Finding Fresh Crops Under Winter’s Snow
I recall a neighbor who had carrots and other hardy crops deep into the winter. The question is, how do they do that?
When considering a true winter garden, we are generally talking about winter harvest as opposed to winter growing. The months of December and January in our area experience daylight lengths less than 10 hours, which is insufficient to promote much growth. However, with planning, good crop selection and some low-tech protection you can harvest crops all winter long. Having fresh food in the winter is a great thing in itself, but the crops often taste better after they’ve experienced cold weather, plus you don’t need to worry about pests and diseases!
Planning The plants will need to do most of their growing before winter steals our long and warm days. That means a winter garden needs to be planted in late summer and early fall. I aim to get my plants at least two-thirds of the way to maturity before the first frost hits. Greens are a little less time—critical because you can eat them young, and garlic can be planted into November and still produce edible sprouts, but root crops generally need more time to develop. If you missed it this year, plan early for next season.
Crop Selection Doing some simple research to select varieties that perform well in cold weather will go a long way to having a good winter harvest. Tango lettuce is know to be very cold hardy, White Russian kale and Long Standing Bloomsdale spinach are also good candidates. Cilantro and Austrian winter pea self seed in my garden in the fall and produce edible greens through the winter with little to no protection. Winter radishes are slower to mature and have complex flavors that improve with the cooler weather. Carrots, beets and turnips will all overwinter if they’ve had enough time to grow. The ground insulates them and becomes a perfect storage vessel so you can harvest what you want when you need it.
Low-Tech Protection Our winters are very variable in the mountains, so the level of protection will vary from year to year. Last year was very mild and most things survived in my garden without anything more than their natural cold hardiness. A couple of years back we experienced polar vortices, which challenged a lot of plants (note: my Austrian Winter Pea didn’t even flinch!). Simple, affordable protection comes in the form of homemade coldframes, row covers and low tunnels. They all aim to trap some of the day’s heat and provide a barrier to hard frosts. If you experience snow that stays around then that is a great insulator and will actually blanket your crops and keep them alive because it tends to be extreme temperature shifts that plants struggle to cope with more than the cold itself.
When can I plant wildflower seeds?
Many wildflowers are perennials, meaning that once they become established they will continue to grow back each year from the same root system. Wildflowers tend to drop their seeds in the fall. The seeds have evolved a safeguard to prevent early germination in a warm fall and then dying as tender seedlings in a cold winter. The seeds won't germinate until they have experienced a period of cold, moist conditions.
So, when planting wildflower seeds, we need to respect this. Your seed packets will often say that the seeds need to be stratified. Stratification is basically exposing seeds to cold moist conditions.
Natural Stratification The advantages of just throwing your seeds onto the ground in late winter and early spring is that it’s easy. Let nature do the work of cold and damp, and your seeds will germinate when the weather is right. You can increase your chances of success by mixing the seeds with some soil before broadcasting them and perhaps even laying row cover over the seeded area (depending on the size of the planting). The risk of this method is that your seeds need to survive the perils of winter, which mainly boils down to being eaten or washed away.
Artificial Stratification This method is more hands-on, but you get to control your seeds for a little longer before exposing them to the outside world. Mix the seeds with some damp peat moss. Place the peat moss and seed mix in a ziplock bag or larger container and put it in the fridge for 4-8 weeks. You can then either broadcast the peat moss mix where you want to establish the wildflowers, or take the additional step of sowing the mix in flats and babying your plants through to transplant stage.
As a lazy gardener, I tend to broadcast my seeds in early spring and let nature do the work, accepting the risk that some seeds may not make it.
About the author: Chris Smith is the community coordinator for Sow True Seed—an Asheville, N.C.-based company that specializes in open-pollinated, heirloom, and organic seeds. Contact Smith at sowtrueseed.com.