Help Me Find Winter Gardening Hobbies!

I am already feeling the winter blues while waiting for the next spring planting season. I want to find ways to continue gardening during the colder months but I need YOUR help! 🌱
How have you stayed connected to gardening during past Winters?🌟

I make a point of getting outside and staying active in the winter months.

Obviously in my climate there's no growing going on, but there are a hundred small jobs that support growing for next year. Everything from chopping up the last of the garden stuff for composting, to repairing and sharpening all my pruners/loppers and digging tools, to burning waste wood for biochar and soil-building. I may even try some indoor composting this year.

And then in February, the seed catalogues start arriving. Delicious torment since growing season is months away, but fun to peruse and get ideas.

I still have plants to move and, as Douglas mentioned, prep work to do.
I'll have to do some germination trials either next month or in January to test some seeds.
Then end of Jan is when I start with the seed sprouting for that summer. Onions take a long time to get going.

I have my ginger and turmeric pots to try and keep going.

I've also been considering trying some microgreens this winter. Peas and lettuces are the most likely ones to start.

Lastly, I try to work on crafts in the winter so I've got some summer clothes to make and some toad hides to work on. I'm sure more things will come to mind.

Botanical illustration and a cup of hot tea.

Where in the world are you? J Juniper's illustration idea is great! Do you have interest in wild foods or herbal medicine? Illustrations would give you a jump on learning to identify plant families.

In my house long winter evenings are for working out. We have a strength and mobility routine that keeps us flexible. Workouts might not seem like a gardening hobby, but we sure are glad we did them when Spring comes around.

Looking at seed catalogs and planning next year's garden.

I am always adding compost to my pile, and now I add wood shavings from the shop to my hugel.

Harold Skania wrote: Workouts might not seem like a gardening hobby, but we sure are glad we did them when Spring comes around.

Excellent advice! Better still if they including chopping, splitting, moving heavy objects, dragging logs and biomass up and down hills, and all that cross-training exercise that makes active homesteading the best workout routine ever invented. (Or re-invented -- our ancestors did this for countless generations, and it was just called "living.")

Kathy do you have any old fishtanks with a light and a heater? If you put eight to twelve inches of water in a big tank and add the water heater used for tropical fish, you can float containers of seed raising mix on the water and get heaps of stuff going out of season- warm water- the tank heaters can be temperature controlled- warm air, light. It will be humid in there so keep that it mind.
I also make traditional English corn dollies from wheat straw in winter- nothing to do with American corn husk dolls which are a whole nuther animal. This is an interesting read as well as some nice images- http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2012/07/my-attempt-at-making-easy-corn-dolly.html#google_vignette

Wintersowing is a great way to plant during the off season.
It involves planting outdoors in containers with transparent/translucent covers.

I suggest Seed Catalogs.

What is more fun than pouring over all the pretty pictures of what to plant in the spring.

This link to the Old Farmers Almanac has a list of Over 45 Seed Catalogs & Online Plant Sources:

https://www.almanac.com/content/garden-seed-catalogs-mail

Seed Catalogs are usually sent out in the spring so I keep last years catalogs to look at all years.

Another past time for winter would be to have some indoor plants.

There is a whole forum devoted to houseplants:

https://permies.com/f/497/houseplants

I spend my time researching and learning more.

I finally got around to reading Elliot Coleman's book the Four Season Harvest.  If you want to be growing all year this is a great place to start.  First written in 1992 it's still quite relevant
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/four-season-harvest/

Farmer Jessie and No-Till Growers is an amazing resource for gardening ecologically.  
https://www.youtube.com/@notillgrowers

check out their website for a bunch of other podcasts including; The Composter, Market Garden, Collab Farm, Winter Growers and others
https://www.notillgrowers.com/

And one more about No-Till Growers is the Living Soil Handbook which is a great companion to the YouTube channel
https://www.notillgrowers.com/livingsoilhandbook/d9z5gkf1bbnhu0w5xxb3trngiqhwgo

Charles Dowding is a market gardener in England and is an excellent teacher with high quality content.  He also has several books
https://www.youtube.com/@CharlesDowding1nodig

John Kempf blows me away every time I hear him speak.  While the focus is on broad acre farms and larger operations the soil science information found here is invaluable.
https://regenerativeagriculturepodcast.com/

The Real Organic Project is a wealth of knowledge.  Not directly garden related but very relevant.  Great podcast!  Several amazing interviews with Elliot Coleman.
https://realorganicproject.org/

While not directly garden related Ben Falk's book The Resilient Farm and Homestead, second edition is a great read.  This book documents 20 years as a permaculture practitioner and his interactions with the land.  I loved this book!
https://www.wholesystemsdesign.com/the-resilient-farm-homestead-ben-falk

What Your Food Ate by David Montgomery and Anne Bikle is extremely insightful.  This book brings together the worlds of health and nutrition and agriculture.  
https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58999199-what-your-food-ate

Glyphosate - This interview with Zach Bush discusses the problems with glyphosate in great detail.  Grab a notepad and give this a listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tL6KHhCTNZo&ab_channel=AdvancingEcoAgriculture

I could go on...

Hope this helps.

Hydroponics provide an alternative. I own two small Aerogardens. It's more of a hobby than anything else, but it keeps us well stocked in fresh herbs during the winter (basil and dill do very well in it, and this year I'm trying to root perennial cuttings of thyme and rosemary), and it provides a few leaves of lettuce for sandwiches and garnishes.

The system out-of-the-box is not very permie, since it uses single-use "seed pods". But you can wash the plastic pods, use alternative growing medium (You can buy just the peat cones online, or I've recently started exploring hemp substrate) and obviously use your own seeds.  My next step will be to explore alternative nutriment solutions (frass - aka insect poop - seems promising and I've found a local supplier).

There are alternative, but that one is reasonably inexpensive, compact, well designed and fairly mechanically simple so I figure it can be hacked once it breaks (just replace the pump with a simple aquarium pump, remove the light stand and use another light source, and ignore the electronics).

I don't generally have much free time, and if I do, it's usually short periods here and there.  So, projects that would take a couple hours end up taking me much longer to do.  I get them done, but it has definitely made me better at time management by necessity.  It involves planning things out, keeping running lists of projects, breaking them down into segments, things like that.  So, to actually answer the question, my hobby would basically be an extension of pre-season planning combined with the small busy work things that satisfy creative needs while recycling.

-Make seedling ID stakes for seedling flats.  
These can be made from many things, but I save the larger white plastic yogurt containers for this.  Just cut them into strips vertically, and write on them with a Sharpie marker.

-Make seedling pots.  I make mine from the taller aluminum energy drink cans.  Poke about 5 drain holes around the bottom, cut the top off smoothly with scissors.

-Make a seed starting rack.  I've seen ones made from wire racks and grow lights and a fan.  The seedlings were very healthy and strong.  

-Make garden ID stakes from wine corks and bamboo skewers.  This one is on my list to try since I already have the materials on hand.  I'll be painting the corks, then write the plant name in marker or paint on it.  I don't always mark my plants since I haven't ever had a problem remembering, but I'm growing lots of hot peppers next year & want to know what's what.

-Make trellises for pole beans.
I have some tree branches, and am planning on making some rustic looking trellises to grow pole beans on.

-Plan & replan the garden many times up until the day the last plants are in the ground.

-Reorganize your seed collection.

-Scrounge some reclaimed lumber to make raised bed frames or obelisk trellises.

I like to build from things normally thrown away, so reclaimed/recycled things are my material of choice...even though there's admittedly more work involved.

Winter is a great time for sprouts, microgreens, and hydroponics for growing inside. Bring in a small clump of chives for your windowsill.

It’s also a great time for learning to identify local trees by their bark and growth habits! This can set you up to be looking for good forage opportunities later in the year.

I make handles for my old tools in winter. I love looking for ancient tools on line- America has some great stuff cheap but shipping to Australia is a killer. Some bargains on ebay. I also shop for second hand books- Thriftbooks and Better World Books get a lot of business from me. Millions of titles from new and almost new to ex library books and dog eared old favourites. I just scored a Drew Langsner book for $5.12! Better world books ship free world wide, although it's surface mail so can take weeks for a book to arrive. A percentage of money from sales also goes towards world literacy programs, and they keep me updated on how many books my purchases have paid for towards the programs.
Totally irelevant to the thread but a short while ago I looked out the window to see what was making so much noise- a massive bee swarm near the corner of the house- many thousands of bees in the air, on the grass, in overhead branches and on the wall. I grabbed a spare box, suited up and headed out to catch the swarm just in time to see the last of them disappearing into a crack. So now there are ten thousand bees in the wall three feet from where I'm sitting and I can't get them!
The wife and I are heading to town (twenty miles) to buy some little Corymbia Torelliana trees and ten grams of seed- that's about three and a half thousand seeds for less than seven bucks! Laughin eh

A few years back, I joined the local "Pollinator Pathways" chapter.  It's very informal and during the growing season, we tour each other's gardens and in the off-season, we decide on a book to read that has some tie to gardening.  So far, we've read Doug Tallamy's book, Nature's Best Hope, and last winter, we read Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass.  One lady has volunteered to lead us, and she assigns readings for each month along with discussion questions.  It has been fantastic.  Just a few nights ago, we all (nine of us) got together to have a "three sisters" feast.  We each brought something containing corn, beans or squash.  This was idea we'd gotten from Sweetgrass.
Anyway, perhaps there is some sort of gardening club that you could become a part of.  Many organize events throughout the year and it's a great way to meet others with similar interests.