Warm weather gardeners know the challenges of trying to keep lettuce going through summer.  This ebook teaches the 5 techniques that I’ve used to be able to harvest lettuce in our very warm summers.  I hope you enjoy it. &nbsp[ois skin=”3″]

My very small cold frame winter garden

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This is supposed to be a cold frame but it really isn’t.  I learned this idea from Mel Bartholomew many years ago, and he writes about it in his first book, which is a condensed version of what he wrote earlier in the publication of The Avant Gardener in 1978.  The article is long out of print so you wont be able to find it easily.  This is called a sun box.  A google search for sun box will give you nothing close to what this is.

What’s the difference between a cold frame and a sun box?  A cold frame is something that is usually fairly permanent, and usually fairly good sized.  It’s usually dig into the ground and placed at a low angle on the southern side of a yard to get as much of the sun as possible, especially in the winter months.  The back of traditional cold frames are much higher than the front and they can be pretty heavy and bulky.  It’s covered with a variety of things ranging from expensive, self venting tops to cheap things such as wood with plastic stapled to it to act as a protective covering over the top.  Cold frames can be very expensive or pretty cheap.

A sun box is different.  It is not dug into the ground.  It is not permanent.  The back is the same height as the front.  In fact, its nothing more than portable wood boxes that have been placed on top of each other.  Thats it.  They can be moved around, taken apart, added upon, etc. in about a minutes time.  They are great for last spring and summer.  When you tomatoes(or anything else) need to be hardened off and they begin to outgrow your cold frame, you’re almost forced to plant them in the garden.  All you need to do with a sun box is add another portably wood box on top of what you already have.  Then all I did was buy a $5 glass window at the Re-Store to place on top for protection.  We’ve had a tough winter so far with more coming.  As you can see, the salad greens have done amazingly well.  And I just had a small salad-it was wonderful.[ois skin=”3″]

The winter garden

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january-winter-garden-2017I thought it would be good to post on the first day of a new year. I hope this upcoming season is a great one for all! I also hope you’re using this time to think about, plan, and prepare for your garden, hopefully in early spring. We’ve got about 4 weeks before we hit the minimum 10 hours of daylight, where its a good idea to start planting certain cool weather crops. It does take longer to get them going and its more work. For those wanting to do less, you can still plant in early March and probably have a harvest around the same time as us early January planters.

This will be the first year in as long as I can remember that I wont be planting on Presidents Day weekend. I’m going to put it off until the first week of March. Right now the garden looks good, and I’ve been harvesting plenty of overwintered carrots, chard, beet greens, scallions, spinach, and small leaf lettuce varieties. The radishes are gone, but were good earlier in winter.

I’ve literally done nothing in my garden since November 28th. With the right crop varieties and the right protection, having a 4 season harvest is a very simple thing to do. There’s been no watering and only harvesting. In about 4 weeks it’ll begin to look pretty empty. I’ve got my compost ready to amend the soil when the time comes to get cranking on the early spring season.

One last note: my ebook is a few days from being released. I’ve been threatening now for 2 years and it’s finally here! Its an book about growing my favorite crop, lettuce, in the hot months of summer. For the most part, I’m pleased with the final product. I don’t consider myself to be a very good writer so it takes me a long time to finish. Its 12 pages long and will sell for $4.99. It talks about the 5 techniques I’ve used to successfully have lettuce all summer. I hope you’ll like it and will have a chance to give it a favorable review. I’m hoping to have it available on all the major online outlets very soon as well as here on my blog. Stay tuned.[ois skin=”3″]

Prepped box for winter

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prepped-garden-box-for-winterI just pushed about 3 inches of soil over, filled it with fall leaves and pushed the soil back on top. You won’t see the leaves-they are covered with soil. And you won’t see the leaves come spring time either. This is a great way to prepare your soil for the next growing season.

It takes about 5 minutes per box to do this. When spring arrives all you need to do is cover your boxes with plastic to heat the soil up. Even after a very hard winter season, your soil will be ready to plant in about one week.

If you were to turn your soil and look for leaves at that time, they’ll probably be gone. They are eaten and “mulched” into fertilizer by our friendly earthworms[ois skin=”3″]