Extend Your Garden Season With These Techniques

With your garden prepped for winter, you may be ready to turn in and take a break from growing for a few months. But if you’re like me and the idea of the garden totally ending breaks your heart, there’s a few different ways we can extend our growing season and keep harvesting fresh food from the garden all year round. I’ll be using all of these methods in my own garden to grow cold loving crops while the snow falls.

How To Use Row Cover

There’s a good chance you have some plants already in the ground that can withstand cooler temperatures and give you harvests well into winter with a little planning. Plants in the brassica family for example have the ability to produce a type of natural anti-freeze that converts into sugars and makes the plants taste even better after a frost. But you can extend their life even further by utilizing frost covers which act as a cozy winter blanket and keep out the wind chill and moisture that causes the most damage to these cold hardy plants. These covers act as a shield against harsh frost, preserving the warmth around the plants and preventing frost damage. It's a simple yet effective measure to safeguard your garden and extend your harvest.

Benefits of Mulch

We aren’t the only ones who benefit from an extra blanket or two in the winter months. A layer of mulch such as wood chips, pine needles or straw around perennial plants acts as insulation, protecting their roots from extreme temperatures. It also helps retain moisture and suppresses weeds, contributing to the overall well-being of your garden beds during the winter months. A good rule of thumb is to use four to six inches of mulch around the plants - just don’t press the mulch up against the plant itself. We are insulating the roots, not the aboveground parts.

Using cold frames/cloches

A cold frame works by creating something like a mini-greenhouse, trapping warm air through solarization inside of the box and insulating the plants within from the worst that winter has to offer. We control the temperature inside of the cold frame with a simple vent - the hinged lid can be propped open with different sized sticks to allow excess heat to escape on warmer days, but for the most part in our deep New England winters the lid stays firmly shut until we trudge through the knee deep snow to harvest.

If you have the time and physical ability, building a cold frame yourself is absolutely the most economical solution. Purchasing one ready-made can cost you anywhere from $60-$500 and quality issues on the low end of that budget will prevent you from getting many years of use out of it. Meanwhile, if you build one yourself it can be done for far less than the low end of that range, and produce an end result that will be sturdy enough to continue providing shelter to your winter crop for years to come. While old windows can be fragile and prone to breaking, when they can be found for free I still find it a better option than a new piece of corrugated plexiglass.

Builing a Hoop House

Hoop houses are used by growers in all types of climates for many different reasons - but the main goal is climate control, whether that is to make the growing area colder using the artificial shade created or warmer by taking advantage of the insulating properties of the covered area to effectively move your grow zone south.

If you’ve never seen a hoop house before, you probably have and just didn’t realize it! The basic idea is that you form some sort of rounded roof structure using metal rods, cattle panel or pvc that bends down and is anchored to the ground and cover that with heavy duty greenhouse plastic that lets light in but keeps wind out and provides some insulation.

You can build your own greenhouse easily in an afternoon with just the help of one other person, and you don’t need any special skills or carpentry experience either. The hardest part is honestly just getting the cattle panel - they are huge, so unless you have a truck you’ll probably need to rent something or have them delivered. Click here for my full guide to build your own DIY cattle panel hoop house.

Cold Tolerant Plants

Of course, with any of these methods you still won’t create tropical conditions for your plants if you live in a colder climate. So it’s important to stick with plants that are known to tolerate temperatures down to about thirty degrees fahrenheit. Here’s a list of everything I’ll be growing this winter:

Gai Choy Mustard

This mustard matures in 40-60 days and grows anywhere from six to ten inches wide and ten to twelve inches tall. This is a head forming traditional Chinese mustard with a mild flavor when it’s young.

Bloomsdale Spinach

This is a dependable, open pollinated variety that matures in 28-45 days and grows about six to eight inches tall with dark green, thick and curly leaves. It’s a prolific grower with tender leaves and rich flavor.

Common Sorrel

This green has been popular in France and England for centuries but for some reason it isn’t as popular in the states. It matures in 60 days with bright green crinkled leaves that have a lemony spinach flavor.

Easter Egg Radish

This blend has red, white, pink purple and bi colored radishes that mature in just 30 days. Easter egg is a mild and crisp radish that forms small one inch globe shaped roots, so if you don’t like the spiciness of other radishes you may want to try this one.

French breakfast radish

These radishes are super mild - almost sweet and mature in 28 days. The root is scarlet with a white tip about 1 inch around and 2 or 3 inches long.

Spanish black radish

This is an extra large medium spicy radish that matures in 60-70 days with a black exterior and white interior. The globes are about 3-4 inches in diameter when mature. Since this is a winter radish it needs shortening day length and cool temps to mature, so this one gets planted later than the other radish varieties I’m growing.

Bok Choy Choko

I can’t live without this for my stir fries and this variety is so good and tender when harvested when it’s only about four inches tall. It matures in around 50 days and has smooth, leafy blades in a cluster with crisp, pale green stems. Choko was bred to be small and heat tolerant.

Big Seeded Mache

Mache can survive temperatures down to ten degrees fahrenheit and matures in 60 days. It’ll grow to be about six inches tall and eight inches in diameter with dark green, spoon shaped soft leaves in a loose rosette.

Tokyo Long White Bunching Scallion

These Japanese scallions are long, slender, mild and mature in 65 days. They are sweet enough to use in pretty much anything from salads, soups, and stir-fry dishes and grow about 16-18 inches tall.

Olesh Tres Fine Endive

This is a mildly bitter flavored green with a really interesting frilly texture that matures in 42-70 days. It grows about six inches wide and tall in rosettes with broad crinkled green leaves.

Ruby Red Swiss Chard

Chard can withstand moderate freezes and matures in 50-60 days, growing about 24 inches tall and eighteen inches wide with dark green crinkled leaves, red veins and stalks. I use this the same way I use spinach

Danvers Carrot

This variety was actually created an hour from where I live way back in the day when growers were looking for a carrot with improved yield, color and uniformity. It matures in about 65 days. It’s a sweet classic carrot that’s resistant to cracks and splits and roots grow about six inches long/

Astro Arugula

I said I would never grow this, but there’s very few foods I actively dislike and I have a personal rule that I re-try foods I hate about once a year in different forms or varieties and since arugula is so cold hardy, I had to bite the bullet with this and try a new type to see if I can learn to love it. Astro matures in 32-55 days and supposedly has more of a mild flavor than other varieties when the plants are young so I’m hopeful.

Mizuna Mustard

This tender Japanese mustard is milder than other varieties and ready to harvest in 30-50 days. It can grow up to a foot tall and wide but it’s usually harvested when it’s smaller.

Rosette Tatsoi

This beautiful leafy green is more flavorful than traditional bok choy and matures in 45 days. It is super cold tolerant down to 15 degrees fahrenheit and can be harvested even in the snow. It grows pretty low and wide with spoon shaped dark green thick leaves in a rosette.

Tendergreen Mustard

This is also called mustard spinach, but it’s not actually mustard OR spinach. It’s super easy to grow, hardy and productive and matures fast in 30 days to be about two feet tall and up to two feet wide with smooth dark green glossy leaves.

Are you team take a break for the winter, or keep growing?

How To Make A DIY Cattle Panel Greenhouse [plans]

As a gardener living in New England, winter is kind of brutal. We only get about 5 really good months for growing food outdoors and the rest of the time the landscape is just brown and dead and dried out with no signs of life whatsoever, or everything is covered in a foot of snow. So I’m planning to utilize these DIY cattle panel greenhouse plans to grow food all winter long when nothing else will grow outside. But first, I wanted to touch on why this project is happening and my motivation behind this project.

Gardening For Mental Health

I have dealt with pretty bad anxiety most of my life. Being out in the garden has become an essential piece of protecting my mental health and reducing that anxiety. It seems backwards but honestly accepting the total lack of control I have over what happens in the garden has been super healing for me and having something to nurture and care for that sort of depends on me gives me a sense of purpose. Beyond that the sensory experience of literally having my bare hands in the soil is something that grounds me and is honestly just life giving. When I think about totally losing that outlet for the entire long winter I get a literal pit in my stomach to the point where I only half jokingly talk about wanting to just move somewhere warmer.

Gardening For Physical Wellness

With my arthritis and chronic pain I need to have options for moving my body that are gentle and consistent. Planting, checking on the plants, weeding and harvesting all offer me opportunities to move my body in a way that doesn’t necessarily cause more harm than good and just keeps me active and gives me an excuse to get outside for some fresh air - which if you know anything about winter in New England, it’s tough. It’s tough to convince yourself that you WANT to go out when it’s two degrees outside and everything just looks bleak. But with a hoop house I’ll have an excuse to really take a walk and check on things and just spend some time outside of the house during the day.

Another big motivation for me is that I love to experiment. The garden is like one big playground for adults. And I firmly believe adults need to play too. There are always puzzles to be solved, and it’s so rewarding when you try something new and it actually works.

Can You Really Grow Food In The Winter?

The concept of growing food all winter in our cold northern climate isn’t unheard of, but it’s definitely uncommon, I know I’m guilty of assuming it would be impossible whether because of the low temperatures or the shorter daylight hours and I’m just really psyched to be trying something new and sharing it with you so hopefully you can be inspired to give it a try and keep gardening all year round regardless of the weather conditions.

I’ve made it my job to empower you to feel confident in trying new things in the garden. Gardening is one of those life skills that builds confidence in other areas of life but you need to be a little brave to get started because there’s always this fear hanging over your head that you’ll put all this work in and the crops will still fail due to either you not knowing something you should or circumstances beyond your control like pests or disease. But gardening is also one of those things where if you can give yourself permission to make those mistakes you will learn and get better and grow in that confidence.

Change Your Climate + Move Your Garden Grow Zone 1.5 Zones Lower

Hoop houses are used by growers in all types of climates for many different reasons - but the main goal is climate control, whether that is to make the growing area colder using the artificial shade created or warmer by taking advantage of the insulating properties of the covered area to effectively move your grow zone south.

If you’ve never seen a hoop house before, you probably have and just didn’t realize it! The basic idea is that you form some sort of rounded roof structure using metal rods, cattle panel or pvc that bends down and is anchored to the ground and cover that with heavy duty greenhouse plastic that lets light in but keeps wind out and provides some insulation.

There’s a ton of different ways to build these and kits you can buy but for the purposes of this project, I’m specifically referring to a cold, totally unheated hoop house that can be used to grow year round in northern climates where I would otherwise be limited by the sub zero temps we experience here in Massachusetts.

So what am I NOT talking about? This is not a “cool” hoop house that might utilize some form of heat throughout the winter and require a double layer of greenhouse plastic, blowers and all that. I’m also not referring to this as a high tunnel because it’s kind of not. The terms are often used interchangeably, but in this case I’m going to be building a relatively small, low structure. It’s going to be about 7 feet across and 12.5 feet long with just enough room to stand up in the center. When I think high tunnel I think high ceilings, built in irrigation, venting fans and the whole nine yards which is great but just not the goal for this particular project.

We can’t talk about unheated hoop houses without acknowledging the king of organic winter gardening, Eliot Coleman. This guy is one hundred percent the inspiration behind this project and my main resource in planning this project. If you’re considering doing something similar with a hoop house the very first thing you should do is grab his book “The Winter Harvest Handbook” because it’s going to go into even further detail on exactly how this all works on a larger market garden scale from someone with literally 40 plus years of experience growing in an extremely cold climate at scale. A lot of the concepts and strategies I am going to be talking about are straight from Eliot. One of the things I love about Eliot is he outright says in his book that he WANTS people to innovate on his strategies, take what he’s done and run with it and make it their own so I’m excited to follow in his footsteps here and put my own spin on it.

It’s so easy to get bogged down in the research with an unfamiliar project like this and end up not actually starting because you get overwhelmed, and my method for avoiding this is to kind of pick one expert and latch onto their resources as my kind of main resource going forward and then if I have specific questions as I’m going through the material, google is my best friend. It helps that his climate isn’t too far off from mine, and it’s actually “worse” in that it’s colder so realistically I should have an even easier time growing some of these crops overwintered.

I want you to feel empowered to build your own hoop house, which meant I needed to choose a design that was easy and cheap and used the most basic materials possible. This cold hoop house will be totally off grid and scalable so you can make one any size that you want. I’ll be using sections of cattle panel to form the tunnel roof of the hoop house and holding it in place with tension only using rebar and supportive cross beams at the base. This means I won’t need to do any digging, post setting etc and the structure will be easy to remove when I’m finished with it.

diy cattle panel greenhouse plans

If you’ve always dreamed of having a greenhouse but you can’t afford it, a hoop house might be a better fit for you. Honestly, this hoop house is a temporary experiment. I have big plans for this section of the backyard and eventually will be adding a much larger permanent structure off of the main house that will actually be climate controlled. But that project is basically going to be on the scale of a full house addition in the form of a workspace/sunroom, and it’s going to require actual grading and pouring a foundation and some type of custom design that will actually sit up against the existing house.

In the meantime, I knew I wanted to keep growing food throughout the winter and I had to decide if it was worth investing thousands of dollars into a smaller greenhouse and foundation that wasn’t actually what I wanted long term.

I had all these crazy ideas of how I could heat a greenhouse structure utilizing waste exhaust heat from the pellet stove that I use to heat my house to make a thermal sink, and I still think that would be such a fun project to experiment with and utilize passive heat for a greenhouse, but I really wanted to show a super accessible way that you could create a barebones setup that pretty much anyone could build regardless of skill level or budget first, and prove that concept works before scaling it up to something that is commonly used and known to work but not super accessible to everyone.

There’s kind of this divide with garden content creators that I personally have trouble deciding which side I’m on, between those gardeners who are kind of like, make do and mend so they have this ingenuity and kind of macgyver attitude and they’ll use whatever they have on hand to make a project work for them within a really limited budget and they’re less concerned with how the final end result actually looks and I so admire this - it’s more sustainable and makes it possible for people to garden who otherwise might not be able to afford it, but my issue with it is that these DIYs are usually way more labor intensive and for myself personally dealing with chronic pain from my arthritis I’m often put in the position of having to decide if these types of energy expenditures are something that I can physically handle.

So there’s the financial privilege aspect of it where these DIYers are providing more accessible options for people who have those budget limitations but then on the flip side there’s the ableist privilege aspect of it where those DIY options aren’t always physically available to those of us with disabilities. And this came into play a ton with my raised bed build where I built raised beds to waist height so I wouldn’t need to bend down, because I get comments all of the time that container gardens suck and why don’t I just garden in the ground from people who obviously aren’t thinking from the perspective of others having different levels of physical ability from them.

Of course this played a huge part in my thought process while I was trying to decide whether I should build a greenhouse or not. And the reality is that it’s a much more labor AND money intensive project to build a greenhouse, you need to grade land and pour a foundation and mount glass panels. So it became clear to me that that is going to be a project for the professionals, and cutting corners with some sort of smaller greenhouse structure wasn’t going to give me the result I want and would have still been a pretty decent investment to create something that could actually support life in our cold climate.

So that brings me to the hoop house. I’ve said before that there are a ton of different ways to build a hoop house using kits or from scratch. But even these kits require you to bend your own metal pipes and set posts and all these bigger construction tasks that I knew wouldn’t be possible for me physically with my arthritis. And actually here’s where I need to give another shout-out because I stumbled across Briana from Blossom and Branch farm’s cattle panel tunnel that she converts into a covered hoop house for the winter. Her build looked super simple which is exactly what I needed and then things just kind of spiraled from there when it became clear that this method of using cattle panel would be not only physically accessible but financially super affordable too.

The method I finally settled on using the rebar to anchor the cattle panels is actually covered in detail on Homesteading Family’s page. Their tunnels are MUCH longer than what I’ll be doing with just three panels but the concept is the same. So just another shout out there because I want to make sure I’m giving credit where it’s due - I did not invent these ideas, just putting my own spin on it.

So at the end of the day would I love to have a huge beautiful climate controlled glass greenhouse? Of course! I’m a very visual person and I’m not super thrilled about adding a plastic covered tunnel to the garden. But sometimes big goals require that we take small steps first and this hoop house is the beginning of something big.

Where To Put Your diy cattle panel Greenhouse: Don’t Skip This Step If You Want To Grow Food All Winter

If you want to grow food all winter proper planning can make or break your chances of success so let’s dive into exactly what you need to do to get ready for tons of winter harvests.

With a diy cattle panel greenhouse especially for winter growing, you’ll notice that almost all of the time growers orient these with the ends on an east-west axis and there’s a pretty good reason for this - it follows the sun to provide maximum passive heating because the long side is going to be getting the most southern exposure which is the line that the sun travels along throughout the day.

Once you have your orientation the next most important thing to consider is any shade that will be present. This is less of a concern in the winter when the trees are bare with no leaves, but it’s important to keep in mind that the sun is going to be traveling across the sky much lower than it does in the summer months, which means they could block that southern side of your hoop house from actually receiving direct sunlight and create shade that will cool your hoop house. So I do have a pretty heavy treeline, but I know from living here for two decades now that the shade isn’t really going to reach out over the spot I’ve selected.

The last consideration is going to be the grade of the land. I do have a pretty steep slope where my greenhouse is located, as the house is set into a hill. At this point grading the land isn’t an option. I am a little concerned about how the drainage is going to be at this spot because it kind of sits on a lower tier, but this section also has a slope of its own and again, from living here I know that it’s not a particularly muddy area so we’re going to try and see what happens. This will be good to observe for future more permanent greenhouse plans as well.

Now that we’ve got an idea of where the best location is, you need to figure out how big your hoop house is going to be because this is probably going to be limited by the area you have to work with.

In my case the overall width is going to be limited again because of the materials I’ve chosen to use. If you want something wider than 7 feet and you’re going to use cattle panel like I am, you’re going to end up sacrificing headspace for standing up and are probably better off going with a more traditional hoop house structure using bent metal pipes. And unless you’re willing to cut the cattle panel down which comes with some risks since the sharp metal edges could snag on your greenhouse plastic and cause tears, you’re also stuck to increments of about 4 feet or whatever the width of your chosen panels is. So that’s how I landed on the 7x12 foot structure for my own build, because that is the length of three cattle panels when they’re butted up to each other.

How to Build a DIY Cattle Panel greenhouse

You can build your own diy cattle panel greenhouse with these plans easily in an afternoon with just the help of one other person, and you don’t need any special skills or carpentry experience either. The hardest part is honestly just getting the cattle panel - they are huge, so unless you have a truck you’ll probably need to rent something or have them delivered.

SUPPLIES

• 16’ Cattle Panel (3)

• ½” Steel Rebar (8)

• 12’x6” Wood Boards (2)

• Heavy Duty Zip Ties (UV Stabilized)

• Greenhouse Plastic (6mil UV Stabilized)

• Self-Adhesive Zipper

• Tarp Clips

• Lightweight Row Cover (I used Agribon-19)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Prep soil

Assuming this is a new garden bed, you’ll need to prep the soil. After marking out my corners, I laid a tarp over the grass for two weeks to kill it, dug out the roots with a shovel and amended with compost.

Set rebar

Using a mallet, drive the rebar posts into the four corners and every 3 feet along the long edges

Set boards

The wood boards just rest up against the rebar on the inside edge.

Set panels

With assistance, lift one short end of the cattle panel to your hips. Slowly walk towards each other to bend the panel into an upside down U shape. Once the panel is bent, walk over to the wood baseboards you set into place and press the panel until it fits in between the wood. Slowly release the panels, allowing the tension to hold the panels in place against the wood. Repeat with all panels.

Using the heavy duty zip ties, connect the panels to each other. I used one zip tie every other open square. You can also zip tie the panels to the rebar stakes to anchor it to the ground.

Add greenhouse plastic

Unroll your plastic and lay across the top of your cattle panel. Secure the edges with the tarp clips and cut away excess. To form the end walls and door, cut panels to fit the opening leaving excess to overlap at the edges and secure to the edge of the cattle panel. On the door end, attach the adhesive zipper in the center and cut your doorway opening using the tool provided in the zipper kit. Bury the long edge of the greenhouse plastic along the length of the greenhouse on the outside by digging a furrow four inches deep, laying the extra plastic in the furrow and replacing the soil to secure it.

If you’re a visual learner I have a whole video walkthrough showing how to build a diy cattle panel greenhouse yourself with these plans on my YouTube channel. Watch now:

What To Grow in A Winter Garden

What food can you harvest from your garden when the soil is only 32 degrees fahrenheit? The list is longer than you’d think. A lot of your favorite fall crops can survive down to these temps, and actually the issue isn’t so much the temperature that kills plants but a lack of daylight hours and the stress caused by wind chill. This is why I said harvest and not grow - at a certain point in the year when your daylight hours go below 10 hours a day, plant growth is going to stop. Now this doesn’t mean the plant will die - but it isn’t getting enough energy from that sunlight to produce new growth. So we aren’t technically GROWING in the winter, but HARVESTING plants that we grew in the fall. Which means timing this planting is super important. So let's dive into exactly what I’ve decided to try to grow in the hoop house this winter, including one I swore I would never grow:

Gai Choy Mustard

This mustard matures in 40-60 days and grows anywhere from six to ten inches wide and ten to twelve inches tall. This is a head forming traditional Chinese mustard with a mild flavor when it’s young.

Bloomsdale Spinach

This is a dependable, open pollinated variety that matures in 28-45 days and grows about six to eight inches tall with dark green, thick and curly leaves. It’s a prolific grower with tender leaves and rich flavor.

Common Sorrel

This green has been popular in France and England for centuries but for some reason it isn’t as popular in the states. It matures in 60 days with bright green crinkled leaves that have a lemony spinach flavor.

Easter Egg Radish

This blend has red, white, pink purple and bi colored radishes that mature in just 30 days. Easter egg is a mild and crisp radish that forms small one inch globe shaped roots, so if you don’t like the spiciness of other radishes you may want to try this one.

French breakfast radish

These radishes are super mild - almost sweet and mature in 28 days. The root is scarlet with a white tip about 1 inch around and 2 or 3 inches long.

Spanish black radish

This is an extra large medium spicy radish that matures in 60-70 days with a black exterior and white interior. The globes are about 3-4 inches in diameter when mature. Since this is a winter radish it needs shortening day length and cool temps to mature, so this one gets planted later than the other radish varieties I’m growing.

Bok Choy Choko

I can’t live without this for my stir fries and this variety is so good and tender when harvested when it’s only about four inches tall. It matures in around 50 days and has smooth, leafy blades in a cluster with crisp, pale green stems. Choko was bred to be small and heat tolerant.

Big Seeded Mache

Mache can survive temperatures down to ten degrees fahrenheit and matures in 60 days. It’ll grow to be about six inches tall and eight inches in diameter with dark green, spoon shaped soft leaves in a loose rosette.

Tokyo Long White Bunching Scallion

These Japanese scallions are long, slender, mild and mature in 65 days. They are sweet enough to use in pretty much anything from salads, soups, and stir-fry dishes and grow about 16-18 inches tall.

Olesh Tres Fine Endive

This is a mildly bitter flavored green with a really interesting frilly texture that matures in 42-70 days. It grows about six inches wide and tall in rosettes with broad crinkled green leaves.

Ruby Red Swiss Chard

Chard can withstand moderate freezes and matures in 50-60 days, growing about 24 inches tall and eighteen inches wide with dark green crinkled leaves, red veins and stalks. I use this the same way I use spinach

Danvers Carrot

This variety was actually created an hour from where I live way back in the day when growers were looking for a carrot with improved yield, color and uniformity. It matures in about 65 days. It’s a sweet classic carrot that’s resistant to cracks and splits and roots grow about six inches long.

Astro Arugula

I said I would never grow this, but there’s very few foods I actively dislike and I have a personal rule that I re-try foods I hate about once a year in different forms or varieties and since arugula is so cold hardy, I had to bite the bullet with this and try a new type to see if I can learn to love it. Astro matures in 32-55 days and supposedly has more of a mild flavor than other varieties when the plants are young so I’m hopeful.

Mizuna Mustard

This tender Japanese mustard is milder than other varieties and ready to harvest in 30-50 days. It can grow up to a foot tall and wide but it’s usually harvested when it’s smaller.

Rosette Tatsoi

This beautiful leafy green is more flavorful than traditional bok choy and matures in 45 days. It is super cold tolerant down to 15 degrees fahrenheit and can be harvested even in the snow. It grows pretty low and wide with spoon shaped dark green thick leaves in a rosette.

Tendergreen Mustard

This is also called mustard spinach, but it’s not actually mustard OR spinach. It’s super easy to grow, hardy and productive and matures fast in 30 days to be about two feet tall and up to two feet wide with smooth dark green glossy leaves.

Spring Gardening: 7 Cold Hardy Plants to Grow in March

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Are you wondering if March is too early to start a garden? This post explains what plants can survive in the cold, what is a winter hardy plant, what are the easiest plants to grow in winter and more.

The ground is attempting to thaw, which means mud season has officially arrived and with it my itch to garden and grow has returned in earnest. I’ve just gotten my new elevated garden beds from Gardener’s Supply Co built over the old garden bed and spread a thick layer of clover seed beneath with dreams of a carpet of clover to rest on come warmer days and now I can’t think how I could wait another two months for our last frost to start planting them. So we’re going to plant out a small cold hardy garden in the first two beds here just to tide us over until we can start planting the majority of our crops in May.

This will be the smallest planting we do all year, and so I committed to really savoring the sensory experience of it and slowing down to enjoy the process. All I need to bring with me are my seeds, my favorite trowel and gloves. And I’ll be bundling up because while these plants I’m growing may be cold hardy, I most certainly am not! So sweaters and hats and layers galore. I love the lack of urgency and the sense of hope I get from planting the first cold hardy garden of the season. Soon green things will push up out of the earth and remind us that we are all connected to the life that grows beneath our feet.

We have a short growing season here in New England, but that won’t stop me from planting cold hardy vegetables that can thrive in these colder temperatures. My garden is just a few short steps from the back door, overlooking 70+ acres of my neighbors fields and surrounded by the buzz of life beginning to stir - a blue heron in the distance, a mouse skittering through the undergrowth.

Out back the trees are still in their deep sleep and the sun is trying its hardest to break through the seemingly endless layer of gray clouds that has graced the sky for the past four months now. I can still see my breath as I exhale, and this too is a reminder to be mindful. I breathe the same air as these trees that rest around me, and thank them for how clean and fresh it feels within my lungs. This grounds me in my purpose to bring myself and my body closer to the living things that are all around us.

What is a winter garden?

A winter garden is just a garden that you grow using only plants that can thrive in winter! There are many fun varieties of cold hardy vegetables and perennial plants that have unique characteristics that help them to survive in colder climates. For instance, kale, brussels sprouts and other brassica plants produce a form of antifreeze when exposed to cold temperatures that actually causes the plants to taste sweeter. I enjoy winter kale far more than summer kale - not to mention, there’s no cabbage moth pests in the winter chewing through every leaf before I have a chance to harvest it.

What plants can survive in the cold?

Now I’ll preface this by saying that what can grow in my garden in March may not be the same as what can grow in your garden. If you are in California for example I’m afraid this post won’t be much help to you as you do not suffer from the same deep cold winters we have here in the northeast. But in grow zone 6B many plants can survive the chill of late winter - as a matter of fact, some plants like lettuce and spinach require a colder temperature in order to germinate. This is why you’ll begin to see signs of life in the form of things like wild onion grass even this early in the season when the trees are still sleeping. And since we’re all about low-energy gardening tips and tricks here, I’ll also only focus on what is the easiest plants to grow in winter. No seed starting, forcing rhubarb or chilling your garlic seed in the freezer to trick it into sprouting earlier here. I want to focus just on plants that can go straight into the ground in March. 

Winter plants for the garden:

Here is everything I will be planting in my cold hardy garden using my elevated beds from Gardener’s.

• Snap peas (germination temp 40+ F)

• Pansies (germination temp 45+F but we are planting these from established plants from the nursery not seeds)

• Lettuce (germination temp 35+F)

• Radish (germination temp 50+F)

• Spinach (germination temp 40+F)

• Chives (transplanting this from another spot, these grow well at temps above 40F)

• Calendula (this one is more of an experiment as while it is cold-hardy once established, it probably won’t germinate until soil temps reach 60 degrees fahrenheit)

What is a winter hardy plant?

A winter hardy plant means any plant that can survive average winter temperatures, including cold hardy vegetables and cold hardy perennials. Most winter hardy plants do not produce much throughout the winter due to the lack of sunlight but by surviving these cold conditions they are able to establish themselves faster in the spring which means they will be the first to yield a harvest since they will mature before anything else in your garden.

What can I plant in pots for winter?

Some plants that won’t survive the winter outdoors can be transplanted into pots for the winter and brought indoors. You can do this successfully with most herbs including rosemary and sage. You can also overwinter pepper plants (which are perennial in warmer climates) by cutting off all of the foliage except for the main Y shaped stem, moving into pots and storing in your basement. They will go dormant and then can be transplanted back into your garden beds after your last frost date.

When I was deciding what to plant in early spring, I was happy that everything I wanted to grow would thrive in my elevated garden beds - which meant I didn’t have to worry about hurting my back while gardening. With my arthritis, it’s important that the way I garden is accessible and gentle on my body while still providing me with opportunities to stretch and strengthen my joints. I found prepping the elevated raised beds to be the easiest it has ever been, since I didn’t even need to weed the planting area prior to starting. It feels like a true luxury to stand over my raised beds in the garden and I was able to save more of my limited energy for actually enjoying being in the garden instead of just trying to finish as quickly as possible before my energy ran out. The beds are quite deep and so they can support the largest root structures of some of the plants I’ll be growing with no problem.

I had honestly begun to dread spring garden prep last year. I found myself crying in frustration more than once trying to wrangle the wildness of my in-ground beds into shape for planting. It is really shocking how much harder it is to work the earth when your back is in pain and your energy reserves are lower. While I do greatly appreciate the physical benefits of working out via the garden, and weeding has always been the best way to let out any pent up aggression, my body has been telling me for a couple of years now that this isn’t the right way to go about it for me anymore. I feel lighter knowing that I won’t have these dark moments in the garden where I really have to push myself beyond my limits anymore and can just be present and enjoy the process of gardening again. A part of me felt worried I wouldn’t be taken seriously as a gardener if the majority of my plants were grown in what is effectively a giant container garden. Especially with our full acre to work with, I knew I wanted to take a hybrid approach. So we have perennials like asparagus and rhubarb in-ground since those don’t require much maintenance year-to-year and then larger crops like garlic in ground as well. And of course borders of wildflowers fill up a lot of space too. Eventually it is my dream to add a greenhouse to carry us through the endless winters. But these elevated beds have taken such a weight off my shoulders (and my back!) and gave me back my peace in the garden, and I would not trade that feeling for anything.

If you’re looking for winter garden ideas, I hope that you’ve found this post helpful. Don’t forget to check out this post on cold frame gardening to extend your growing season even further + Let me know in the comments what you are planting in your winter garden this year.