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If you are lucky enough to live in certain areas of the country you can save a lot at the grocery store by doing a little winter vegetable gardening. Planning when to plant the seeds or transplants to be able to enjoy the bounty of the garden is the trickiest part of winter vegetable gardening. July and August plantings are something many gardeners just don’t think of doing but that’s the time for starting a winter vegetable gardening project.
The optimal areas for winter vegetable gardening are the West side of the Cascade Mountains that run from British Columbia through Washington, Oregon and terminate in Northern California in the Pacific Northwest and many Southern states in the United States in general. More specifically any area that winter lows are in the 35 to 45 degrees Fahrenheit can support a winter vegetable garden. A few colder snaps can be tolerated by heavily mulched vegetables so don’t let the possibility of the temperature dipping lower discourage you.
The success of winter vegetable gardening is contingent on knowing when the killing frost can be expected in your area. Planning your winter vegetable gardening schedule is a matter of back tracking from that date. Planting seeds or transplants in time for the crop to fully mature before the onset of the killing frost is the most critical timing element. And even then the timing is not exact so if the optimal planting date is past it is still worth doing the planting. Whatever crops you can harvest before the freeze is a bonus for your kitchen.
Based on a first freeze date in the last part of October vegetables with a 90 day growth cycle should be planted in mid-July to be harvested in the fall. Crops with a 60 day maturity can be planted as late as the end of August. In areas that do not experience ground freezing many crops can be planted even later and harvested in the following spring.
Some plants that do very well as winter vegetable crops include carrots, cabbages, leaf lettuce, peas and parsnips. Certain plants even benefit from going through heavy frosts before harvesting. Parsnips are a prime example. The frosts are what make the parsnips sweet and you want to harvest them only after a few freezes. Carrots can grow through out the winter and be pulled in the Spring before they get woody. Reading the seed packages and talking with other winter vegetable gardening enthusiasts in your area will give you an opportunity to find out what works best in your particular area. Mulching the winter vegetable garden is another important step to take.
A few tips on where and what to grow along with the suggestion that you keep records of the results you have with growing each plant variety is all there is to winter vegetable gardening in non-freezing areas. The Northern or colder areas have to go to the extra measures of raised beds, hot beds, and greenhouses to raise a winter vegetable garden.
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Author Bio Box: Patricia Wainwright
Get all the facts about vegetable gardening and organic gardening at GreenThumbArticles.com!
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