Fall and winter are not as widely utilized as gardening seasons, but with the right plants and of course avoidance of extreme cold, you can grow plants that summer and spring are too hot for. The theme of fall and winter gardening plants is rustic and hearty. Focus on these three categories for your fall & winter garden: Brassica, Root Crops & Leafy Greens. In this episode, we cover our favorites and the plant spacing for all of them in the Garden Grid™ watering system.
Intro
On this episode, we’re talking about cool weather plants for your garden and what their spacing needs are for your Garden Grid™ watering system.
Hi everyone, I’m Bryan Traficante from GardenInMinutes.com and this is Episode 18 of Easy Growing. On today’s episode I’m gonna be talking about fall gardening, heading into winter gardening, and different plants you can be growing at this time of year. Now the main theme behind what you can grow in the mid-fall into early winter season are the
rustic and hearty type vegetables that you would typically see on your table during Thanksgiving and the winter holidays.
The Brassica Family
There are three primary types of plants that we stick to when it comes to growing this time of year and the first is going to fall into what’s known as the Brassica family. You’re going to have your cabbages, your broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and they’re most notably recognized by the head that they produce, which you want to harvest when the plant is done growing. Now when you go to plant them in your garden, know the plants are fairly large. They produce really large leaves that will commingle with each other, but you can grow roughly one per Garden Grid™ square. So you can have a broccoli, a cabbage… and broccoli and a cabbage. You’ll see the leaves crossing over, but there’s in those space beneath each of the plants for the root system to establish itself.
Note About Extended Periods of Cold
Now these plants are known for being pretty cold hardy and frost tolerant, so you can even have them grow through periods of light snow or short periods of frost and they’ll do alright. If you’re gonna have a long period of snow or a long period of frost they might have some issue because eventually the root system will not be able to keep up. But, if you’re in areas where you don’t expect long frost periods or really heavy snow these should be alright.
Root Vegetables
The next group that you want to consider are your root vegetables. So you have your carrots and parsnips… that’s typically what we like to grow once we get into the winter gardening season. Carrots, depending upon the variety, you can have somewhere from 9 to 16 per Garden Grid™ square. Parsnips, they’re a bit larger, so you’re going to have 9 to 12 per Garden Grid™ square depending on their variety.
Leafy Greens
The last family of plants you want to consider are your leafy greens, like spinach or kale. Spinach is not as cold hardy as kale, but you can grow roughly 6 to 9 plants per Garden Grid™ square and then thin them as needed. Kale on the other hand is a much larger plant. You’ll typically have one large plant per Garden Grid™ square and kale is a bit more frost tolerant depending on the variety then spinach. So if you’re more worried about cool weather or really cold weather or periods of light snow or light frost, I would recommend
kale over spinach, but both are a fun variety to grow this time of year.
Take Advantage of Fall and Winter Gardening Seasons
So, we hope you take advantage of the fall heading into winter gardening season.
It’s a time to grow some really unique vegetables that you typically don’t see (in summer)… and that’s it! So I hope you all have a wonderful day. Thank you all so much for
watching, we’ll see you next time!
