Gardening Is a 12-Month-A-Year Sport
While the height of gardening season is late spring through the end of summer, gardening is really a 12-month-a-year sport. Yes, summer tomatoes may be the star of the show for many gardeners, but there is bounty to be harvested virtually all year long if you are up to it, and mandatory tasks must be completed in winter to ensure a good harvest in the warmer months.
In recent years I have extended my harvest by planting a second round of cool weather crops in late summer to be harvested throughout fall and even into winter. The first round, planted in spring, is exciting because it is a taste of what is to come. But many of these same seeds can be planted in August and early September as the nights get longer and cooler, when most gardeners are stopping for the year.
This past summer I had spectacular luck with a fall planting of salad greens – arugula, spinach, and lettuces (leaf, romaine, and especially butterhead varieties) – which I was able to pick through November. The snow peas I planted in mid-August provided enough pods to be part of several crudité platters, and I grew an abundance of day-glo watermelon radishes, some of which we are still eating on salads in January. I find that cilantro and dill grow best in the fall, and kale gets sweeter as it gets colder. Carrots are the same, benefitting from a light frost, forcing all the sugars into their crunchy roots. We still have a few pounds of last season’s abundant carrot harvest in the refrigerator. And as climate change modifies conditions, some crops last longer into fall. I get my biggest harvest of tomatillos, which require a long season, in early fall. I harvested a tomato or two into October, and peppers even later, before a killing frost. As long as the ground is not frozen I can pick alliums such as scallions and leeks. In fact, last week I picked the leeks I planted almost exactly a year ago to make a hearty pot of Beef Barley Soup.
To extend the season further, the dedicated bring the garden indoors. I sometimes plant microgreens in the heart of winter using grow lights in the basement. They provide delicious freshness on a winter salad or a beautiful show of color garnishing a dish. But some gardeners grow more substantial crops inside in winter: lettuces, beans, and even tomatoes, for example. And while I do not partake, the advances in home hydroponics systems have significantly expanded the options for winter gardening.
Winter also brings mandatory garden tasks, some more interesting than others. Perusing seed catalogs just after ringing in the New Year is a pleasure. With their bright pictures and promise of endless bounty, it is great fun to pick successful classics and gamble on new varieties that may or may not reward as the season progresses. Other jobs are not so fun, especially cleaning equipment – seed starting pots, tomato cages, etc. – with a weak bleach solution to ensure disease free plants.
Finally it is time to start seeds, some of which can be planted in the dead of winter under grow lights in the basement. For example, I start cabbage, kale, leek, and rosemary seeds in mid-January. They are slow-growers, and I want to be able to put them (with the exception of rosemary) outside into the garden as soon as the soil can be worked in mid- to late-March. Mid-February is when I start peppers and eggplant, followed by parsley and lettuces a few weeks later. I make sure to hold off on planting tomato seeds inside until mid-April, lest they grow too long and leggy in the basement under grow lights.
While gardening activities certainly pick up in spring and peak in warmer weather, it’s not too difficult to extend your harvest year-round, and even in the coldest, darkest days of winter there is work to do. Gardening is a 12-month-a-year sport.
Here are some of the vegetables from my garden that were especially successful and exciting this past year:
Jimmy Nardello’s Peppers
Red Meat Watermelon Radish
SunSugar Hybrid Cherry Tomatoes
YaYa Hybrid Carrots
Butterhead Blend Lettuce
This coming year I am sticking mostly with known plants and varieties. The only new crop I’m going to try is horseradish, which I attempted unsuccessfully many years ago. I’m hoping for enough knobby roots to make big batches of horseradish pickles.
