by Scott K
(Merrickville)
This might be sub-titled, 'Is season extension practical above the 45th parallel'?
Here's what's going on in my garden right now:
- carrots (pulled some fresh for dinner last night, they were wonderful)
- turnips
- beets
- spinach
- kale
- arugula
- lettuces (Winter Density doing particularly well)
-various other greens
In storage, I have potatoes, winter squash, cabbage, onions, and garlic. Experience says everything except the cabbage will last through the winter. And the carrots will soon join the other veggies in storage.
This represents a fair amount of nutrition, including even vitamin C from the squash. So how hard was this to achieve? Since I am by nature lazy, it wasn't that hard. It mostly consists of some planning and applying a little appropriate technology; in this case, row cover.
If you haven't used it, row cover is a light-weight spun poly fabric that helps protect plants from both bugs and bad weather. This has been an unusually mild November, but we have still had several good frosts, with overnight temperatures below -5C (23F). And all the veggies listed above came through fine.
COMMENTS? Tell us your own experiences with winter vegetable gardening, successful or otherwise.