Seed sowing for winter gardening-last call

Lettuce and other greens under a portable green house last winter

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Mid-September is the latest to sow seeds for your winter garden.  Your plants need to be up and fully mature by November 16th in our zone.  This is the date in our area that daylight reaches 10 hours.  Less than this amount of daylight and plants go dormant.  We reach another 10 hours of daylight on January 25th when they will start growing appreciably again.

You can use this web page to calculate the hours of daylight by zone.  http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/Dur_OneYear.php

When planting seeds in the fall, add two weeks to the days to maturity to the days listed on the seed packet.  If planting in mulched beds, dig a trench, plant seeds and cover with potting soil.  Seedlings are not strong enough to break through the hard crust of mulch.

Here is a list of vegetables for winter harvesting you can plants seeds for now:

*Arugula

*Beets

*Carrots

*Chard

*Chervil

*Chicory

*Chinese cabbage

*Claytonia

*Coriander
*Corn salad (also called Mache)
French or Italian dandelion

*Egyptian walking onions

*Endive

*Kale

*Lambs lettuce

*Lands cress

*Leaf radish

*Leeks

*Lettuce

*Mibuna

*Minutina

*Mustard spinach

*Mustard

*Pak choi
*Sorrel

*Spinach

*Tatsoi

*Turnip

*Winter purslane

You can plant lettuce, spinach and other greens you would like to be able to make salads all winter in the location where you are going to cover with a portable green house.  I planted our greens in Earthboxes and then covered them with our portable green house shown above.