I was hoping that this winter would be milder so that I could get some greens from the garden, but with night time temperatures in the single digits and the beds as hard as rock, nothing is growing. Technically, little grows in the winter garden as it is merely a refrigerator for certain plants holding onto life. Harvesting, rather than growing, is what winter gardening is all about.
Unlike the prior few years, this year’s Connecticut winter weather has been picture perfect—if your picture is the Bing Crosby/Fred Astaire movie, Holiday Inn. Since before Christmas, there has been snow on the ground and every day over the past week has come yet another thin layer of white that we have to sweep or shovel away. It has not been above freezing for over a week and any signs of vegetative life outside the house are muted by the snow and cold. For my hoop houses, any kind of real growth starts in mid-Feb. and kicks in big time in March when the beds become soft and the sun is higher in the sky. I’m just hoping that at least some of the greens will winter over so that when a thaw comes I will be able to harvest a few.
Unlike the other three seasons where you can plant and harvest, winter permits you harvest and think about what you will plant in the seasons to come (at least outside.) Perhaps the largest harvest now for many gardeners is the unending stream of seed and plant catalogues that present themselves in the mailbox daily like so many welcome wildflowers that pop up unexpectedly.
For those of us encased in snow, perusing through Johnny’s,Territorial, or Bluestone takes us away from the cold and back into the garden we want to be in rather than the garden we find ourselves looking at from the warmth of our homes. Now some of us will cheat nature a bit by getting grow lights and starting seedlings in a heated area. In fact, that is something we will start this week at Green Chimney’s with the children as it is too chilly to be outside. We will grow mini greens in January and in February start to plant for the spring garden with the hope of being able to transplant outside in March.
But March seems far away as the rhododendrons are fully desiccated, their leaves sadly drooping to survive the chill. Our dog Daisy, is missing the squirrels, who are in torpor and not romping around the yard looking for nuts and other foods. The only real activity comes from the finches, woodpeckers, sparrows, blue jays, snowbirds, titmice and other birds that are visiting the feeders in record numbers requiring me to refill them every day. We cut some greens from the firs to spruce up a vase of forced tulips that sit in the middle of our dining room table. The paperwhites have finally bloomed indoors and the amaryllis are starting to show some growth. Time to read another gardening book.
