All posts tagged Winter Gardening

Winter Gardening Tips

Winter gardening tips
As you pull in your harvest, you don’t necessarily have to bid your garden adieu for the winter. Of course, where you live may restrict your growing (not much grows in snow). For many of us, we can have fresh herbs and produce year round.

  • Some vegetables that grow well in fall and winter are spinach, beets, carrots, and even broccoli.
  • Familiarize yourself with your hardiness zone. This will help you determine just what to grow this fall and winter.
  • Planting in raised beds improves drainage and allows the soil to warm up more quickly.
  • If you use a lot of containers for your herbs, bring them inside and sit them them in a south facing window.
  • For areas with temperatures that hover around 35 to 40 degrees during the winter, you might want to take Sea’s advice and build a cold frame box. This glass lidded strucure creates a mini greenhouse for your garden.

Even if you can’t grow produce, there are plenty of other ways to prepare your garden for spring.

  • Continue to add to your compost pile and make sure to keep it aerated.
  • If you are able, plant some clover, rye or vetch in your garden to add some organic material to the soil.
  • Add corn gluten meal in mid-February to prevent weeds from sprouting.

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Source obtained from www.greendaily.com

4 Ways To Use A Cold Frame

No matter what your climate, these plant shelters expand your gardening options

by Adrianna Vargo

4 ways to use a cold frame

A few years ago, while driving with my family through the countryside of Bulgaria, I noticed how strikingly similar the landscape was to that of central Virginia. I also noticed that nearly every home had a garden plot, a grape arbor, and a cold frame of some sort. It made me realize how ancient and universal the practice of using cold frames is.

A cold frame is a simple structure that utilizes solar energy and insulation to create a microclimate within your garden. For those of you who have harvested and eaten a salad of fresh greens in February or have flowers blooming well past frost, you know the attraction of using cold frames. You also know how easy they are to make and use. Although we have a greenhouse on our farm, space is always limited, so we rely heavily, especially in spring and fall, on our cold frames to overwinter plants, extend the growing season, start seeds, and harden off plants.

For whatever purpose you want to use a cold frame, you need to keep in mind a few basic factors. First, some plants fare better in cold frames than others, with low-growing, cool-season plants being the best suited. Second, the type of cold frame you use dictates how much protection you can offer your plants. In all cases, the main conditions you need to monitor and control are temperature, sunlight, moisture, and wind exposure.

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