Crops for a Fall + Winter Harvest

Did you know you can grow a garden in the snow?! A few years ago my mom loaned me this new gardening book and I devoured it – gardening year-around in cold. Canada cold! A winter harvest!

That just seemed so cool. With grocery prices continuing to go up and the flavor and quality going down, our food budget is strained. This year I feel ready to give a fall garden a go.

Turns out right now (mid-late August) is the time to start planting for a fall/winter harvest.

With cold winters, long nights and dark days, we don’t get outside as much for that lovely vitamin D (interestingly it’s actually a hormone) and need all the nutrients we can get to stay healthy.  How fun is it going to be to reach into your pantry, or your garden, and uncover an array of veggies blanketed with snow, and ripe for the picking? 

Winter Harvest Prep

Now, our Canadian winters can be harsh.  It gets to -40 and we can barely survive, let alone how plants can. But folks say they can so a quick gameplan is in order.

Keeping in mind, some crops are going to need additional help such as heavy mulch or a cold frame. It’s mulch or growing indoors for this mama. No fuss!

Frost-Loving Vegetables

Some cold-hardy vegetables taste better once they’ve had a nip of frost. Carrots become sweeter and crisper as the sugar increases as a natural protection against the cold. The cold gives parsnips they’re nutty flavour and potatoes can even be left in the ground after frost has killed their tops off.

Fruits like rose hips ripen after the first light frost of the year. Rose hips can be made into a vitamin-C-packed syrup (recipe to come!).

Leafy Vegetables

Low-lying, leafy green vegetables do well in cold weather. These plants won’t freeze, even if temperatures get to below -7. Crops like cabbage, collards, kale and brussels sprouts.  You can also harvest them before maturity.  In fact, they taste better if picked early.

Root Crops

Root crops can survive until a hard freeze.  Crops such as beets, carrots, radish, and green onion. Garlic should be planted in the fall to overwinter and you’ll get large clusters the following July.

if you think growing in winter is out of your reach, I hope you’ll be inspired to give it a try.

6 Cold-Loving Crops for a Winter Harvest

1) Carrots

Sow carrots in late summer, giving them time to mature into late fall, and then leave them in the ground for steady harvests throughout the winter. Green carrot tops are hardy to at least 18 °F (-8 °C), but the roots can withstand even colder temperatures. To make harvests easier, either heavily mulch carrots when really cold temperatures arrive in zones 5 and above, or cover them with a low tunnel or cold frame. Or do like Anna — she places heavy straw bales over her in-ground carrots as extra protection, since it is not unusual for her nights to reach -40 °F (-40 °C). Varieties Scarlet Nantes and Autumn King are recommended for a winter garden.

2) Spinach

Spinach is a surprisingly tough plant. It overwinters easily in at least zone 6 without protection, growing slowly through winter and bouncing back in early spring.  It can even be a perennial in Canada.  The leaves will die back in the cold but new shoots will emerge in spring. You’ll want to protect it though if you’re looking to have salad greens in December. You can use a cold frame or a weighted fabric row cover.

3) Leeks

Leeks are an ideal winter crop.  They are not sensitive to day length so they will continue to grow well during the shorter sunlight hours, and are amazingly resistant to hard freezes. The darker, blue-green varieties of leeks are your best bet for cold-tolerant crop although most leeks fare well.

4) Parsnips

A typical British and Irish food, parsnips should be on every winter dinner plate. They add such a depth of flavour to soups and stews and are the perfect complement to carrots. Parsnips produce more sugar with the first frost, and will last in the ground for a continual winter harvest. A word of note: If you want to grow parsnips for winter harvests, you’ll need to start in spring — parsnips must be planted no later than early May, as they can take up to 130 days to mature. You can cover them with clear plastic as an extra precaution when hard freezes occur, but parsnips are pretty tolerant to -18 °C (0 °F).

5) Lettuce

Immature plants are the best and more cold-tolerant than mature plants. In the heart of the prairies, you’ll want to grow this crop in a greenhouse or indoors.  Otherwise a cold frame or low cover tunnel will do just fine for other, warmer, climates. Protected this way, lettuce can survive when outdoor temperatures dip to -12 °C (10 °F). If you’re not sure which variety to use, grab a mixed blend and see what survives.

6) Cabbage

Cabbage is a crop that’s destined for a fall garden. It’s flavour is improved by frost and there are less pests to worry about. As with spinach, the best cold-tolerant varties are savoy types with deeply crinkled leaves. Overwintered cabbage will need to be planted in late summer to have time to mature.

Other Cold Hardy Crops to Try

• Swiss chard
• Broccoli
• Kale
• Beets
• Garlic

Happy winter harvest!

I’d love to know, have you ever done a fall or winter garden?

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