Late fall and early winter have always been the saddest time of year for me. This is the furthest point in the calendar year from tending to growing fruits and vegetables. I think this must be why somebody bunched so many holidays together at this time…to help us forget the bleak frozen dirt outside our doors.
But I’m never one to give up easily. Which is why I keep planting well into fall, and make sure that at least a few of our 52 garden beds have something hardy and green in them for as long as mother nature-ly possible.
We’ve had many frosts this year, but luckily they’ve been fairly shallow. We were able to harvest a full range of garden fresh vegetables for the Thanksgiving table. And we hope to continue through Christmas with a little sun and continued luck.
Then in January, the seed catalogs start coming…and I can spot the light at the end of the tunnel.
Take a look at our garden as of the end of November in the slide show below. (Captions below pictures.) Maybe you’ll get some ideas to extend your own garden next winter:
Pig Compost
Part of the reason we raised our pigs this year was to help compost the years of brush and branches that had been dumped into our old silo foundation (which served as their pen.) Porky and Bess did their job well, and we just scooped a large pile of lovely black pig manure/compost from their home. We're using it to top-off any garden beds which have lost some dirt.
8 Comments
Great inspiration! I think it would be interesting to see just how ‘far’ I can extend gardening into the next season. I love the idea of pulling carrots well into winter! I’m going to keep this in mind for next year. Thanks, Josh!
oh no…I forgot to mulch the blueberries…Good reminder : )
I do want to build some beds like you have. What kind of lumber do you use?
Hi, WF
We use untreated locally-sourced hemlock
A question as to the soil level of your beds. Are they completely filled with soil, or did you start with stone for drainage, etc. Please share.
Thanks
Hi Inga. Our beds are filled entirely with soil and compost. The soil beneath them does not have a lot of clay, so they drain very well. Even in the wettest weather, I’ve never seen any puddling.
Josh, I share your excitement of something, anything green and growing when all else is grayer than gray………..I have beets and carrots in the raised bed. It’s just frozen on the surface this week, but warm temps through tomorrow is my window to put the straw on! They look very happy despite some very cold and snowy weather the last 2 weeks.
Oh, and carrots in winter…….my mother told me that her mother (who moved here in the early 1900’s from Lithuania) had a kind of wooden “box” in the dirt floor cellar of the house. It was filled with sand, and was used to store root crops like carrots over the winter. Although I was very young when we lived with her, I have a “flash memory” of going down into that damp cellar and being amazed as she pulled plump, sweet carrots out of the sand!
what a great idea! Thanks for sharing, Linda