Mountain Musings on Winter Gardening

Mountain Musings – A guest column by Dottie Simmons who lives in eastern Humboldt County describes life at her rural homestead:

My name is Dottie, I am a Plantaholic. I confess, I get all jittery and out of sorts if I can’t get my hands in the soil on a regular basis. I am happiest outside digging and potting and plotting what goes in next in our vegetable garden. Winter can be an issue, and a passel of houseplants just doesn’t fulfill my needs, so we have put together a couple of small greenhouses to fill in the gaps when there is rain or snow. Thus I can play in the dirt and keep us fed all year round.

January 4th harvest

Over the decades we’ve gardened in this same spot we’ve developed a pretty good feel for what we can get away with. Nature always has ways of surprising us, but we know what plants are survivors and help us survive the winter months with fresh food to eat.

December harvest

Roots and greens and brassicas.

So our outdoor garden has plenty of bounty year round, from the carrots, beets, chard, and variety of Cole crops (the brassicas – kale, cabbage, Brussel sprouts, broccoli, overwintering cauliflower, mustards…), parsley and such, that we planted in summer. Being on the north face, the garden gets only 3 hours of sun each day in winter. To extend the season we put a small greenhouse out on the point by the barn, as far north as we can go, to catch enough hours of the low winter sun to keep greens and later plantings of those brassicas happy and allow early plantings of peas and lettuce.

Greenhouse Pac Choi succession

Early on we learned not to transplant greens in late fall, but to wait until after the solstice. They will sit as the days grow short only to bolt and flower instead of gaining size when the days grow long. They don’t have to be big to recognize they are biennials and the sun signals the change.

Of course our alliums go in during this time, garlic in November, onions in late January or February. We want them to get that green growth well before Summer solstice when the energy switches from leaves to bulbs.

Garlic bed

If it’s predicted to snow or have a hard freeze we harvest extra carrots and greens to tide us over. The old leaves and cabbage plants provide fresh food for our hens.

Even though we may miss fresh tomatoes and peppers, beans and summer squash, every week I still bring in a basket of fresh food. And I get to play in the dirt all year round. This is an addiction I don’t want to quit.

November harvest