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Winter Garden

Plant tulip and lily bulbs now for beautiful blooms in the Spring.

by Sage Carter-Hooey
November 12, 2008

While winter may mean the end of fresh summer fruit and seemingly endless hours of sunshine, it doesn’t mean the end of your bright and beautiful garden. Here are some tips to keep the garden green and your hands dirty all year round.

Great winter indoor plants for this time of year include African violets, paper whites, amaryllis and basil.

Fall and early winter is a great time to plant bulbs. Bulbs can often be the first flowers to bloom in late winter and early spring.

Some of the best bulbs for planting in the fall and winter include daffodils, day lilies, iris, tulips and my personal favorite, ranunculus.

Keep a record of what you planted and when, and what succeeded and failed to help you grow as a gardener.

The key to a successful winter garden is allowing your plants to reach maturity before the first killing frost. This means planting now.

Choose a south-facing plot of land to take advantage of the most sunshine possible during the shorter winter days or a bed beneath a group of deciduous trees, which will shelter plants from the harsher elements of winter.

Winter gardens also need the best drainage possible, so prepare the soil with sand or organic compost to lighten its density and aid with water runoff.

Perfect winter plants include spinach, kale and any other lettuce (the frost makes the leaves even sweeter), broccoli, snap peas and carrots.

To enjoy plants outdoors in the cooler months, try growing them in containers and raised beds. A lot of plants that wouldn’t ordinarily survive in the winter can grow well in raised beds.

If your growing space is limited to indoors, container gardens also work well this time of year. Make sure your plants are getting enough sun by placing them in a south-facing window.

posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/12/08 at 07:21 PM. [printer version] Share |

COMMENTS

I've been enthusiastically planting a container garden inside my apartment. I happened to get interested in it during the late fall, so I'm taking on the learning curve now.

I have three long containers. One is full of cilantro seeds. After about 3-4 weeks, the sprouts are about 5-6" tall, and showing their first leaves shaped like the cilantro we know and love to eat.

I bought a basil starter plant that I've been picking leaves off of for more than a month, and it's thriving and replacing some of the places where I've plucked. Sharing a long container with the basil, I have a garlic clove planted that's really stable.

I just planted a long container of lettuce that hasn't germinated yet, so I'm hopeful about that. Lettuce is always the first thing that goes bad when I buy it at the store, so having some fresh in the house would be great.

posted by darren on 11/12/08 at 10:02 PM

It is so good to hear of young people coming to know gardening.

posted by JLY on 11/16/08 at 11:01 PM

Darren, my dad actually planted some of that hydroponic lettuce that you can buy in the store -- it's usually some kind of butter lettuce that still has the roots on the bottom? He said it has done really well! He's already gotten two more heads of lettuce out of it. I'm going to try it myself, because like you, anytime I get lettuce in the store it just doesn't last long enough.

JLY I love gardening, I just wish I had a bigger space to do it! I'm in a small apartment with just a few potted plants for now.

posted by andi on 11/17/08 at 08:07 AM

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