Winter gardening

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What do you all do with the extra time on your hands in the winter when the gardening season is over?

Do you do any indoor gardening at all? Any potted plants that you bring indoors? Do you get an early start on the new season by getting seeds started? Do you do anything special to prepare for next spring?

Gardens take up a lot of time. How do you fill that time between seasons?
 

zigs

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Thats normally a busy time for Gardening Forum staff, sorting out the fights when everyone's going stir crazy :D

There's usually something going on, preparing beds, winter digging, sorting out the seed orders, looking back at what went well and what didn't.

Giant onion seed is sown on Boxing Day, needs extra lighting during the dark months. Mine just didn't get enough this spring but others did well.

This was taken at the Melplash show last month,

 
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What do you all do with the extra time on your hands in the winter when the gardening season is over?

Do you do any indoor gardening at all? Any potted plants that you bring indoors? Do you get an early start on the new season by getting seeds started? Do you do anything special to prepare for next spring?

Gardens take up a lot of time. How do you fill that time between seasons?
All of the above. :p

I have potted plants in every room of the house that gets decent light, most of which go outside in the summer, four terrariums of differing sizes at the moment, and I've got lots of houseplant plans for the winter - I'm trying my hand at keshiki bonsai, and I want to try growing an indoor bonsai or two. I also am experimenting with taking cuttings of my favourite tender perennials to overwinter indoors. I'm planning on building a rough greenhouse on my deck to overwinter more plants, and I start seeds in late winter/early spring. I also plan to try some winter sowing on my deck as well, since it's hard to find enough light sources in the house for my seedlings, and I don't have the budget to buy a tonne of grow lights.

And of course I read plant books and make plans for my gardens for the spring
 
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Giant onion seed is sown on Boxing Day, needs extra lighting during the dark months. Mine just didn't get enough this spring but others did well.

This was taken at the Melplash show last month,

Wow Zigs, those are some pretty big onions! I didn't even know there was such a thing!
 
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Am prepping a new veggie bed and renewing an old perennial bed since it got full of grass I couldn't control any longer. Just need to get enough cardboard, already have the mulch. Lots of pruning trees, cutting back and tidying up perennials throughout the winter. Unless the winter turns extreme (which it has the last few years) should be harvesting kale and chard. Not doing any starts this year, but I still need to bring in my little bay tree. Will continue to think about what I want a large cold frame/green house to look like and function. Might even get the foundation laid out...maybe. The vision isn't firm yet and I want to use up the materials I have on hand.
 

zigs

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Wow Zigs, those are some pretty big onions! I didn't even know there was such a thing!

The variety is called Kelsae, need a long growing season.

This one broke my foot.



Picked the pot up to move it and it slipped, breaking the pot and my bones, was using a walking stick for nearly a year
 

zigs

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Yep, re potted it, it was delicious :)

Broke my other foot a few weeks later, hit a tree stump whilst looking up at the trees for Oyster Mushrooms.
 
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ROFL!!!!! OK, sorry, probably wasn't funny at all for you, but still...that's pretty funny - who knew gardening was such a hazardous pastime!
 

zigs

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:D I've seen the funny side of it now, Willow made me buy a walking stick, I was too proud to get one for a while.

It was great when visiting National Trust properties, as soon as they saw the stick they laid on transport :) Got taken around in minibusses, golf carts and all sorts.
 
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Oh dear, I shouldn't giggle at that either but did!! I'm glad you got your revenge by eating the onion :D
 
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Oh, my. Those veggies are out for revenge. :eek: Sorry about your injuries. Sounds like you had a rough time, Zigs. I trust you healed up well?

Gorgeous onions. I've never grown them but I really ought to because I am constantly buying them.

I lived in Texas for many years and it was easier to prepare the garden during the winter since we had no snow and some plants, like my peppers, would continue to produce year round.

Now that I live in a place with four seasons it has become trickier because the growing season is so much shorter. We get a lot of snow in the winter. I have a couple real nice windows here that I think may provide enough light so I can get a few pots going with ... something, not sure what yet.

Cabin fever time is almost upon us! ;)
 
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During the winter time I cook.

Before the first frost I pick the largish tomatos and I cover the plants. The tomatos, if they are large enough, will ripen on the counters. And, the tomato plants wither will or will not survive the first frost: they might give me more tomatos and they might not.

There is a man in Maine who sells vegetables in the late fall, long after everything outside is dead. What he does, is, he covers the growing beds with 3 layers of plastic and he moves a greenhouse over the top as well. Last year I tried this in my home-made greenhouse and it really works! I picked the last of the beets in January, and it had gotten perhaps as cold as 10 degrees F (-12 celcius). Some of the beets had frosted on the very top but most of the vegetables were sound and good.

I do not have anything in my greenhouse this year that I would want to do that with, but I have an outside bed of swiss chard and another of kale. I might try just throwing several layers of plastic over the bed and seeing how well that extends the growing season. . His website is here: http://www.fourseasonfarm.com/

AND! I saw a recipe that sounds excellent, and the vegetables are all found in my garden!

You start with chopped bacon ( he did not say how much but I suspect one pound???). Heat it slowly until the fat is rendered out and the bacon is crispy. That would be our American bacon that has a lot of fat in it.

Add a chopped onion and 3 cloves of garlic. Sweat the vegetables gently. Then add a chopped tomato and heat. Season.

THEN add in a finely diced squash (I am going to omit this because otherwise the family would not TOUCH the dish).

Then add swiss chard (again he did not say how much but I intend to add lots, and I will also try this with substituting kale). After that is cooked down add 2 teaspoons of cream and 1/4 cup wine, and serve over pasta.

I THINK that I can use this recipe for a dish of cooked greens instead of using it as pasta sauce, and I believe that my family will eat it. I am the only one who likes greens but everybody likes bacon, and they just might eat this. My entire family operates on the philosophy that bacon makes everything better!
 
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I find winter quite a burden. I've got a lot of trees I'm growing for bonsai and their winter requirements vary. I've got a very small greenhouse (big enough to walk in, but only just) and it's full to capacity. As a result I still have to bring a few trees indoors at night, but our climate is mild enough to allow me to put them outside during the day. As a result I spend quite a bit of time moving trees around every day. I also cover some of my less sensitive trees with frost cloth every night, while only a select few are left unprotected all winter.

I should really have made my life easier by choosing hardier trees,but my passion is for Ficuses, and they can't take the frost.

Thankfully spring has just arrived in South Africa, so I don't have to worry about all that work for a while now and can get on with all the repotting and pruning that need to be done.
 

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