Evening.. well I had a pretty good garden this summer.. everything came in so fast that now i'm ready to plant something i can eat this winter... it's been so very dry here all summer that my water bill is ..WELL!! i tilled up part of my garden today.. after watering every night for 3 months to keep my Vegggies growing it was like tilling up the moon.. i can't believe how dry it was..but i have it down to about 6" now and will till again in a few days.. we love greens, potatoes, onions,can these be planted any time soon? any more suggestions for winter Veggies? i live in Martin ,Georgia on Lake Hartwell.. winters are mild to cold... PS.. what is the best type of grass seed to throw out for the winter.. lots of shade!! Tom
Living up here in Canada the weather is probably a bit cooler than where you are but I grow kale and collards over the winter. They grow slowly and the cold weather seems to make the greens a lot sweeter than they are during the summer months. I also gow a variety of green onion that is hardy over the winter and they are great to have in salads and on boiled potatoes. I've heard that in these parts you can plant potatoes in mid to late summer and you will be able to harvest small new potatoes by Christmas time (of course you need to plant them under straw so that you can get them out of the garden (in case the ground freezes!) There are probably some types of lettuce that would grow also. I often hear of people planting a fall crop of lettuce although I have never done so. Anne
In Georgia, you can make fall plantings of all sorts of greens. Try mustard greens, collards, spinach, kale. Brassicas, like broccoli and cabbage should do well. You can plant carrots, leave them in ground after the tops die back and you can harvest throughout the winter. You may want to cover those with a bale of hay or something, like Anne58 suggests for potatoes, so that you can still dig them if the ground freezes. In general the greens like the cooler weather better. If you protect them from frosts, you might keep them going into the winter.
I have done lettuce many times, the variety is "Winter Density". It actually does far better thru the fall winter and spring than the normal timing of trying to mature it in late spring/summer (tends to be bitter then). Many European veggies are bred for winter/spring harvest, as they don't have the huge Californian veggie factory going to provide winter vegetables...the winter lettuces are one excellent example if you can find seeds available down there. Territorial Seed company in the U.S. is a useful source of info as well as seed re: winter harvests. Also, I'm trying to imagine what your hot summers must be like, after one of the coolest in many years up my way! Even here tho, it's amazing how much we can water and still have dry soil a few inches down...at least we always have our winter monsoons to eventually re-soak all the soil profile here.
