Cold-climate winter vegetable gardening

[Rosemary]

I've read a couple of books from our library, one by Eliot Coleman and one by Nike Jabbour, about growing vegetables under a low-tech cover in cold climates in the winter. They live in Maine and southern Canada, respectively, both of which are warmer than where I live in MN, but I am thinking that fresh greens for at least a few of the winter months are better than no fresh greens from November until May.

I'm going to try a couple things:
We built a 3-season porch on the south side of our house this summer. It's not as light-filled as a greenhouse, as it has a regular roof, but it does get a lot of sun. I'm going to set up some trays of seeds on the table inside the porch. I got some seed-starting trays and a heated seed mat on clearance at the end of the summer.

Also, I'm going to build some low tunnels on the bed that has some greens growing in it already, and seed some more, and see what happens. I'll pound in some 18-inch rebar stakes and attach 1/2 inch PVC pipes on either side of the bed to make hoops, then stretch some plastic over them and secure the edges for wind. I am hoping I won't end up with mice nesting inside.

The main issue I see with both of these is watering. We can't use our outdoor taps after October, so I will have to lug water from the inside of the house. But I am thinking that the plants won't need nearly as much water as similar plants growing in the summer - we'll see.

Has anyone else tried winter vegetable gardening?

[herbgeek]

Yep. I had the same setup as your low tunnels last winter. It was awesome to be harvesting spinach the first week of January.

Two reasons I'm not continuing this year: 1) the way the sun is situated on our lot, there is almost no full sun during the winter months, maybe an hour or so. For greens that I started in August, this doesn't seem to be much of a problem, but the stuff I planted later in the fall just didn't seem to thrive due to the lack of sun. 2) I did have a rodent problem, they really liked those warm tunnels. Both mice and chipmunks. Ordinarily that wouldn't be a problem, we live in the woods, but my cats could not get to them under the covers to keep them from proliferating.

I am however going to get an early spring start, as we have much more sun then. I have the rebar in place, because I like to start warming the soil early and the ground is too frozen to get the rebar in then. Last year, I put the plastic on in mid February and left it up for a couple of weeks to warm the soil before planting anything out there. Even so, the transplants did much better than the stuff from seed at that time of the year. I was harvesting wonderful salads in April, which is a month before anyone around here even thinks of starting their garden.

Watering was not really a problem, with the plastic not much evaporates anyway, its kind of like a terrarium. I did water a couple of times if the weather got warm.

One thing to be aware of for your porch: lettuce/greens really germinate better when its cool. If the heat mat is too warm, you might affect germination rates.

I really love both of the books you mention. Niki's in particular has some great garden porn.