In the Garden Articles

Vegetables for Your Winter Garden

by Joan S. Bolton

Quick and easy, or slow and steady. You can have it both ways with winter vegetables.

Some crops, such as carrots and radishes, are one-shot wonders that offer nearly immediate gratification. Other crops, like broccoli and leafy greens, take longer to mature. But once they get going, they'll produce their harvest for several weeks or longer.

Regardless of whether they're fast or slow, all winter vegetables need at least four to six hours of sun a day, along with excellent soil and excellent drainage. Some of the smaller edibles are easy to grow in pots. You can move them to the sunniest spots in your garden, onto a patio or close to a faucet.

Quick Root Crops

They grow, they ripen, you dig them up and they're gone.

Among the fastest root crops are radishes, which are ready to pick in as little as four weeks.

Start with the traditional red orbs. Or if you're feeling adventurous, try Easter Egg radishes, which come in pink, red and white. Long white radishes, such as White Icicle, look just like carrots. Watermelon is an interesting heirloom from China. About the size of a Mandarin orange, it's white on the outside and magenta within. Other white Oriental radishes, including sweet, crispy Japanese Daikon, grow up to 2 feet long and take about twice as long to mature.

Radishes -- along with other root crops such as carrots, turnips and beets -- are best grown from seed. All should be sown directly where they'll grow, rather than started in flats or containers and transplanted later.

Prepare your planting area for all of the root crops by breaking up any clumps and digging in lots of fine compost and other organic material to create a loose, fertile mix. Be sure the bed drains fast. That way, if we get sustained rain, your edibles won't sit in a soggy mess for days on end.

Dig at least 2 to 3 inches deeper than however far down you expect your roots to grow. For example, if you sow 8-inch Kaleidoscope Mix carrots, which come in red, purple, yellow and orange, dig down nearly a foot.

If your soil is sandy, that won't be difficult. But if your soil is heavy clay, look for shorter, rounder roots. For instance, Thumbelina carrots are cute, stumpy nubs that grow to about the size of a golf ball. White Hakurei turnips and red-and-white striped Chioggia beets are round, too. Both grow about 2 inches across and are great for slicing and tossing fresh into salads.

If creating those perfect conditions in the ground is too difficult, grow your roots in a raised bed or container, where you can control the soil mix, depth and drainage from the start.

Regardless of the site, start by shaping little furrows with your finger, sprinkling in the tiny seeds, then covering them lightly. The individual seed packets will provide instructions on spacing and depth.

Keep the soil moist until the seeds sprout. Mist the soil several times a day, cover it with wet paper towels or make a little plastic tent by poking toothpicks or wood barbeque skewers into the ground, then suspending the plastic over the top. Just don't hose down the area: the force of the water can move the seeds before they've had a chance to root.

Slow & Steady

Other winter vegetables let you nibble around the edges for weeks or more.

A classic for the Central Coast is broccoli. Commercial growers generally whack off the main flower, then turn under the plants. But in the home garden, you can slice off that first, perfect head, then wait for a second, third and sometimes even fourth round of shoots to sprout. The new shoots aren't as big as the first flower, but they're every bit as tasty.

You can try the same approach with cauliflower, although secondary shoots don't always appear. As for our other large, edible flower, cabbage: it only produces one head per plant. Earliana is a traditional white-headed cabbage that matures to 2 pounds. Salad Delight is a red head that weighs in at a hefty 3 pounds.

Soil prep for any of these edible flower crops is less painstaking than for the root crops. While they still appreciate a fertile, fluffy, well-drained mix, they're not as fussy about a few dirt clods.

However, all three take several months to mature and ultimately require a lot of space. A common strategy is to double up by tucking in radishes and carrots around the edges. You'll dig up the little guys and eat them before the big three need the room. If you do adopt this approach, you're back to breaking up all the chunks in the soil and amending to create a silky, fine texture.

In-Betweeners

Leafy greens go both ways. They mature quickly, with many varieties ready to pick in two months or less. Buy seedlings and you may be harvesting within a few weeks.

For butterhead or Boston lettuce types, pluck the whole plant. Little Gem matures in just 50 days, while Buttercrunch takes 75 days.

But for loose-leaf lettuce, such as Red Sails and Black Seeded Simpson, you can prolong the harvest for a month or more by snipping the outer leaves and letting the plant continue to grow from the center.

Spinach and Swiss chard benefit from the same trick. Spinach will eventually bolt. But you can harvest Swiss Chard for a couple of years. It's also pretty. Bright Lights bears stems in vibrant shades of yellow, pink, red, orange, purple and white, all with dark green foliage.

Soil prep for the salad greens is similar to the root crops -- other than you may not need to dig as deep. The greens produce shallow roots, so about 6 inches down should be sufficient. All of the greens, along with spinach and Swiss chard, are easy to start from seed.

Marauding birds are likely to pose the biggest challenge, as they love to devour every last tender sprout emerging from the earth. If you sow your seeds directly in the garden, cover the area with a foot-tall canopy of netting, then bury the edges of the netting all the way around so the birds can't sneak in underneath.

Better yet, start your greens in nursery flats or pony packs that you can protect. Transplant the seedlings after they have developed at least two sets of true leaves. Our avian friends tend to ignore plants that have achieved a certain size. Or sidestep the bird threat altogether by purchasing larger seedlings at local nurseries.

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Winter Vegetables to Plant Now

Beets

Bok choy

Broccoli

Cabbage

Carrots

Cauliflower

Celery

Garlic

Kohlrabi

Leeks

Lettuce

Mustard

Onion, green bunching

Peas

Radicchio

Radishes

Spinach

Swiss Chard

Turnips

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Seeds of Wisdom

Winter vegetables do best with consistently moist -- but not soggy -- soil that drains well. Unlike with summer crops, don't let the top inch go dry between waterings. Apply a thin layer of fine-textured mulch to conserve moisture.

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Sources of Winter Vegetable Seeds

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds

2278 Baker Creek Rd., Mansfield, MO 65704, (417) 924-8917

www.rareseeds.com

Burpee

W. Atlee Burpee & Co., Warminster, PA 18974, (800) 888-1447

www.burpee.com

The Cook's Garden

P.O. Box C5030, Warminster, PA 18974, (800) 457-9703

www.cooksgarden.com

John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds

PO Box 638, Bantam, CT 06750, (860) 567-6086

www.kitchengardenseeds.com

Park Seed Co.

1 Parkton Ave., Greenwood, SC 29647, (800) 213-0076

www.parkseed.com

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