Winter Garden Tasks The Wall Street Journal

Winter Garden Tasks
The Wall Street Journal

What does your garden look like in winter? Are you growing winter vegetables or have you abandoned the space until warmer weather? Or are you taking the time to prepare for spring? According to some super-experienced gardeners, you should be making the most of the winter.

In a Wall Street Journal article, several experienced gardeners and farmers from the Northeast share their winter gardening checklist. The colder months are not a time for slacking in the garden: 73-year-old Eve Thyrum says that she has "been out pruning her trees 'night and day' in her 2½-acre garden in Wilmington, Delaware."

What else do these winter gardeners do beyond pruning trees?

Get a head start with some plants indoors.
Use "cold frames" to grow outside
Compost
Clean and sharpen tools

Find out more about these gardeners here.

What kind of gardening are you doing?

(Image: Flickr member harryalverson licensed for use under Creative Commons)

Comments (3)

My winter gardening consists of planning for the next year of gardening (or at least trying to - see my recent blog post: http://2greenacres.blogspot.com/2010/01/analysis-paralysis.html)

On warm days, I weed, prune, and take soil samples.

posted by 2 Green Acres on January 20th 2010 at 11:56am
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Here in Portland, OR, we're having a pretty mild winter so far. I am in the process of designing and starting my first real vegetable garden. I'm using the cold days to read gardening books, look through seed catalogs, and make a garden plan.

This weekend, I'm going to check out a couple of local garden stores and see what seeds are in stock. The way things are going, peas will be able to be planted in just a few weeks!

I'm tracking my progress here; http://willitgrowpdx.blogspot.com/

There's not much now, but things should really pick up as I get a few seeds in the ground.

posted by nikkimay on January 20th 2010 at 5:55pm
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Yay! I am fighting a little spring fever right now and am so happy to see some suggestions for winter occupation.

posted by Carliegirl on January 21st 2010 at 7:16am
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