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Gardening When It’s Cold


Did you miss planning your Fall/Winter garden like I did? It's life sometimes, but there are still green thumb things you can do.


  • Indoor Gardening - There are plants that can be grown indoors. Herbs are for sure a group of plants that can thrive indoors. You can also find kits to grow things like mushrooms.

  • Micro Gardening - Microgreens have grown a lot in popularity in the culinary world, but you don't have to be a chef to access them. There are sooo many options and they can be grown indoors. Some great and successful options are sunflower sprouts, pea shoots, micro arugula, and micro radish. True Leaf Market is a fabulous stop for micros (and regular seeds) as they sell the seeds, supplies, and kits needed. You can also check out Hamama as they have beautiful grow kits with seed quilts, which makes it easy.

  • Sprout Gardening - Sprouts are another method of gardening that is indoors and easy. You can buy seeds from True Leaf Market (not paid to promote them, haha) OR, and this is the best, grab a bag of dried legumes from the store (think Grocery Outlet...cheap!). If you choose the later, the only bean that's a no-go is kidney beans as they are toxic. Stick to peas, lentils, and garbanzos. Here's a blog on it. By the way, did you know you can also plant dried pinto beans from the store, true story.

  • Cold Hardy Gardening - Some cold hardy plants can be direct planted just before the coldest parts. They have to be already established, not seedlings. You can pick up some at local farm supply stores. Brassicas are frost hardy - broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choy, cauliflower, and mizuna.


  • Forget About It Gardening - I recently saw this Amish method of seed preserving tomatoes on this vlog. I haven't tried it, but you cut a fantastic tomato (Farmer's Market) and then put it in soil ...then forget about it till Spring.

  • Mulch and Composting Gardening - Not really gardening, but important for the garden. You can collect and store the fallen leaves for your mulch pile, which can be used to help your plants retain moisture during the Summer.

  • Plan Your Gardening - No soil involved, but planning is important for successful gardens. You can of course just plant and go, but to have an on going garden plan can be beneficial. With it being cold it's a perfect time to review the previous year (successes & lessons), seed inventory, plant choices, seed ordering, seed supply inventory, planting calendar, and

  • Winter Sow Gardening - I have not done this, but some folks out there start seeds in the Winter. They use plastic milk jugs, plastic freezer bags, greenhouse, or cold frames like hay bales with old windows.


Hopefully this encouraged you to keep your gardening skills going through Winter time as there is still plenty to do.



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