Fall through Winter Gardening: how to harvest throughout the cool season

For many of us who grow food, late autumn brings cold weather and spells the end of the harvest. But the cold season doesn’t have to end your gardening journey. While it is true that some places, like USDA zones 0-2, have extremely short growing seasons that make growing vegetables outdoors extremely challenging, in most zones, even those where it snows every winter, you can continue to grow fresh herbs, vegetables, and even some flowers all year. Planting or placing your crops inside a greenhouse, coldframe, hot box, polytunnel, row cover, pop-up-plant protector, or heavy-duty gardening plastic will keep them growing through the fall and winter months. Some of these tools are inexpensive, while others can cost a small fortune. For example, a lean-to or freestanding greenhouse with walls made of polycarbonate plastic can be purchased or built for as little as a few hundred dollars, while a large walk-in greenhouse with walls of horticultural-grade glass can cost tens of thousands of dollars. These are some of the most common ways that you can extend your growing season from the early fall months, or even begin growing new crops in the winter.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money in order to be able to garden through the cold season, though, there are ways to keep your crops growing even in freezing, snowy weather that don’t require an expensive outlay for equipment. As with any other gardening venture, it’s important to prepare your soil and make sure that your plants stay hydrated (in fact, lack of water, even more than cold weather, is often the reason why winter food crops fail). You can water your plants manually or with a drip irrigation system. If you cover your plants with row covers or gardening plastic, the condensation that forms and then drips down into the soil will also keep them well-watered for a while (just be sure to check that there is condensation under the cover). For the most part, you won’t need to worry about insect herbivores, but you will need to protect your plants from the harsh wind. Again, row covers or heavy-duty gardening plastic can do the trick here.

As the infographic below demonstrates, planning and preparation are keys to success.