If you live in zones 9-13 you can grow year round without a greenhouse with a little bit of frost protection. When you extend your growing season it doesn’t have to be as time intensive as your summer garden. Growing a cool season garden for part of the year will introduce a variety that will confuse the pests, give your garden a rest and allow you to eat veggies you normally wouldn’t be able to grow! In the 9th video of our Cool Season Garden series discover how to grow year round in zones 9-13. If you don’t live in zones 9- 13 you should still watch this short training video. You will experience these kind of growing season later in the season and the techniques shared will help you grow year round in a greenhouse in your growing zone!
In zones 9-13 you will very rarely get a frost so growing year round is completely possible if you plant a cool season garden. The closer you are to the equator the longer days you will have in the winter. This will open you up to a host of vegetables that you can grow. In October you can plant broccoli, cabbage, carrots, garlic, onions, peas, radishes, salad turnips and a host of our favorite leafy greens.
If you do live above the equator, your garden will feel the effects of the short winter days. There are plants that are day length sensitive and they will not produce well during the short days even if it is warmer. The cool weather plants will all do well in the shorter days. They will not do so well in the long hot summer days. This will give you the chance to grow different things in your garden. You can rest the warm weather plants and just enjoy the cool weather plants. It will also give you a chance to have garden space to put up some cool weather vegetables like spinach and peas in the freezer for eating in the hot summer.
Even though you can grow year round, this will give you a chance to change up your menu to plants that you can’t grow in the summer. Also by changing up the plants you will confuse the bug population and may get a reprieve from the pests. If you are growing cool weather plants you will more than likely not need any frost protection for your plants at all. Even if you do get a freak freeze, the cool weather plants can handle it.
No matter where you live on this planet, you can be playing with plants year round whether it is indoors, in containers, in cold frames or gardens. Maybe it is just watching some videos to learn some amazing new techniques or perusing the seed catalogs. Keep feeding your garden passion and you will reap the rewards.
This is the last part of the Cool Season Garden Series. If you want to begin trying to grow year round this is a great series to begin in. If you need help with starting your seeds, pest control or building cold frames/trellises watch our past training videos and invite your friends to join the High Performance Garden Community. Would you like to high performance garden in one season? This high performance garden system is an easy and efficient garden that will produce more nutrient dense produce than you have ever had before. Check out the Leafy Greens Container Garden or the Abundance Garden Course to create your garden this season.
Stay tuned for next week for the special High Performance Garden article on planning your garden in the cooler months no matter where you are in the world!
Until next time may your garden be easy, fun, productive and always organic!
Lynn
Email me any questions you have about cool season gardening by the equator. It will be fun to talk gardening with someone who lives in such a beautiful corner of the world!
