For many home growers, growing comes to an end as soon as the summer is over. Tomatoes are picked and finished, herbs start to droop and wilt, and bedding goes away, put to sleep until the spring sun comes around. However, reality does not have to be this way. Provided there is forward-thinking and an understanding of how to do it correctly, food production does not have to stop just because the temperature drops. Plenty of growers are harvesting year round and it’s more achievable than one would think.
Choosing the Right Plants for Each Season
The first way to understand how to grow year-round is to establish what plants thrive in colder weather, and there are many options. Leafy greens are the obvious choice—spinach, kale, rocket, and Swiss chard thrive in lower temperatures and also can be harvested multiple times over weeks and months. Brassicas like broccoli, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts are other optimal crops for fall and winter, as well as root vegetables like carrots, beetroot and parsnips.
However, this does require some forethought. Many cool season crops need to be sown a few weeks before the fall season truly begins so that they’re strong enough come autumn and winter temperatures. The sooner it’s planted (within bounds) the healthier it’s guaranteed to be over the next months, and it’s one of those things easily forgotten until there’s a pattern of missing the opportunity year after year.
Making the Most of Protected Growing
Another way to ensure longevity of the growing season is to grow plants under cover. This means polytunnels, glasshouses or even just simple cold frames, provide a more protected environment without frost or with stable heating sufficient to keep plants strong through winter. However, even a makeshift cold frame from old windows can add another month at each end of the season.
For those without outdoor space, or who want a more controlled setup indoors, vertical growing systems are worth serious consideration. A tower garden allows growers to cultivate herbs, leafy greens, and other crops indoors throughout the year, unaffected by the weather outside. It’s a practical option for anyone who wants to keep harvesting regardless of the season, and one that works just as well in a flat or small home as it does in a house with a garden.
Using Grow Lights to Fill the Gap
Time is another consideration that often gets in the way during winter time growing—inside or out. Plants need light for photosynthesis and when days are extremely short, growth halters. Therefore, grow lights are critical for substitution and keeping plants growing at healthy rates no matter how bleak conditions may be outside.
LED grow lights have recently become more economical for greater populations and with emerging technologies, the modern LED lights for this purpose are not exceptionally costly on energy bills either. Full spectrum options work well for most edible crops and with simple timers, this makes light distribution even easier. It requires minimal investment which can be quickly returned when harvests come in abundantly all year round.
Succession Sowing: The Underrated Technique
Further, one advantage that consistent growers have over those who do not frequently harvest is their ability to apply succession sowing—meaning instead of sowing everything at once one focuses on smaller amounts every few weeks. This ensures a younger batch is maturing every few weeks so that there’s always something almost ready to harvest instead of everything needing harvest at once and then waiting weeks for the regrowth.
This works best with fast-turnarounds like salad leaves, radishes and spring onions which can go from seed to harvest within months time (or shorter). Instead of having an onslaught for one month and nothing for another, succession sowing keeps things on a consistent interval throughout the growing span.
Herbs: The Easiest Year-Round Win
If year-round growing seems ambitious right away, herbs are a good place to start. Many common herbs—basil, chives, parsley, mint and coriander—are happiest in a sunny window and can be delicately harvested time and time again throughout the year without concern from dedicated space or care. They require limited amounts of room, appreciate daily or weekly clipping on the stems, and having fresh herbs around makes at-home cooking exponentially more enjoyable.
Perennial herbs have even less maintenance; rosemary, thyme and sage thrive outdoors throughout most winters so long as they’re not frozen or soaked and they come back each year with little attention—this makes things much simpler!
Building a Growing Routine That Works
However, perhaps the most crucial component to successful, year-round growing is developing a routine for consistency. Checking in on plants regularly means proper watering levels for each season, attention and upkeep on sowing schedules and even if things only require fifteen minutes every other day, it’s remarkable what can grow when given attention.
The people who find themselves with some sort of crop every month are not necessarily finding themselves doing anything complicated—just developing good habits for their space, picking thoughtfully from the available options and creating an arrangement that works best for them. With enough forethought with combinations of various methods, tackling years with potentially daunting cold weather growing becomes less intimidating when the end results of fresh growth are so rewarding come the middle of winter.
