Fall/Winter garden
 

What all do you grow in the fall/winter?

What part of the country do you live?

I'm in TX, and am about to start some onions, greens, spinach, chineese cabbage, and some tunips,beets...maybe some coliflower and brocoli.

I need ideas.

Thanks everyone.:coolbeer:

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

I'm currently growing about the same things as you, here in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. I want to grow some rocket, too; never have before.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

I plant onions in the fall for a stronger midsummers harvest

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

we grow a pretty good crop of frozen dogshit. Keeps real well till spring.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

Moose turds or dogshite, which thaws first ?......I'd hafta go with dog rocket :wink:

Good reminder this thread, got to get the garden tilled up for broccoli, coliflower, beets and some of the other veggies you folks mentioned

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

i'm a gardening noobie
and would like to experiment with growing veggies inside ( veggies, not pot )
so that sometime next summer, whatever happens, i can plant a guerrilla-garden out in the bush
nothing grandiose, maybe two each of 5 different veggies
i know i may need some kind of growing light

anyone for suggestions as to what veggies or what type of light i may need ?
or would a few hours by the window be enough ?

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

I'm in northern New England and am fortunate to have several polytunnel greenhouses on my land. We raise broiler chickens for the year in one of the tunnels over a couple months of the winter. The chickens eat any vegetable matter and insect pests left over from the growing season and add their manure directly to the soil. Our batch of chicks arrived today.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

I amended my beds yesterday with some Alfalfa meal and worm castings. Worm castings make plants healthy and are cheap to obtain...also pickup some Alaskan Fish Emulsion, maxicrop, and superthrive from lowes garden center. They carry these products on the cheap and you will increase the nutrional content of your garden using these items.

I grow to get the most nutrients INTO my food. No chemical fertilizers if I don't have to.

Need to get me a good hoe.:4_1_72: No pun intended. Some of the soil around here takes forever to amend.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

Hmm, well, a couple three dozen Papaya fruits are hanging. We have Mustard greens, onions, squash, pumpkin, tomato's, cabbage, brocs, cauliflower, and even some cucs growing.
Sweet potato's grow here in the garden like weeds.
Fall and Spring here are like Summer in temperate zones.
Not even the dogs like going outside in August.
My veggie garden growing seasons are approximately late August to December and February to maybe mid June. After that the bugs and the humid heat just demolish the garden.

We might lose some to freeze, we'll see. Last winter we got a freeze mid November, but some years don't freeze till January and then only two or three times.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

That's a prerequisite tool to gardening. And gloves, 'cause you ain't hoeing long without them.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

yah I've been roughing it for 2 years with a shovel.

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

These are great hoes. Rev127 posted about them quite awhile back. I can't seem to find the thread...anyway I bought a couple and they really are fine hoes :s9:.

http://www.easydigging.com/
Grub Hoe : also called a Grubbing Hoe ~
Azada ~ Trenching Hoe ~ Digging Hoe
These are the digging and cultivating tools used
by gardeners and farmers all around the world.
Now you can dig and till in an upright position that
is easy on your back. Dig faster, with less effort!

Re: Fall/Winter garden
 

Hi there,

I've been gardening for two years. I grow almost all my veggies outside of course, but I've also tried growing a few veggies indoors over the winter and of course I start my own seedlings in early spring for transplanting, which requires weeks or months of indoor growing.

Winter light in front of a window will NOT be enough for almost anything to grow well. Winter light is quite weak due to the low angle of the sun, and there is never enough of it. In addition, if it is a heated space, then the warmth can trick plants into trying to grow faster, while the limited light makes their growth spindly and weak. I try to keep the house on the cool side, but for the benefit of the plants, and for saving heating fuel.

That being said, simple 2 or 4 racks of efficient fluorescent tubes are all you really need for supplementing your grow areas. Keep in mind that light follows the "inverse square law" of intensity--every time you double the distance you loose 4x the light. So I try to grow things of similar height in each area and keep the tubes almost touching or even touching the leaves of the plants. Fluorescents are cool enough not to burn foliage. For my seedlings I put several racks side by side and drape the area with reflective mylar to get things as bright as I can.

Things that you might try growing indoors might be some leaf lettuce, perhaps other small greens, and peppers and tomatoes.

Peppers and tomatoes are actually tender perennials. I am stubbornly unwilling to let my favorite pepper plants die when winter comes. A year ago before the frost I dug up my four favorites, put them in gallon-size pots and brought them in for the winter putting them in my garden window (a projecting bay). After adjusting, they continued to produce small peppers all winter long. In the spring I moved them outside and stuffed them pots and all into the dirt. They gave me peppers all summer and fall. Last week I yanked the pots back out of the dirt and brought them back inside, where they will live with us all winter again and probably give me more peppers this winter because they didn't have to go through transplant shock. I gotta tell you that there is NOTHING like the crisp, sharp bite of a pepper that you picked off the plant just 10 seconds ago, and it's the dead of February.

I've also grown tomatoes, both determinant and indeterminant indoors in winter. Determinate means that they grow to a certain size, set fruit for a while and die. Indeterminate means that they will attempt to grow and set fruit forever. Of the determinates grown indoors, I heartily recommend Red Robin. It grows only six inches tall with decent-tasting 1 1/4" fruits. It's the easiest to manage of the tomatoes that I've grown indoors. I've also tried Orange Pixie, and although they were fine, their larger size makes them more difficult to manage under lights. Finally, I've also grown indeterminate cherry tomatoes in a full-sized window with some supplemental light, but supplementing light is difficult with a plant this size--my first attempt didn't really seem worth it, but I"ll try again.

Regarding tomatoes, the best way to get a ripe tomato in winter (in my experience) is to grow a surplus in summer, pick all the last ones before the frost (yes, even the green ones) and carefully arrange them on horizontal surfaces not touching each other stem side down out of direct sunlight. They will slowly ripen--the warmer the temperature the faster. Time things right and you might still have fresh tomatoes in February.

I've also heard of freezing some whole, but these would only be good for recipes of course--not fresh eating.