What's happening in the mid December garden

Sunrise in the December edible garden

Saturday, December 12, 2025

Most think that nothing is alive to eat in a mid December garden.  Winter is hard on almost all living green things, but some can out weather even the harshest winter temperatures, especially if given a helping hand.

So, what is still surviving in December in our Zone 7 garden?  Perennial herbs and vegetables are still green in the garden along with cole crops.  Oregano, creeping thyme, mint, parsley, rosemary, horseradish, artichoke plants, carrots, celery, kale, sorrel, chives, winter's cress, cultivated dandelions, chard, sprouting broccoli, and onions are all still green without any cover.  If you had broad beans, Brussels sprouts, cabbage or cauliflower planted, they would all be doing fine.  When the temperatures get into the teens, they would appreciate a cover.

The winter edible garden

Extend the season with protection for plants

Using pop-up greenhouses to garden year round

Cold season crops for your edible garden

Want a vegetable and fruit garden that you only have to plant once? Try perennials!

Edible December garden bed

Salad burnet

Oregano

Parsley

Chard

Rosemary

Egyptian walking onions

Kale

Under cover, lettuce, sprouting broccoli, celery, parsley, sorrel, chard, and kale are still green and happy. 

Greens inside portable greenhouse

Portable greenhouse over potted greens

I have a couple of dwarf tomato plants and a few pepper plants that I moved into the house a couple of weeks ago.  There are fruits that are ready to be picked on all of them.  The winged bean plant I brought in is nice and green but no beans or flowers.  Same for my 3 year old Meyer lemon tree.  I hope it blooms and fruits this year!

Use the fresh greens and onions in salads and herbs in salads, soups or cooked dishes.  It is cold outside, but the garden keeps giving.

Another option for fresh greens is to grow sprouts indoors.  It's super easy and nutritious:

Indoor winter gardening-grow sprouts, microgreens or wheat grass! 

Indoor winter gardening-grow sprouts, microgreens or wheat grass!

Microgreens growing in reused salad container

Sunday, December 7, 2025

Winter doesn't mean you can't eat fresh, nutrition packed greens.  There are many that grow well indoors and different ways of growing them.  Sprouts are grown in trays or jars with no soil while microgreens and wheat grass are grown in a shallow layer of soil.  All can be grown indoors.

Something easy and nutritious are sprouts.  I bought a simple, inexpensive sprout grower.  You can also use a quart Mason jar.  You can get seeds on line and in many grocery stores, nurseries, and big box hardware stores for growing sprouts and microgreens.  I like buying a seed mix so I get a nice variety of taste and nutrition.

Sprouts are a powerhouse of nutrition and so easy to grow.  There are all kinds of seed sprouting kits out there.  The one I have that I really like is 3 levels so you can have one that is fully sprouted that you are using with 2 in various stages of growth so you always have a ready supply of sprouts.

With a simple sprout grower, you can have nutritious sprouts of many different veggies, beans, and/or grasses in 3-5 days.  All you do is put a teaspoon of seeds in the grower and water it twice daily.

Top 10 Nutrient Dense Veggies & Fruits

If you want to try with a Mason jar, there is more work involved.  You'll need to punch holes in the lid.  Place seeds in jar, fill with water and leave overnight.  In the morning, drain the water.  You will need to rinse and drain 2-3 times a day until most of the seeds are sprouted.  Their tails will be about an inch long.  Move sprout jars to a place where they will get sunlight.  After the sprouts turn green, they are ready to eat.  Place jars in the refrigerator to keep fresh.  Use sprouts on eggs, salads, and any other dish you want to spruce up with fresh sprouts!

Microgreens are also very easy to grow indoors.  You can get variety seed packets of microgreens anywhere they sell seeds or on line.  You can reuse a plastic salad container or seed flat to use as a pot.  Just add potting soil, sprinkle the seeds down as instructed on the seed packet, tamp down gently, water, place in a sunny window and you will have microgreens in 10-21 days, depending on the variety.  To speed up sprouting, you can use a warming mat to boost the soil temperature.  Once sprouted, just cut with scissors and use or place in a glass jar in the refrigerator for keeping.

If there are still seeds visible after your initial harvest, you can wait and see if they will sprout or go ahead and start your next batch of microgreens.  I would compost the used soil and start with fresh to keep the chance for any soil diseases to develop low.  Be sure to sanitize your growing container before adding new soil and seeds.

Wheat grass is another great edible.  I put it on salads.  You can also juice it.  Wheat grass is a great alkalizer.  Today’s diet is so acidic.  Basically anything we eat besides leafy greens and some other vegetables are acidic.  Your body’s blood pH must stay between 7.35-7.45; anything above 7.0 is alkaline.  Wheat grass helps balance your pH.  Wheat grass is also a purifier of the blood.  There are wheat grass growing kits too.  Or you can use an old salad tub that you fill with potting soil and grow them right in the salad tub or seedling flat like microgreens.

Sprouts and microgreens mirror the taste of their grown counterparts.  Here are some reco's based on taste:

Spicy-mustards, arugula, radishes, sorrel, cress, basil, oregano

Mild-amaranth, chard, carrots, cabbage, broccoli, beets, kale

You wouldn't want to grow as sprouts varieties that produce a really thick stem like squash or melons.  These will just be chewy.

If you like to add color (which also adds different nutrients), be sure to include varieties like purple amaranth, neon chard, red kale, red varieties of mustard (Ruby Streaks, Giant Red), red-veined sorrel, red beets, purple basil, or many more.
The Power of Purple

So, if you are wanting some fresh, nutritious, home grown food, it is super easy to grow any of these indoors year round!

Make your own flavored olive oil

 

Saturday, December 6, 2025

You see these beautiful bottles of flavored oils in stores.  You can make these at home!  This a great way to use the extra herbs and peppers you dried from the summer and fall garden.  You simply infuse the oil with your favorite herb or pepper.

I use a wide mouth canning jar for the infusing.  For herbs, I fill the jar with stems of cut, dried herbs, cover completely with organic cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and let sit for 2-4 weeks.  For hot peppers, I do the same thing, straining out the peppers after 4 weeks.  At this time, you can pour the oil into a beautiful container.  It is safe to put a sprig or two of completely dried herb or pepper into the container.

If you want instant gratification, put the herbs and oil into a sauce pan and simmer on low heat for 20 minutes.  After cooling, the oil is ready to be strained into the serving bottle.

I use only dried herbs.  If you use fresh, you will need to keep refrigerated and use within a week or two.

Herbs are the easiest edible to grow and most are perennials which means you plant them one time and they come back every year.  I think they are the most cost saving crops you can grow as spices are very expensive.  For growing your own herbs: Culinary kitchen herb garden

What to start in the December garden

Newly sprouted greens inside portable greenhouse

Sunday, November 29, 2025 

You can still plant outdoors for the edible garden in December.  What you are planting in December may not germinate quickly.  Growth will restart in mid January when daylight hours get back to 10 hours.  Keep your edibles under cover to encourage germination and growth and to extend the harvest all the way through to spring.  

What is a four season garden?
You can garden year round in small space
Planning for a four season garden

This month you can sow more greens, carrots, and herbs in the greenhouse.  You can also transplant trees and shrubs and even spring bulbs as long as the soil is workable.   Midwest Perennial Vegetable Garden

Here are the crops you can start outdoors and indoors in the December Midwest edible garden:

December seeds outdoors

Austrian winter peas-will sprout in early spring

Broad beans-will sprout when conditions are right

Spinach seeds-will sprout in late winter/early spring

Snow peas-will sprout in early spring

December seeds under cover

Will sprout under cover:

Arugula

Sprouting Broccoli

Carrots

Celery
Corn salad

Endive
Escarole

Frisee

Lettuce, Winter Hardy types

Mustard and Mustard Greens

Parsley and Parsley Root

Pak choi

Austrian and Snow Peas

Radicchio

Scallions

Sorrel
Spinach

Swiss Chard

December transplants

Trees and bushes until ground freezes

Transplants for winter and overwintering

December seeds indoors

All kinds of microgreens

Onion seeds-end of month

Flowers-Dephinium, Dianthus, Viola end of month

Stratify native flowers in refrigerator or outdoors

Look for cold hardy varieties when planting for winter growing and harvests.  You will be surprised to harvest all through the winter months things like greens, onions, Austrian peas, carrots, and cabbage when you get them started in the fall.  You can also extend the harvest by looking for the same crop with different days to harvest timing so that they mature at different times.  For those you are seeding now, they will provide your late winter and early spring harvests.  

 Winter planted crops take longer to sprout and grow than they do in the spring.  It's because the days are getting shorter rather than longer and the temperatures are falling.  Winter solstice is the shortest day of the year on December 21, so daylight hours are still getting shorter until then.  Just be patient, the seeds will sprout when conditions are right.  Growth is very slow now as the daylight hours are less than 10 and temperatures are cold.  In my area, we will get back to 10 hours of daylight on January 19.  Growth will pick up in late January.  

To keep plants producing, keep them covered.  The biggest risk with covers is the plants overheating.  Full sun can raise the temperatures by 50 degrees.  Keep this in mind and give ventilation when the temperatures are getting up into the 50's with nice sunshine.

Window open on portable greenhouse

If you are using a row cover, they should be in place now.  I put mine in place when the temperatures are getting into the low 20's at night.  Your plants are safe from overheating as long as the temperatures don't get into the upper 50's with the full sun.  When temperatures are that warm, just open the ends of the row cover and close back up when the temperatures are forecasted back into the 20's or colder.

The same goes for greenhouses. I have my edible greens covered by my portable greenhouse with the "windows" open to vent when it gets into the 50's.  You can use cover to extend the harvest all the way to next spring.  Extend the season with protection for plants  Homegrown, organic salads in a Midwest winter 

December 2025 Edible Garden Planner

Early December garden; chard in the foreground, herbs in the background

November 29, 2025

December is when many stick to the indoors and staying warm.  When winter arrives, it may appear that everything is dead outside, but there is still life in the garden.  In the beds, kale, cabbage, salad burnet, sorrel, rosemary, oregano, garlic, onions, lettuce, leeks, chard, dill, celery, sage, carrots, broccoli, spinach are all still green in December.  October planted garlic is sprouting.  Under cover, greens, celery, parsley and lettuce are growing.

The winter edible garden

This fall had weeks of above average temperatures with below normal for rainfall.  We had our first killing at the beginning of November.  We brought all my overwintering tropicals, bay tree, moringa tree, basil, aloe vera and citrus tree a couple of weeks ago.  I'll bring in the rest of the edibles, pepper plants, tomato plants and dwarf tamarillo today or tomorrow as it's calling for the low in the 20's this week.  The pepper plants will continue to produce for a few more weeks.  It will keep its leaves and start producing again in February.  The tomatoes and tamarillo are an experiment to see if they survive indoors.   

Outdoors, fresh herbs, onions, kale, chard, lettuce and broccoli are just steps away from the back door, the portable green houses are packed with greens.  The citrange I planted outdoors last fall died back to the roots.  The root stock resprouted in the spring.  I'll see if it survives this winter.

Most Mediterranean herbs are perennials so you get to enjoy them practically year round.  You can also grow many herbs indoors as well like chives, oregano, rosemary, parsley, chervil, and basil.  Rosemary, basil and bay are good ones to dig up and bring indoors to guarantee survival through the winter.  Just place your potted herbs in a sunny window.  I keep my bay tree in a pot.  I have put it in the basement with a grow light but this year I put it upstairs in a south facing window.  My bay tree is over 9 feet tall after 9 years in a pot. 

Growing herbs indoors for winter

If you are using a greenhouse or row cover, your kale, celery, mustard, lettuce, chard, spinach, cabbage, broccoli, Brussel sprouts, sprouting broccoli will be happy all winter.  They will not grow much until sunlight gets back to 10 hours per day in late January, but you can still harvest from them right now.  Be sure on sunny, warm days to pop the top on your covers or you will scorch your greens.  It can get 50 degrees warmer inside a greenhouse on a sunny day than the actual temperature outside.  Do check to make sure your pots in the greenhouse have enough moisture.  Open when it is warm to check, water and harvest.  If kept covered, little moisture escapes so there is not much watering that needs to be done over the winter.  While plants are actively growing, fertilize every couple of weeks.  

Homegrown, organic salads in a Midwest winter

Cultivated dandelion in a pot

All cold crops are at their sweetest during the cold weather.  Frost brings out the sugars in cold crops.  Hardy greens like chard, kale, spinach, mustard greens, cultivated dandelion greens, pea shoots and collard greens make great salads and are tasty steamed or braised.  You can still sow seeds in December to get a head start on the spring garden.  What to plant in the December edible garden 

Make sure if you have any potted veggies to put them on the ground if they are on coasters to keep them warmer during the winter.  The ideal location is in full sun and a sheltered area on the south side of the house to extend their growing time.  Placing straw bales around them or mounding mulch provides extra protection.  Moving them up against the wall on the south side does double duty-southern exposure gets the most sun and warmth and the wall radiates its warmth.  Pots left exposed on all sides will be zone colder than the ones planted in the ground.  If you are in Zone 7, be sure that plants left in pots are hardy to at least Zone 6 if you want them to come back in the spring.  If they are not, put under cover, mulch around them or bring into the garage or basement for the winter.

How to extend the harvest after a hard freeze 

Veggies like your favorite tomato, pepper, eggplant, or celery that you potted and moved indoors will continue to produce indoors if provided warmth and enough sunlight.  My Chiptelin pepper is one I bring in every year.  I have brought my Jigsaw pepper indoors last winter and will again this week.  I am bringing in a small sweet pepper plant Habanada to see how it overwinters indoors.   I will put them in my sunroom.  I may need to add supplemental lighting as we have triple pane windows so they keep most rays from getting through the glass.  

Your indoor and outdoor plants will still need to be fertilized at about half the rate as during the growing season.  A liquid fertilizer every two weeks would be plenty.  I used blood meal to provide nitrogen for my greens when I planted them in the portable greenhouses.

Be sure to spray your edible garden beds with deer repellant, sooner rather than later.  The deer and rabbits will be getting hungry and your edible garden will look like a feast to them!  If you keep them from getting into the garden the first time, it is much easier to deter them after the fact.  Quick tip-how I keep the deer away

Chives in front, sage and rosemary in back

In addition to the greens, onions and fresh herbs fresh from the garden, we will be eating the extras I put up over the summer and fall.  I have green beans, okra, tomatoes, pesto, winter squash, sweet peppers and hot peppers in the freezer.  Canned tomato sauce, hot peppers, pickles and pickle relish in the pantry.  I have dried onions, homemade chili powder and herbs for seasoning dishes.

Preserving the extras from the summer garden

If you don't have much freezer space but want to grow what you can preserve without freezing, check out this blog for your garden this next year 21 no tech storage crops.

If you weren't able to put in your own garden this year or have enough to put up for the cold months, buying local is a good option.  Many farmers markets will open up again right before Christmas.  You can also look up local farms at www.localharvest.org  If you want to support your local farmer and get fresh produce come spring, buying a share from a local farmer is an excellent option.  It's called CSA (community supported agriculture).  You buy a share now and then get a weekly allotment of fresh produce when gardens start producing again in the spring.

Before I started our own edible garden, we joined a CSA.  It was great.  We got lots of super fresh produce, our weekly grocery bill was significantly reduced as our meals were planned around the vegetables, and it was an adventure getting to try new recipes with veggies we had never ate before.  
Eat well, be healthy

A CSA shows you what grows well in your area.  You can find out the varieties you like and when they come into season.  You can even save the seeds from the varieties that you want to grow in your future garden if you partner with an organic CSA that grows open pollinated and heirloom vegetables and fruits.
What do the terms GMO, natural, heirloom, organic, hybrid really mean?

To advertise as “organic” you have to be certified.  Many farmers cannot afford to do this.  Some farmers participate in the "Certified Naturally Grown" program.  This is less expensive than USDA organic, but also relies on inspections by other CNG farmers, non-CNG farmers, extension agents, master gardeners and customers instead of USDA certified agents.  If you are interested in produce grown without pesticides, herbicides or other chemicals, ask the farmer if she uses organic practices.  Go visit them to see the garden for yourself before you commit.  You can also check out reviews on line. 

Many sell out by January so don’t delay if you want to join!

Tarragon, thyme, sage, rosemary and chives

Winter is time to savor the fresh herbs from the garden along with what you have preserved, browsing for canning ideas, and planning next year's garden.  A potential Christmas meal using what is growing in the garden in December, Jazz up the Christmas feast with herbs from the garden  Consider making herb mixes and herbal salts to give to family and friends as Christmas gifts.  Make your own "Herbes de Provence"   Using herbs, flowers and fruit for flavored sugars and salts   If you had a bumper canning season, consider giving extras as Christmas gifts too or to your local food panty.

I have used Christmas break in the past as the time to finalize my garden plan for the spring.  Now that I am retired, I do it a little earlier.  I look back on my notes from last year's edible garden and this year's seed catalogs to decide what new varieties to add to my standbys.  Here is my 2025 garden reflections and plans for 2026.

Reflections on the 2025 garden and the 2026 garden plan

Seed catalogs have started arriving and there are tons to look at on the internet that you can start ordering for your spring garden.  For tips on choosing seed catalogs to order from:   New seed catalogs are here! 

What's happening in the late November edible garden

Lavender in late fall

Sunday, November 23, 2025

We have had a couple of hard freezes in the first week of November.  Since then we have had chilly days and days in the 70's.  Another hard freeze is forecasted for this week and highs in the 40's.  Harvests in the garden are greens, herbs, and onions.  The summer crops are done until next year.

I stripped all the fruits off the plants before our hard freeze at the beginning of the month and put the greenhouse covers over my cool season loving greens.  Usually with a cover, the greens produce all the way through to spring.  We've put the greens on the basement patio which is on the northeast side.  I re-opened the covers when it got so warm.  After the 60's in the next couple of days, I'll put the covers back on to encourage growth.

We took all the tropicals at the beginning of the month except for the lantana and jasmine tree.  They'll be coming in later this week.  I use a grow light over them so they get enough light to survive the winter.  I do have a couple of tomatoes and peppers I'll bring into the sunroom to overwinter.  We put triple pane windows in our house to make it more energy efficient; it also keeps more daylight from entering.  I may have to add daylight bulbs in the sunroom too.

The onions, oregano, thyme and mint will stay green without cover over the winter.

Inside, I cleared out most the frozen tomatoes from last year and made tomato sauce.  Had 9 quarts of frozen tomatoes that I used another 6 pints of frozen sweet peppers along with 6 bay leaves and 8 garlic cloves to make into 12 pints of sauce.  Our tomato harvest was much smaller this year because of the prolonged heat waves we had in the upper 90's.  And since we had so many tomatoes last year, I did not plant a late crop to pick up production like I usually do.  Next year, I will because we will need fresh tomatoes to freeze.  I'll also look for more high heat tolerant varieties to try next summer as it looks like these type of heat waves are here to stay.

We picked up our deer from the processor yesterday.  I always make sauce before we have to load the freezer back up with venison.  Plus, I go through everything we have in the freezer to know what we need to have the deer processed into and how much veggies are left to determine what I need to plant in next year's garden.

I have already done my garden review of this season and an initial cut on what to grow next season.  I started getting seed catalogs this week.  I'll look through them to tweak the plan and order seeds.  I'll start seeds indoors in late February or March. 

Reflections on the 2025 garden and the 2026 garden plan

The only lingering garden chore is to plant garlic and shallots.  I think I'll order a dwarf mulberry tree.  They start producing a ton of fruit in 2-3 years.  I'll also look for other annual fruits to try next year to fill the gap.

If using a greenhouse this winter, remember the biggest killer of veggies in greenhouses?  Getting too hot!  Make sure you crack open your green house when the temps get above freezing and the sun is shining.  

How to read seed packets for planting your garden

Front of seed packet

Saturday, November 22, 2025

Seed packets are a wealth of information on the plant and its ideal growing conditions.  All give you the plant common and botanical name, many show you when to plant in your zone, when to plant in relationship to your frost date, how far apart to plant, what type of soil it grows well in, amount of sunlight needed for optimal growth, how many days from sowing until the plant is harvestable, and a detailed description of the highlights of the plant itself.  I love reading plant descriptions, looking for varieties that are "compact" and "prolific" for my small garden or "winter hardy" for winter gardening, or "heat tolerant" for summer gardening.  They give a wealth of information to decide what new variety or crop to try next.

On the front of the seed packet, you typically get the common name, the botanical name and a picture or drawing of the plant.  Some seed companies will also put a clay pot symbol on the front to indicate that the plant does well in a container (see pic of Burpee's seed packets below).  Many will also indicate if the plant is an annual or perennial (comes back every year).  Most also give a very short description of the plant.  They will also say if they are "organic" or "hybrid".  Some will also state if the plant is "open pollinated" or "heirloom".  

99% of what I grow is open pollinated or heirloom.  All heirlooms are open pollinated varieties that have been around for generations.  Open pollinated varieties come back "true" to their parents.  Hybrids won't necessarily come back the same as their parents.  I like saving seed from the plants that do well to plant again next year.    

What do the terms GMO, natural, heirloom, organic, hybrid really mean?

Back of seed packet

On the back side of the seed packet there is a wealth of growing information.  You typically get when to plant the seed in relation to your frost date for both starting indoors and outdoors, germination time (how long does it take from when you plant the seed until it sprouts), how deep to plant the seed, any special treatment of the seed prior to planting, how far apart to space the seed, when/how to thin the emerging seedlings and days to harvest if it is an edible plant.  There is a longer description of the most desirable traits of the plant and which season it thrives in.  If a flower seed, it will give timing of flowering and height of the plant.   There will also be a date that the seed was packed for and a "sell by" date.  Unless you store in the refrigerator, germination rates dramatically decline after the first year and this varies by plant seed type.  I keep my seeds in the refrigerator in ziplock bags to keep them viable.  I have seeds that are over 10 years old and still have great germination rates.

Burpee's seed packet front even has the pot symbol for those that do well in  containers

Key attributes I am looking for to improve the productivity in my garden, I look for on the descriptors on the back.  Examples-if I want to maximize the harvest I get from a pepper plant, I will look for words like "prolific", "produces until frost", "continuous harvest".  If I am having a disease problem in my humid summer garden, I will look for words of "disease resistant", "powdery mildew resistant", "blight resistant" or whatever disease issue I am having.  For the best summer producers, look for terms like heat tolerant, thrives in hot temperatures, drought tolerant.  For the best cold season crops, look for terms like "winter hardy", "frost tolerant", etc.  If you want to harvest tomatoes all at once, look for the description "determinant".

With the crazy heat waves we are having now, I look for tomato varieties that do well in extreme heat.  Typical tomato plants produce sterile flowers at when temperatures are averaging 85F.  I'm going to buy a couple of new to me varieties that thrive in heat.  

For even more information about a particular variety, check on the seed company's web site or seed catalog.  When I first started gardening, I poured over Territorial Seed catalog.  Their catalogs have a detailed planting and growing guide for each family of vegetable seeds they offer.  Even now if a crop isn't doing the best, I will go back and look at all the great growing information that they have for every crop they sell seeds for.

I do look for varieties that have disease or pest resistance that I have experienced in my garden.  Squash bugs are a big problem in our area so I look for varieties that say they are squash bug resistant to try in my garden.  For example, I used to grow regular zucchini but they would also get ate up and diseased from squash bugs.  Now, I grow Trombetta squash that is not as attractive to squash bugs nor succumbs to disease.  

If you are growing flowers, what may be a strength for a vegetable can be a liability for a flower.  "Prolific" means it produces a lot which you typically want in a vegetable but in a flower that can be synonymous with "invasive".  A flowers that "self sows" means it produces many seeds that turn into more plants which can end up being invasive in your flower bed.  Think through what the descriptions mean for your bed and if it is a positive attribute or something you don't want to get started in your garden.

I use Johnny's Seeds web site for for their seed starting date calculator to plan out when to start my seeds indoors.  You plug in your last frost date and it spits out the dates for you on when to plant your seeds.  Baker Heirloom Seed puts out an enormous annual catalog that dives into the history and growing of different crops that I look forward to getting and reading every year.  They have a huge selection of all kinds of unusual varieties.  I try new varieties every year, along with the standbys that grow exceptionally well in my garden and garden conditions.