What to Do in Winter

Image Gallery Even in winter your garden can be growing and producing cold-hardy crops. Thick mulch will build soil and protect beneficial organisms necessary for next spring’s plantings. The mulched soil itself is a perfect storage place for your fall-grown root vegetables.  ELAYNE SEARS

What are you growing in your garden this winter? This is not a trick question. When you work an organic food garden in ways that bring out the best in your site, your soil and your plants, winter is an interesting and useful stretch of time. In most regions, you can enjoy spinach, Brussels sprouts, sunchokes, kale, carrots, parsnips and other cold-hardy crops all through the winter.

To help you brush up on your cold-season gardening skills, let’s tick through the simplest, most sustainable ways to address the three main winter gardening tasks:

• growing cold-hardy edibles
• using compost, cover crops and mulch to radically improve soil quality
• enhancing habitats for hard-working beneficial insects and wildlife

No matter where you live, you can make use of climate-appropriate techniques to bring spinach, kale, chicories and other hardy vegetables through the winter (see Grow Great Salads Year Round, August/September 2006). You will need an attached greenhouse in Zones 2 to 4, but in Zones 5 to 7 you can get by with a tunnel covered with one layer each of row cover and plastic (the plastic comes off easily for ventilation). Support the tunnel with an arch of heavy-gauge wire fencing to make sure it can stand up to accumulated ice and snow, like a green igloo.

Protect Fall Crops

If you have carrots in the ground, take this tip from Eliot Coleman, author of Four-Season Harvest. In early winter enclose the carrots in a cold frame, and sprinkle an inch of compost over the tops of the plants. Add enough straw to fill the frame and close the top. Pull carrots as you need them, and be prepared to be amazed at their sweet flavor — what Coleman calls “carrot nirvana.” Parsnips need no protection to make it through winter, but a thick mulch (or a garbage bag stuffed with leaves) makes it easier to find them and keeps the soil from freezing. In any climate, early winter is the best time to harvest Brussels sprouts and sunchokes, both of which benefit from exposure to freezing temperatures.

Mulched soil doesn’t wash away in heavy rain, but the biggest advantage of winter mulch is that it moderates soil temperatures, slowing the speed at which the soil freezes, thaws and freezes again. Because water expands as it freezes, shallow roots are often torn and pushed upward — a natural phenomenon called heaving. Winter mulches reduce heaving around winter crops, decrease compaction from heavy rain or hail, and enrich the soil with organic matter as they decompose. They also look nice.