Fall and winter garden

I am trying to setup a winter salad garden in pots.   I have already planted seven 1x2’ pots with lettuce, carrots, cherry tomatoes, radish, and beets.  Any further ideas or suggestions?  

Turnips! The roots are excellent sliced thin and sauteed in butter, goes well in soups, and they work well made like mashed potatoes.

Mustard greens are yummy, excellent instead of lettuce on a sandwich. Good mixed in a salad or mixed as wilted greens and onions topping off a plate of rice.

Spinach, arugula, kale, collards, snow peas, Swiss chard

I've got my lettuce and spinich planted for hopeful late Oct./early Nov. harvest.  Also about to plant red radishes, I did them in early spring and it went well so doing it again for autumn harvest.  My daikons died, so that won't come to fruition, but hoping for these to work.

As a compromise I planted a pot of mixed greens. I also planted a pot of onions.   I have located another planter.   I will get something into it tonight.

I have been preparing my garden for next spring, so I am thinking about planting a bed of kale as well.

John F Dean wrote:I am trying to setup a winter salad garden in pots.   I have already planted seven 1x2’ pots with lettuce, carrots, cherry tomatoes, radish, and beets.  Any further ideas or suggestions?  

Why cherry tomatoes? I'll admit I'm confused, because if you have frost free winters, you have many more options, and if you don't, those tomatoes will die.

I'm focusing on greens this year- lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, etc. I was thinking of doing indoor dwarf tomatoes though.

Hi Andie,

We don’t have frost free winters.  At least one night at 10 below F can be counted on. I am planting in 2 sq ft planters.  This is the largest that can be moved indoors with some degree of ease.  I hope I can keep them outside until 11/1.   If they keep producing greens until 1/25 I will consider my effort a success.  

Currently, I have 9 planters….so indoor window space is a concern.

Over in the seeds from grocery store thread (probably that was where) someone suggested planting whole beets.  I tried that and did get plenty of seeds.  Now that winter is coming, and the local produce store has nice fresh beets I’m thinking of doing it again to provide winter greens.

As for bringing in planters for the cold nights, do you have a wagon or a wheelbarrow?  I have done this at school gardening projects, make a bed  in the wagon itself and plant it.  When one of those early frosts is predicted, it is so easy to just pull it in to your sheltered space.

Garlic is worth a pot if you haven't tried it. Plant the cloves now and you get greens all winter, just snip them like chives. The bulbs won't mature till summer but the greens are the best bit for winter eating.

What kind of lettuce did you plant?  There are so many different varieties of lettuce, why not plant several unless you are like me and only like iceberg lettuce and will tolerate romaine mixed with iceberg.

G and P would both vote for mustard greens. They're similar to kale in that they're fairly cold tolerant - kale is frost tolerant, but I haven't tried mustard greens in frost yet.

My issue is that we're just too wet and cloudy for the plants to get enough sunshine to grow. Even my plant lights can't give most veggies enough to actually grow - just enough to stay alive, which doesn't make them a food source. There's a reason it takes so much electricity to keep greenhouse plants growing in the winter, and it isn't just heat. They end up running lights 22/24 hours which pisses off the neighbors (humans and insects alike), so many areas now have laws that they must have covers to block the light during certain hours.

My mother successfully used a version of the "wagon" in the spring to get seedlings hardened off. I think she had at least 3 wheeled carts so the most tender went in every night, the mediums on cooler nights, and they all got pulled in if a serious frost was predicted.

Jay Angler wrote:

My mother successfully used a version of the "wagon" in the spring to get seedlings hardened off. I think she had at least 3 wheeled carts so the most tender went in every night, the mediums on cooler nights, and they all got pulled in if a serious frost was predicted.

That wagon idea was so successful for me in the past, I think as soon as my greenhouse is repaired I will figure out how to put it to use!