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So you require to start harvest a wintertime crop , but you ’re not sure where to get going ?
Eliot Coleman split up down the three basic components of the winter harvest so that this time next year , you ’ll be knee - high in green groceries ! ( Maybe not knee - high , but you ’ll definitely have unused vegetables ! )
The following is an excerpt fromThe Winter Harvest HandbookbyEliot Coleman . It has been adapted for the Web .
The Winter Harvest: Three Components
The winter crop , as we practice it at Four Season Farm , has three constituent : cold - hardy veggie , succession planting , and protect cultivation .
1. Cold-Hardy Vegetables
Cold - fearless vegetables are those that tolerate inhuman temperature .
They are often cultivated out of doors twelvemonth - round in areas with modest wintertime climate . The majority of them have far depleted light requirements than the affectionate - season crops .
The list of cold-hardy vegetables includes the familiar—spinach, chard, carrots, scallions—and the novel—mâche, claytonia, minutina, and arugula.
To appointment there are some thirty dissimilar vegetables — arugula , beet William Green , broccoli raab , carrots , chard , chicory , genus Claytonia , collards , blowball , endive , escarole , garlic William Green , lucre , kohlrabi , Allium porrum , lettuce , mâche , minutina , mizuna , mustard viridity , pak choi , parsley , radicchio , radish , spring onion , sorrel , spinach , tatsoi , turnips , cresson — which at one time or another we have grown in our winter - harvesting glasshouse .
The feed calibre of these cold - hardy vegetables is unrivaled during the cooler temperatures of spill , wintertime , and spring . They attain a higher spirit level of paragon without the heat accent of summertime .
2. Succession Planting
Succession planting means sow vegetables more than once during a season in lodge to provide for a continual harvest .
The selection of sowing dates , from late summer through tardy fall , and winter into spring , keeps the cornucopia flowing . In midwinter the vigorous regrowth on issue - and - come - again crops provides the harvest time while tardy - fall - and - winter - sow harvest lento reach productive size .
We begin planting the winter-harvest crops on August 1, the start of what we call the “second spring.”
We preserve planting through the fall . The realness of sowing for wintertime crop is that the seasons are reversed from the usual spring - planting experience . Day length is contracting rather than expanding ; temperature are becoming cooler rather than warmer .
Success in maintaining a continuity of crops for harvest time through the winter is a function of understand the effect of shorter day length and ice chest temperature on increasing the time from sowing to harvest .
Thus the alternative of exact sowing dates for fall planting is much more essential than for spring planting . The date are also very craw specific .
We aim for a end of never leaving a glasshouse bed unplanted , and we fall pretty close . Within twenty - four time of day after a crop is glean , we murder the residues , re - prepare the dirt , and replant . We keep careful records so as to play along as wide-ranging a crop revolution as potential .
3. Protected Cultivation
Protected cultivation means vegetables under cover .
The traditional winter vegetables will often survive outside under a cover of snow . Since gardener ca n’t depend on snow , the expert substitute is protection of an unwarmed nursery .
Many delicious winter vegetables need only that minimal protection.
Our winter - harvest cold houses are received , plastic - cover , mediaeval - style basketball hoop houses . The orotund of our houses are 30 fundament broad and 96 understructure long .
They are aligned on an east - west axis . For the most part the cold houses need only a single - layer covering of ultraviolet illumination - insubordinate plastic , whereas heated greenhouses benefit from two layers , which are air - inflated to minimize estrus expiration .
The success of our cold house seems improbable in our Zone 5 Maine winters where temperatures can overleap to – 20˚F ( – 29˚C ) . But our growing system of rules works because we have con to augment the mood - tempering core of the cold house itself by adding a 2d layer of protection .
We place floating words - concealment stuff over the crops inside the greenhouse to create a twicetempered clime . The dirt itself thus becomes our heat - memory board medium , as it is in the natural world .
Any type of lightweight floating row cover that allows light, air, and moisture to pass through is suitable for the inner layer material in the cold houses.
The words top is hold up by flattopped wire wickets at a top of about 12 inches ( 30 curium ) above the dirt . We space the wickets every 4 groundwork ( 120 centimetre ) along the length of 30 - inch - all-inclusive ( 75 cm ) grow beds .
The protected crops still experience temperatures below freezing , but nowhere near as low or as trying as they would without the inner stratum . For model , when the out-of-door temperature drops to – 15˚F ( – 26˚C ) , the temperature under the inner layer of the cold home drop only to 15˚F to 18 ° F above zero ( – 10˚C to – 8 ° C ) on average .
The moth-eaten - hardy vegetables are far sturdy than growers might reckon and , in our experience , many can easily outlive temperatures down to 10˚F ( – 12˚C ) or low as long as they are not exposed to the additional stresses of out-of-door conditions .
The double coverage also increases the relative humidity in the protected area, which offers additional protection against freezing damage.
The climate modification achieved by combining inner and outer layers in the cold mansion is the proficient foundation of our low - input winter - harvest home concept .
In a world of ever more complicated technologies , the wintertime harvest is refreshingly unproblematic because all three of these components are well known to most vegetable agriculturist .
What is not well known is the synergy produce when they are used in combination , and that is what we go on to explore on a everyday fundament on our farm .
Recommended Reads
The Winter Harvest Project
Winter Gardening Without het Greenhouses
The Winter Harvest Handbook
class Round Vegetable Production Using Deep - Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses
$ 29.95
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