Time To Plant The Winter Garden

Vegetable gardens don't look all that great this time of year, that's for sure. However, if you live in a temperate climate, like we have in California, it's time to plant a winter garden. No, you will not have those wonderful vine ripened tomatoes by Christmas, but you will have an abundance of fantastic vegetables including carrots, turnips, onions, kale, chard, cabbage and the various types of lettuce to enjoy during the winter months. The point is, that now is the time to plant while the soil is still warm and almost everything you stick in the ground, whether seed or seedling, will get off to a good start. Wait another month or so when the soil cools and you will have lost the opportunity to get your winter garden off to the best beginning possible. I began to prepare for my winter garden a month or so ago by adding composted oak leaves and well aged and horse manure (the secret to any organic garden) to the top of the raised beds in the garden. My raised beds do not have sides but are simply rectangular mounds of organic material that are about a foot or so deep in the middle and a few inches in depth around the bed's perimeter. The beds are placed directly over the native rocky clay soil we have in the hills of the bay area and are basically dirt less. Yes, you heard me right, dirt is the least important component of an organic garden and that is particularly true if you are gardening in a rocky clay or adobe soil. If you are dealing with such a soil, do not attempt to rehabilitate it, plant over it in a bed of organic material. Carrots, as well as onions and other vegetables with small seeds, are difficult to plant. Fortunately, there is a nearly effortless solution to this problem. Simply, place a couple of handfuls of sand in a small container, add a package of seeds to the sand and mix well. Saturate the soil with water before planting the seeds. Using a hoe with a four to six inch wide blade, make a very shallow trench, about one quarter to one half an inch deep, in the area where you wish to plant the seeds. Sprinkle the sand and seed mixture over the surface of the shallow row and cover with soil or, as in my case, the organic material which makes up the garden bed. Use the back of the hoe to compress the material that has been placed over the seeds and water the prospective new row of vegetables. The advantage of this method for sowing vegetable seeds is threefold. First, you never have to deal with individual tiny seeds that are nearly impossible to see let alone arrange correctly in a garden row. In fact, using this methodology a blind man could sow carrots in his garden. Second, and of equal importance, the developing seedlings will be spread, more or less, evenly over a wide row in the garden, rather than in a crowded straight line. This, of course, greatly reduces the time you will spent thinning the rows of vegetables in the garden. Finally, vegetable seeds are expensive, using this method of sowing seeds will save you money because you will not be throwing away nearly as many valuable seeds during the thinning process. Happy fall gardening. For those of you in Minnesota, get ready to enjoy the snow and ice. Look on the bright side, you will soon be past the mosquito season.