• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Heavy Petal

Gardening for everyone

  • About
  • Journal
  • Small-Space Vegetable Gardens
You are here: Home / Veggies & Edibles / Why you should plant your winter garden in summer

Why you should plant your winter garden in summer

August 19, 2010 by Andrea Bellamy 11 Comments

winter garden
Lacinato kale, leeks, and cabbage: the makings of a great winter garden!

One of the best ways to reap the most from a small-space food garden is to have something growing in your garden all year round. Don’t let plots or containers sit vacant after you harvest your tomatoes and squash! Make ’em work by planting a winter garden (or let them rest and recuperate by sowing a cover crop). Whatever you do, don’t let them sit empty.

What is winter gardening?

Planting hardy and fast-maturing crops in summer or early fall for fall-through-spring harvesting is often known as winter gardening. (It also has a close cousin, overwintering, which is defined as planting in summer for harvest the next spring.)

For both, you’ll want to start now. (Actually, you might want to have started a month or more ago, but if you’re anything like me, you’re just getting around to it. Good news: there’s still time to sow many winter crops.)

In general, you’ll want to plant quick-maturing, cool-season crops that are tolerant of frosts. The aim is to have your plants reach almost full-size by Halloween. That’s when, due to dwindling daylight hours, plants pretty much stop their growth. They’ll stay in hibernation mode until the days start to lengthen again in early spring (unless you eat them first!).

Perhaps surprisingly, there are quite a few edibles you can start from seed now.

Great winter-garden edibles to start from seed in August

Arugula. A fabulous, peppery cool-season green that adds zing to salads. (I especially love it stirred into pasta, though. Just cook up some orzo or capellini, and toss in a few handfuls of arugula after draining. Add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and grated Parmesan. Toss until the arugula is wilted. Simple, and lovely.) Direct sow through to early September. Use crop protection, such as a cold frame or row covers, for a longer harvest. (While frost tolerant, arugula can get a little battered-looking after a winter of heavy rain.)

Asian and mustard greens. Sow these hardy, versatile greens—including komatsuna, mibuna, mizuna, komatsuna, and the many mustards that fall under Brassica juncea—until the end of September.

Broad beans. Broad beans, also known as fava beans, are an oddity amongst their peers. While snap, pole, and soy beans are warm-season staples, broad beans are super hardy. Plant in September or October for spring harvest.

Sorrento raab
‘Sorrento’ broccoli raab is a great cool-season crop.

Broccoli raab. It’s a little late to start regular (full-head-size) broccoli from seed (though feel free to transplant starts into the garden now if you started them indoors last month, or are lucky enough to find some at your local nursery) but broccoli raab, or rapini, matures more quickly, so squeeze in a late sowing before the end of August.

Carrots. They’re often thought of as a summer crop, but carrots are actually one of the hardiest garden vegetables. It’s almost too late to sow now (ideally, a winter sowing should occur in the first two weeks of August) but go ahead, try your luck. Row covers or cold frames will sway success in your favour.

Cilantro. Super cold tolerant, cilantro can be direct sown until mid-September.

Green onions (scallions). Another very cold hardy crop, green onions will easily overwinter. Plant now through the end of August.

Corn salad (mache or lamb’s lettuce). Add this mild, nutty green to your repertoire for salad greens all year round. Corn salad is the hardiest salad green, and can be sown until mid-September.

Endive. Yet another hardy salad green, endive can be sown as late as mid-September.

Kohlrabi. Oddly beautiful kohlrabi gets sweeter after a frost. Ideally, it should have been sown by mid-August, so plant it today, and cross your fingers.

spinach
‘Tyee’ spinach is a prolific stalwart.

Lettuces. Many lettuces are tolerant of light frost and can be planted now for fall harvest, or use a row cover or cold frame for protection and harvest into winter and spring. Look for hardy varieties such as ‘Cimmaron,’ ‘Continuity,’ ‘Red Deer Tongue,’ ‘Rouge d’Hiver,’ ‘Valdor,’ ‘Winter Crop,’ or ‘Winter Density.’

Spinach. Spinach thrives in cool weather. Plant it now through November (though you might want to use a cold frame or row cover as we move into winter if you live in a cold climate).

Turnips. Sow until the end of August for harvests all winter long. You can also eat the greens.

Winter-garden edibles to transplant in August

If you planned ahead, you’ll have started hardy vegetables like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower and leeks indoors ages ago. You didn’t? Me neither. Thankfully, more and more nurseries are carrying vegetable starts (transplants) for fall and winter gardening. Here are some great choices for winter-garden edibles to transplant now. With the exception of chard, which is only marginally hardy, the following edibles can be grown all winter long (though they may benefit from protection from winter rains and frosts in very cold climates). Look for overwintering and hardy varieties of:

  • Broccoli
  • Brussels sprouts
  • Cabbage
  • Cauliflower
  • Chard
  • Collard greens
  • Leeks
  • Kale
garlic harvest
Red Russian garlic can be planted in fall for harvest the following July.

Finally, there’s garlic. For those of you who can’t bear the thought of planting a winter garden now, garlic should be planted in October or November—just about the time you’ll start pining for a day in the garden.

Related posts:

Default ThumbnailSpring gardening kick-off close up of red cherry tomatoesWelcome to the warm season A ladybug enjoys a field of cloverCover me: the low-down on green manures yellow kale flowerKale blossoms are just about the greatest thing

Filed Under: Veggies & Edibles Tagged With: cool season, overwintering, winter gardening

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Zoe says

    August 19, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    Winter gardening might actually be my favorite, for the endless harvest and lack of weeds! Not to mention a little green oasis in the snow… Spinach, cutting lettuce/mustard green mix, and arugula have sprouted; chard, upland cress and more lettuces will get planted this week. Would have liked to try the endive – maybe next year!

  2. Maria says

    August 19, 2010 at 12:58 pm

    Ooooh, exactly the info I needed!! Thanks so much!

  3. Laura says

    August 19, 2010 at 3:15 pm

    That’s a great list. I’d love to have a cold frame to get veg all year round! For now I’ll just dream! I will be planting garlic this fall, but I think that’s it this year.

  4. Dirty Girl Gardening says

    August 22, 2010 at 9:19 pm

    Right! That broccoli raab looks yummy!

  5. Nature Drunk says

    August 23, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Thank you for this! It was just the motivation I needed to get started on my first winter garden.

  6. janis - pinecone camp says

    August 23, 2010 at 3:56 pm

    Thanks for the info Andrea. I’ve been wondering what to do now that everything in our garden is winding down.
    Have a lovely day!

  7. MrBrownThumb says

    August 25, 2010 at 11:20 am

    I can’t wait for the weather to cool down so I can plant some greens. It is still too hot for them in my container garden, but I’m already thinking of salads this fall.

  8. Debbra says

    September 2, 2010 at 10:23 am

    oh, thank you, this is super helpful. Also fills me with optimism because I’ve been experiencing guilt for not having planted a lot of this stuff sooner.

  9. Andrea Bellamy says

    September 2, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Glad this has been helpful. Thanks for all the great feedback, guys! I’m off to start some more cilantro, corn salad, lettuce, and arugula today!

  10. Tricia @ Small Space, Big Dream says

    September 3, 2010 at 12:53 pm

    Thanks so much for this! This is going to be the guide I use tomorrow as I finally plant my winter garden.

  11. Cylia says

    September 4, 2010 at 1:49 pm

    So helpful, I will direct sow more this weekend.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

My latest book

The bright, illustrated cover of Small-Space Vegetable Gardens
Small-Space Vegetable Gardens by Andrea Bellamy

newsletter

Subscribe to receive occasional email updates (I promise never to spam you!)

Reader Favourites

Round, cookie-dough-like balls of clay and seed

How to make seed balls

Colourful quinoa plants in bloom

Would you grow your own grains?

This proves it. Chickens are hot.

Categories

  • Annuals
  • Blogging
  • Bulbs and Tubers
  • Composting
  • Critters and wildlife
  • Events
  • Garden Design
  • Garden Tours
  • Gardens to Visit
  • Green Gardening & Living
  • Holiday
  • How To
  • Indoors
  • Inspiration
  • Miscellaneous
  • My garden
  • Outdoor Living
  • Pacific Northwest
  • Perennials
  • Ponds & Water Gardening
  • Raving and Whining
  • Resistance is fertile
  • Resources
  • Retail Therapy
  • Shrubs & Trees
  • Small-Space Vegetable Gardens
  • Sugar Snaps and Strawberries
  • Uncategorized
  • Veggies & Edibles
  • WTF?
  • Home
  • About

Copyright © 2023 · Infinity Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in