Since I forgot that I wanted to give you more info about gardening in the winter I will give you another quick post. Here's one I did last year if you want to see a mini tunnel. I am in zone six. We use 4 or 6 mil plastic to cover the crops. You can find it at your home improvement store. I forget what the official name for it is. If it gets really cold at your place you can cover the crops with fabric before you put the plastic cover on top. And you can even add a fabric or straw mulch on top of that if you need to.
You aren't really growing anything after the weather gets cold. You are holding the crops at the ready mark to harvest at your leisure. You need to plant early enough so they can be close to maturity by the time the cold weather hits. This is definitely a trial and error gardening method.
Here's another version of a straw bale cold frame. And more info about planning the fall and winter garden to help you figure out what you should plant when. I planted some of my things a little late. It's kinda a gamble with the weather. I'm hoping for a late first frost this year.
My favorite book on gardening year round is Four Season Harvest by Eliot Coleman. He gardens in Maine. He has a newer book out called The Winter Harvest Handbook, but I haven't gotten the chance to read it. And while I'm promoting him I also have and recommend his book The New Organic Grower.
There are special crops that like the cold weather that you can try growing. I haven't experimented with them yet. A lot of them are Asian greens. Baker Creek Seeds sells some neat looking varieties and Johnny's Selected Seed has a nice section in their catalog on winter greens and many other crops to try for the cold weather.
I have three other beds planted with winter crops. Some of them we will eat before the first frost. I am going to experiment with mulching one bed really well with hay and see how it does. For really cold weather I'll throw a scrap of plastic over the hay. I planted one bed with cabbage on the outside and shorter plants on the inside so I could try covering it with a double layer made up of fabric and plastic. Can you tell I like to experiment?
I would really like to use something from the garden every day of the year. If I'm really desperate to meet my goal I can use a snipping of herbs. My parsley, thyme, rosemary, and lavender were green all last winter and my lemon balm was peeking out from under the snow in the early spring. Oh, I forgot, the carrots we missed harvesting had new greens before anything else sprouted.
So much for a quick and easy post! If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. This is only my fourth year of winter gardening so.....
