Winter gardening, AKA winter harvesting

I learned about gardening in winter when I was introduced to Eliot Coleman's book Winter Harvest He farms with several layers of protection. In ground, under cold frames inside of a movable hoophouse or greenhouse.

I am in USDA grow zone 7A. Many greens have survived in the ground with no protection. My first year I planted three rows of spinach in a bed about 25 feet long. I was able to harvest one third of the bed every three days, keeping me in salad greens all winter. When harvesting brought me too much for salad, I would cook up some creamed spinach. Yummy.

We had an unusual snowstorm that year. We got about 10 inches of snow. We have usually gotten one or two storms giving us a couple inches that melt away in a day or two. This snow stayed for about 10 days. I thought the spinach would be dead. Nope. It was ready for a massive harvest of the whole bed. I was sold on winter greens.

After discovering turnips, having TWO harvestable products, I left spinach behind as turnips produce more greens for the space. I now grow mostly turnips, mustard, kale, and radishes, Though this post has me wanting to try spinach out again. Mmmm. Creamed spinach. Maybe next year.

I Have found that it is best to plant my winter garden within a week after Labor Day. I can harvest the greens several times before the winter cold arrives, and the root system is developed enough to keep the greens growing for most of the winter. Slower than the fall growth, but still growing. I have found that leaving one leaf at least an inch long helps the plant recover more quickly. If I wait too long to seed my fall crop, it will sprout, but stay dinky, in hibernation mode all winter. When it starts to warm up in spring, instead of producing food, it panicks and bolts to set seed as miniature stunted plants. Any soul brave enough to harvest will only find bitter leaves and tiny nasty woody roots. Ugh.

My first average frost date is November 12. Though one year, we got the first freeze October 15th, when I was away from home and unable to cover my peas. Watching the fall leaves, mulberry trees are showing the first yellow leaves not long after Labor Day, sassafras is the tree that starts turning next. I think followed by redbud. Planting within that time period my winter greens do fine. There is some winter kill, but enough make it that I can harvest seed for next year.

Now, USDA is trying to tell me that I am in zone 8A. When my winters are getting colder, and the ground may actually freeze for more than 7 days at a time. Ha! Used to be we would only have maybe 12 nights of ground freeze each winter, but usually only one night at a time. Winter will now kill plants that are supposed to be good in 5A. It could be the lack of snow cover that makes the difference. Today, I have five inches of snow on the ground from this storm.

My well guy is an old timer. He told me that he remembers his childhood with multiple snowstorms each winter. He said that the ground used to freeze to 12 inch depth. Our current stated freeze depth is 2 inches. He also believes that our winters are getting more severe again. I may have to make some low hoop houses to ensure future seed production.

Here is an Eliot Coleman article in Mother Earth News magazine.
https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/year-round-vegetable-production-zmaz03djzgoe/

Here is an article from his publishers website.
https://www.chelseagreen.com/2024/eliot-coleman-components-of-the-winter-harvest/

How do you harvest food in the winter?

Edited to fix links

Is your zone shifted in the new map? It's impressive the leafy greens are so hardy.

Ice and snow are melting fast today too. The outer leaves of arugula look mushy but purple bok choy are unharmed down to 7F/-13C without protection.

The new map claims I'm now in plant hardiness zone 8A. Um, no. As I said above, my winters are getting more severe. I am having fewer turnips live through the winter. Depth of ground freeze is increasing. The USDA are not using enough metrics to accurately predict what plants will overwinter in my yard.

Garlic is still overwintering, above ground. Sometimes with leaf dieback.

Although my winters are pretty mild (as you describe - usually just a few days frost at a time) it is very wet and windy, so leaf crops unfortunately get a bit bashed, and crop protection would need to be robust to stand up.
The perennial kale keeps going slowly however and I have quite a bit of sea cabbage too that gives me brassica greens anytime I feel like them. Really winter for me is a time for root crops - I can leave them in the ground and dig them whenever the weather is mild enough. I dug some skirret today, but parsnip, carrots and other roots will be fine in the ground if I leave them.
I wonder whether I can come up with some crop protection that isn't plastic and likely to blow away? Hmm.

Living in western Oregon in zone 8, I  always try to have a big winter garden with as much diversity as possible. I also try to perennialize as many veggies as I can. This winter, I've got kale (3 kinds), tree collards (2 kinds), Swiss chard (2 kinds), broccoli, leaf lettuce, parsley , celery, Brussels sprouts as well as lots of root crops- beets, carrots, turnips. Overwinter veggies include asparagus, artichokes, fava beans and purple-sprouting broccoli. Alliums include Walla Walla onions, Transylvania and Chinese pink garlic, Egyptian walking onions, green bunching onions, garlic greens and Musselburgh leeks. I also have some cilantro in my unheated greenhouse, along with the Meyer lemon trees.

My main problems are always rodents- mice, rats, voles and rabbits- they are always munching the root crops and wiping out my peas. I've pretty much given up on peas because of them. But I'm thankful to able to have such a good winter garden in spite of them.

This gives me hope for someday figuring out the correct formula for winter gardening here.  I accidentally ended up with another lettuce experiment this year, grrrr, unintended, since last year I felt like lettuce did that  thing mentioned in the first post here about going into stasis.  But here I am again.  Hopefully next year, the other trouble was my lack of sun when I planted spinich/radishes which I intended to grow throughout winter.  But now that they finally trimmed the maple trees at my complex I'm hoping everything will grow better this year, greens sucked last year due to all that forested shade.

Here's a link to a handy Winter growing chart for maritime northwest gardeners from the Territorial Seed Company, I consult this chart all the time and adjust it according to how much shade is in different areas of the food forest/ garden during the fall and winter months:

https://territorialseed.com/blogs/fall-winter-growing-guides/winter-growing-chart

Territorial carries all kinds of winter veggie varieties.

Things are quite frozen over here, though around the new year (January thaw) I could still harvest parsnips, mountain mint and various other greens.

One thing I have done is to bring Japanese knotweed rootstocks inside and let them make shoots. They are rather slow but maybe if there’s another thaw and I can bring an entire crown in, it would be more productive. Supposedly people have done this with pokeweed too but I’m letting my poke establish better first.

Hi M.K. Love your list! We also do sorrel, cabbage, Asian greens like komatsuna and bok choy, and potato onions. One things that's fun in the PNW is learning that some things will perennialize here that won't elsewhere. For example, my bulbing fennel came back after I cut it back late summer, and it looks great!

Regarding peas - there is a way to foil the mice.... Put row cover over the seeds and weight down the edges with garden stakes or tree branches so they can't crawl underneath. Keep the row cover on until after the seeds have sprouted and are at least a couple inches tall. Then you get to eat the peas, and the mice dont! Haha!

Hi M.K. Love your list! We also do sorrel, cabbage, Asian greens like komatsuna and bok choy, and potato onions. One things that's fun in the PNW is learning that some things will perennialize here that won't elsewhere. For example, my bulbing fennel came back after I cut it back late summer, and it looks great!

Regarding peas - there is a way to foil the mice.... Put row cover over the seeds and weight down the edges with garden stakes or tree branches so they can't crawl underneath. Keep the row cover on until after the seeds have sprouted and are at least a couple inches tall. Then you get to eat the peas, and the mice dont! Haha!

Jen, interestingly enough that's the exact same strategy I employed last year to thwart the rodents (and birds like the jays and the crows)! I even started the peas in a mini-cell tray and grew them in that for a couple weeks before transplanting them, something I wouldn't normally do with peas. I was real careful to hold down the row cover on all sides. But I came back a week after transplanting and every single pea plant was gone!

Apparently, the voles (or mice?) had come up underneath the row covers through their tunnel system and munched every one. After that, I decided to just give up on peas, it's not worth the trouble...I sure wish the owls would return to my garden, they were a great help. My garden is a rodent paradise since the owls disappeared. I also used to grow Florence fennel like you as a perennial but the rodents seem to absolutely devour that stuff the second it's planted or transplanted.

I also grow Asian greens for winter harvesting but forgot to put them on my list. I started out with wild garden mustard mix from Territorial Seed Company years ago and let them go wild and "landrace" with each other and then I let them self-sow for several years. They keep migrating around the garden. Nowadays, they're mostly down to what looks like Dragon Tongue mustard. It seems to be the best variety for my food forest garden.

I also like winter cabbage- January King is a savoy variety (with crinkled leaves) that I grew for years. In recent years I've been growing Winter King cabbage from a free seed packet, but it seems less adapted to the winter weather. I also seem to be planting it too early and it bolts before the end of September, where January King would hold in the field all winter long. I'll probably go back to January King this year and try transplanting around June 1st. Adaptive seeds carries both varieties.

I sure love winter veggies!