Tuesday, 15 November 2011
Planting Winter Crops
I figured that with planting crops in the winter you would have to provide some sort of protection, but the only things that came to my mind were building shelters for the plants. I did not know that raising the crop beds and the location of where you plant the crops could provide protection. I noticed that a lot of the crops that were on the list that could overwinter were also options for us to plant at our school. I remember planning out our gardens and we chose many of those plants for the reason that we would need to plant them to last the winter. I learned that August is a very good month to plant many crops, and is the ideal month for most overwinter crops. Some however are ready sooner than that and are ready to eat by october. This brought pumpkins to mind for me as they always seem to be ready at the exact right moment. I also noticed that a lot of the vegetables that you can plant for the wintertime seem to be the vegetables that a lot of people dislike. I am curious if being tougher to survive the winter makes these vegetables more bitter or harder to eat.
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Good question. Actually some plants are sweeter in the winter months. Kale is WAY better in the winter, as are lettuce and peas. Its just that there isn't enough solar energy for them to set fruit so you have to eat the actual plant instead of the sweeter fruit. Flavour can also be enhanced in the winter because the leaves dehydrate due to the frozen ground. Its often not the cold that kills plants but the lack of water since they can't pull water out of the frozen ground.
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