Winter gardening in the Appalachians.

When the last of the tomatoes have been plucked from the vine, and you've had your fill of summer's sweet corn, it's time to start thinking about filling the beds of your winter garden with chard, kale, baby lettuce, and asian greens, like bok choy and tatsoi. Out of all the vegetables I grow, these are my favorites, either fresh, as baby greens in a salad, steamed, stir-fried, or sauteed in butter with mushrooms and onions. If properly taken care of, a small bed of mixed greens can yield delicious abundance all winter long. Besides the yummy, nutritious benefit of fresh greens, these months are some of my favorite when it comes to getting out in the garden and doing chores. The misty mornings, crisp sunny days, and cool afternoons make it a treasure to be outdoors after the heat and thick humidity of summer.

I love to put on my wool garden sweater and dig up a few beds, turning in the remains of summer's crop, eventually shedding layers down to a t-shirt as the sun warms my skin. I can get a lot of chores done comfortably this time of the year; raking and collecting leaves, building compost piles, turning in beds and building new ones, planting cover crops, pruning trees and shrubs, repairing sheds, water catchments and fences, and constructing cold frames and hoop houses.

Besides the lovely weather, there are a few other, even greater benefits to winter gardening: no bugs, no diseases, and no weeds! Subtracting these three hindrances from the garden equation adds up to a lot less work and healthier plants that require less fertilizer and no pest control. As a hobby gardener who likes to grow food with what little time and resources I have, this makes a big difference. It means that I don't put hours into weeding and nurturing the russian kale, only to have cabbage leaf moths or aphids come along and have dinner first!

Gardening All Year Long

The real trick to year-round gardening is what growers call "season extension." This means using greenhouses, cold-frames, and row covers to protect plants from frost and keep the soil at an optimal growing temperature. While greenhouses come in many different shapes and sizes, and can be built relatively easily and at a low cost, they aren't always practical for the backyard gardener. What I have been using for years, with much success, has been the little cousin of the greenhouse: hoop houses. Simply built, small-scale, portable, and affordable, these structures are the ticket to backyard winter gardening. They can be used to cover individual or multiple garden beds, and can be built for next to nothing. I use four-foot sections of split bamboo, although half-inch PVC pipe works great too. I arch it over 32-inch wide garden beds. Placed every two feet, it takes ten arches to run the length of a twenty foot long bed. I then cover the arches with five foot wide sheets of six mil clear plastic (available at garden supply and hardware stores). The edges of the covering simply lay on the ground, and rocks or bricks prevent it from being blown off by wind. I like to attach, or roll, one edge on a pole, stick, or piece of bamboo. This allows the side to be rigid, thus one person can open it easily. To finish, I drive a short stake into the bed on either end of the hoop house, about two feet from the last plants that I want covered. Bringing the last few feet of plastic to a point, I tie each end to a stake, anchoring the ends of the hoop house (see diagram). I now have a secure shelter for my plants that if properly tended to, and watered, will yield leaf after leaf of fresh green nutrition.

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The other two crucial factors involved with winter gardening are site selection and crop selection. Choose a location for your winter beds that gets ample sun, preferably a slight southern slope. A tilt of even a few degrees toward the sun increases the quantity of light the plants receive, which in December can make a huge difference. Placing the beds near your house or beside a path that is commonly traversed in your day-to-day routine will ensure that the beds get the attention that they need. Although the plastic comes in long rolls, plant the crops in five- to eight-foot sections, with a few feet in between each planting. This will allow you to have several, shorter hoop houses, making it easier to open and close them.

Crop selection is limited to what will grow under glass or plastic between August and April. Choose salad greens, like lettuce, arugula, and mizuna. Collards, kale, and chard do great; the cold frosty air seems to temper them, making them sweeter. Beets and turnips can be planted for their leaves, with the potential of mid-winter roots. Mustard greens and some Asian types do especially well, yielding bowl upon bowl of spicy leaves to be steamed, stir-fried, or eaten raw in salads. Most of these crops can either be directly sown in shallow furrows, or raised as flats in a greenhouse or cold frame, and transplanted later to a hoop house. Sometime in late August I start planting, a few rows of each crop at first, then another row every other week or so, on into winter. This will provide you with a few plantings at different stages, so you'll always have something in the garden to work with.

These are the basic ideas and principles of winter gardening, something we in the Southeast are blessed to be able to enjoy and receive the fruits of. Try it out, experiment, push the edges of what you think is possible, and share your harvests with others. Who knows, maybe you too will fall in love with the joy of winter gardening.

Turtle is an organic gardener working with plants and people at the Pearson Drive community garden in Montford, the demonstration site for the Bountiful Cities Project, a local non-profit resource for neighborhood gardens and urban agriculture projects.