When you extend your growing season you can experience the higher production rate and the huge monetary savings of a high performance garden. Once you learn a few new skills extending the growing season will become an easy and natural process in your gardens. These skills include a working knowledge of which plants you grow in the warmer months and which ones you grow during the cooler months. Join me in one of my indoor gardens to learn how to extend your growing season!

How to Extend Your Growing Season

To successfully extend your growing season you will need to discover the number of frost free days you have in your garden. The easiest way to do this is to estimate according to your Plant Hardiness Zone. The USDA split the US into growing zones. Each growing zone has an estimate of the first and last frost date. From those two dates you can easily calculate the number of frost free days. (For more on growing zones you should read the article How to Plan Your Garden According to Your Region.)

During those days that your garden should be frost free you should plant all of your warm weather crops. On either side of those dates it can be possible to extend your growing season an extra 8 weeks during the season. This requires a working knowledge of how to cover your garden as well as cool season gardening techniques. I prefer to keep my frost protection easy for my gardens. I’m only 5’1 so I needed something I could easily assemble for my gardens. My no tools required easy trellis doubles as a frost protection during the cooler times of the year. It’s my favorite way to cover my gardens. However, you can purchase cold frames that you can easily place over your garden bed to extend your growing season for an especially long time!

Another method of extending your growing season is to store your cool weather root crops such as potatoes and carrots in the soil. This technique will only work in certain growing zones. You will have to be very careful to heavily mulch those root crops to keep them from freezing.

With these techniques I enjoy a harvest from my gardens well beyond my first and last frost dates and you can too. What are your tips for extending your growing season? Leave a comment below with your questions or innovative ideas you have used in your garden. I would love to hear from you!

If you want to learn more about what it takes to protect a High Performance Garden I would recommend reading High Performance Gardening: the Most Fun & Productive Organic Garden You Will Ever Have. Today is the day to begin planning your high performance garden for the spring.

I look forward to next week where we dive into the 10th characteristic of a High Performance Garden,

Lynn

Email me any questions you have about how to extend your growing season. I would love to help you achieve the high performance garden of your dreams!