Winter tasks and harvest ideas

By Rennie Phillips

After the temps got down to around 20 degrees a week or two back, most of us decided gardening was over and we'd wait till spring. I don't think many of us have even considered growing goodies through the winter months. But actually there are quite a few gardening things we can do even during the winter.

One thing that will make for a more productive summer next year is to get your soil tested. Doesn't take very long and it's easy. I normally take my shovel and push it pretty much straight down in the ground and take out that one shovel full. Then I take about an inch slice from the same hole. If you have a really small garden, one can use that one slice. If your garden is bigger than take several slices from different parts of your garden, mix the samples together and save about a quart of the soil. This will go into the soil test bag at the extension office. It'll cost you less than $20.

I dropped into a local hardware store the other day and the topic came up about planting garlic. If you haven't planted your garlic, now is a good time. Break the garlic bulbs into cloves and plant the clove about two inches deep. I'd keep them 5 or 6 inches apart in all directions. You can then mulch them with 4 to 6 inches of straw or dry grass clippings. The garlic will poke right through this mulch.

If you haven't cleaned off your garden like me now is a great time. We need to take the cages off our tomato plants and clean off the ground where they are. We usually burn our old tomato vines so as not to spread disease. I cleaned out one of our high tunnels a couple weeks ago. It was full of tomato vines so I put them on the burn pile. I need to now hoe off the weeds and grass that is left. This won't take long using my Rogue hoe. Boy those are really neat and well worth the investment.

Probably 45 or 50 days ago I cleaned out one of the smaller high tunnels and planted zucchini, a small hybrid turnip (Hakurei), Swiss chard and some purple top turnips in it. None of the seed came up real well but there was enough to pick occasionally and get a nice mess. The zucchini plants had some 3 inch yellow zucchini on them when it frosted and then froze. The freeze killed the zucchini but didn't hurt the chard or the turnips. So every couple weeks I can pick a small mess of chard and turnip greens. Don't have enough turnips to satisfy my dog and I so I've been buying a few in local stores. They have been really good. Even saw some nice looking turnip greens in a store last week.

We planted quite a few of the Hakurei turnip seed but most of it didn't germinate. It takes 38 days for this turnip to get about 2 to 2 ½ inches in size so they grow pretty good. The tops are really mild and make some awesome turnip greens. I'm not real fond of purple top greens but I do like these off the Hakurei turnips. You might want to put them on your list for next year's garden. If you planted them the first part of April you would have turnips and greens mid May. Just a thought.

Kind of experimented in the new big high tunnel when we finally got it constructed last fall. We planted a row of Dunja zucchini plants. Dunja is an F1 hybrid zucchini that has a really good disease resistance history. I think they are 47 days to harvest. Germination wasn't very good this past fall but I believe three plants came up. We had picked quite a few zucchini off those three plants when it frosted. We'd covered the plants with a frost blanket so it didn't hurt them. But when the temp got down to about 20 degrees we figured it would kill the dunja plants. It didn't so we are still picking zucchini. Kind of neat to still be harvesting them the middle of November.

I believe one could plant some of these dunja zucchini in a short row and then construct a low tunnel over them using something like cattle panels or pvc pipe. One could cover this tunnel with a plastic cover and then a frost blanket like Agribon. This should work. We can't do it this year but may try some low tunnels in some of our high tunnels next fall. Agribon can be bought in different levels of protection. That which we have is I believe 4 degree cover, so if the temps get down to say 28 degrees it won't hurt the plant. Since ours are in high tunnels they will protect the plant down to almost 20 degrees. I bought the 4 degree Agribon because I can double it to make about an 8 degree cold blanket. The neat thing about this frost blanket is one can leave it on the plants. The sun will shine right through it.

Marge and I carried a couple of our picnic tables into the one big high tunnel. On a sunny day even in fairly cold weather it will be toasty warm in the tunnel. I told Marge we can probably have a picnic this winter in the big high tunnel. I know our cats like to go into the tunnels and sun bathe. You can feel their hair and it will be toasty warm from the sun shining through the plastic cover on the high tunnels. Regular plastic won't work for long if exposed to sunlight. Our tunnels are covered with a plastic that isn't affected by sunlight. Our covers are guaranteed for four years and they are 6 millimeters thick.

Have a great week. Do some planning for your garden next summer but don't forget next winter.