[Gardening] Winter Gardens

[Thralen]

If you use a 5 gallon or 10 gallon pot/bucket, you can grow indeterminate tomatoes inside in the winter. You'll need to trellis them and if you don't have a window with good direct sun in the winter, you'll need artificial lighting (I use full daylight style CFL between 5000k and 6500k). I use a home depot 5 gallon bucket and built my trellis into it so that the weight of the bucket keeps the trellis steady. you can frequently get 2-3 years out of a tomato plant this way. Plus there is the added bonus that you can snip and root pieces of it to get a jump start on planting outside in the summer. When you need to replace it, you snip and root your outdoor plants (towards the end of the summer) and use the healthiest of those for your new indoor plant. The process is detailed in mother earth news here:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/2004-10-01/Winter-Tomatoes.aspx

You can also grow peppers the same way, they are technically perennials and can keep going for quite some time. To get a full,fresh salad in the winter is fairly easy. You can grow leaf lettuce (not heading lettuce) inside in this manner:
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Grow-It/Growing-Lettuce-Indoors-Small-Space-Gardening.aspx

Radishes can be grown indoors in a small box as well, here is an article on how to do so:
http://www.kiddiegardens.com/growing_radish_in_containers.html

Unfortunately I've had little luck with growing carrots indoors but lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, and radishes ought to make a decent salad for you in the middle of winter. If you have other things you'd like to grow indoors in the winter, google for how to do so and you'll find that many other vegetables can be grown that way as well.

As for fruits, there are quite a few containerized options for fruit trees, from columnar apples to improved meyer lemons and a whole gamut in between. If you keep your house warm and have good winter sun then you can even grow bananas indoors.

Hope that was some help with your question.

Thralen

[gnm]

Check out the book "the four season harvest" by Elliot Coleman. Here is his web site...

http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/

-G

[jdmartin]

Thanks for the posts so far...

How much electricity does it use to keep a grow-lite going all winter for tomatoes et al? Also, what kind of danger am I in for the local law enforcement to use some kind of heat camera on my house and come kicking my door in, shooting my dog and threatening me over some beefsteaks?

[PrestonSturges]

Be prepared for whiteflies, spider mites, scale and other pests that aren't a problem outdoors to show up indoors. And no poinsettias - they are always full of pests.

[Thralen]

Depending on what you choose as your grow light, the electric varies. The commercial grow lights you can find tend to slurp up a lot of juice. On the other hand, you can get by with as little as a 15w CFL bulb, so long as it is the full sunlight version (6500k). I personally have about 12 sq ft of desktop in a southwestern facing window that I use to grow in the winter. I manage to give all the plants on it (and it tends to be full enough that my cats are in danger of knocking plants over) sufficient additional light (in addition to what sun they get in the winter) with a pair of 23w, 6500k CFL (compact fluorescent) bulbs. While they do draw some juice, it is not nearly as much as the regular grow lights would. You can also turn the lights off when the plants are getting regular sun and only use them to extend the plants lighted hours up to about 14 (if the plants start getting leggy or look unwell, then I'd leave the lights on all day). The LED grow lights are supposed to draw less juice but I've heard nasty things about them just not working well for plants.

Thralen

[PeakOiler]

I over-wintered a few bell pepper plants, two yellow pepper plants, one jalapeno plant, six pineapple plants, two young grapefruit trees, one baby avocado tree, and a young bay laurel tree in the house. They're all next to the windows and I used no electrical plant lights.

I harvested a few small bell peppers, a few jalapenos, and a dozen grapefruit over the winter so far.

Springtime is just around the corner, and I'll be able to take them all outside.

[JimG]

After we get a spring here in Seattle, Im going to finish the polytunnel...roughly 11 x 17.

With the polytunnel I'll get some crops in the rotation longer than usual.
I'm thinking tomatoes in late November would be pretty darn cool.

I could rotate some lettuce year round - just like Mr. Coleman. And broccoli.
Maybe some swiss chard?

I cant wait for the ground to dry out a bit so I can get started. Ah, Seattle.

[PeakOiler]

Today I transplanted four bell pepper plants into pots so I can bring them indoors. The first freeze of the season is forecast for tomorrow night (~30F).

I also need to bring the potted avocado tree inside today.

I will cover the citrus trees with Plankets and close up the plastic around the hoop-house.

I'll try to protect the green bean and cherry tomato plants by covering them as well.

The only other plants in the garden are a few broccoli and onions. They should survive the light freeze.

The three surviving potted strawberry plants are flowering and fruiting again. I picked two nearly overripe strawberries yesterday. Delicious!

[PeakOiler]

Too many tomato sprouts?

I planted a $1.99 package of beefsteak tomato seeds about three weeks ago. Today I'm separating and transplanting the sprouts to larger containers, but I may not finish today.

Last year, I started the seeds too late, and by the time they were beginning to blossom, we began seeing temperatures around 90-100F, at which time the plants quit flowering. So this year, I'm starting a little earlier.



If the sprouts survive the transplanting and they get to 6-7" tall, I may try to sell some of them, below the local grocer's prices.

What are you growing this winter?

[PeakOiler]

As a reminder, shown below is a graph I made of the 2012 temperatures as recorded by the local airport (Burnet, Texas) reported by Weather Underground:



When needed, I can take all those sprouts shown above (in their trays) into the remaining sunny spots in the house until the threat of freezing temperatures is over in late March at which time I can put some of them into the garden.

The chart just helps plan for the future...

Btw, the annotated points in the chart represent record temperatures.

As you can tell from the chart, we don't get a lot of freezing temperatures here, but enough.

[careinke]

I'm still harvesting from my garden. We have in the ground ready to eat; carrots, beets, parsnips, kale, cabbage and some cauliflower. With the exception of the cabbage (for sauerkraut), I no longer preserve any of these vegetables, I just collect them fresh from the garden when I want some. Saves time, money, and energy.

.

[furrybill]

I'm still harvesting from my garden. We have in the ground ready to eat; carrots, beets, parsnips, kale, cabbage and some cauliflower. With the exception of the cabbage (for sauerkraut), I no longer preserve any of these vegetables, I just collect them fresh from the garden when I want some. Saves time, money, and energy.
.

Careinke I thought about trying the same thing this year but was afraid freezing temps could harm the veggies. It got to -2 today and I'm glad I didn't leave my beets in. My kale survived a few frosts but didn't make it through extended 20 and under temps. How cold does it get where you are at, i.e. how low can it go?

[pstarr]

I planted (four 15' rows, hundreds of beets) in late summer for the winter crop. I got lazy, ignored the gophers and now I have no beets. Lot's more easy-to-spot bright red gophers for the barn owl and red-shoulder hawk.

[PeakOiler]

Below is a chart of my 2008 tomato harvest.

It is a misconception that we have a longer growing season, at least with respect to some produce, such as tomatoes. Now if there were a lot of tropical storms to bring temperatures down in the summer, that tomato production chart would look quite a bit different.



I could overlay this graph with temperature data from 2008 to show that tomatoes will not produce much at all during the summer here. It doesn't matter how much water you give the tomatoes during the summer, they just won't flower due to the heat.

That's why I started the tomato seeds earlier this year, but getting the sprouts to survive past the late winter seasonal freezes can be difficult...

Edit to add that there are still six pink grapefruit and seven tangelos on my little trees. The grapefruit are essentially ripe now, the tangelos not quite. I'll probably harvest the remaining grapefruit over the next two weeks.

[careinke]

Careinke I thought about trying the same thing this year but was afraid freezing temps could harm the veggies. It got to -2 today and I'm glad I didn't leave my beets in. My kale survived a few frosts but didn't make it through extended 20 and under temps. How cold does it get where you are at, i.e. how low can it go?

I live on the Southern Puget Sound, Zone 8 Maritime climate. We get maybe two weeks of below freezing weather a year. So, root plants can weather pretty well here. Parsnips are much sweeter after going through a hard freeze, I would think they would be fine in colder climates. My kale is supposed to be fairly frost hardy, but we rarely get below 20 Degrees F here.

I researched root cellars for winter storage, but it is not a very good place for one here. Keeping my root vegetables and Kale in the ground seems to work best for this climate. We are still waiting for a hard freeze so I can trim my grapevines back.

[furrybill]

Careinke I thought about trying the same thing this year but was afraid freezing temps could harm the veggies. It got to -2 today and I'm glad I didn't leave my beets in. My kale survived a few frosts but didn't make it through extended 20 and under temps. How cold does it get where you are at, i.e. how low can it go?

I live on the Southern Puget Sound, Zone 8 Maritime climate. We get maybe two weeks of below freezing weather a year. So, root plants can weather pretty well here. Parsnips are much sweeter after going through a hard freeze, I would think they would be fine in colder climates. My kale is supposed to be fairly frost hardy, but we rarely get below 20 Degrees F here.

I researched root cellars for winter storage, but it is not a very good place for one here. Keeping my root vegetables and Kale in the ground seems to work best for this climate. We are still waiting for a hard freeze so I can trim my grapevines back.

Okay, call me jealous then. I'm in zone 5 so can't do the same thing but your experience confirms I'm on the right track. Thanks for the info!