Choosing and Planting Winter Crops

Question from Marshall:
I am 13 years old and was looking at starting a garden for food and i just started turning the ground for spring and letting the rain run into the nice ground i have and i was getting a little anxious and i wanted to start a winter garden so i would like to find out all the fall-winter crops and get some suggestions

Answer from Pat:
The two best planting months for putting in winter or cool-season vegetables are September and October, so there is still time to plant. You can even continue planting into November. The first 10 days of November provide the perfect time for planting globe onions in Southern California. If you want to plant a big globe onion the only way to get one is to grow them from seeds and to choose the seeds of short-day onion varieties, such as Grano and Granex. (Unfortunately, many seed racks contain the wrong varieties. Be sure to choose a short-day onion, not a long day and not a medium-day onion. These won’t make a big bulb here. We are too far south. The kind we grow are the sweet, short-day onions. If you don’t plant them from seeds in November you can plant them from bare-root transplants bought from nurseries or catalogues in January. Strawberries are also planted in early November. Plant the varieties that grow best here and be sure to ask for bare-root plants that have been pre-chilled. Good varieties include: ‘Camarillo’, ‘Douglas’, ‘Tioga’, or ‘Tufts’.

Now for the cool-season crops to purchase and plant now and how to plant them: Plant all cole crops from transplants. (It’s too late to plant these from seeds): Cabbage, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccolli, and collards. Plant any and all of the plants we can grow year round. Plant these year-round crops from seeds: Carrot, turnip, beet, radish, and Swiss chard. Plant potatoes from seed potatoes. Plant scallions from onion sets. (Remember onion sets are NEVER the short-day onions we need for a big globe onion. You can only get a scallion from them.) Celery is easiest to start from transplants. Too late now for seeds. You can plant lettuce from transplants or from seeds. It’s your choice, but transplants will give you a quicker harvest. (When planting lettuce, be sure to treat the row with an organic slug and snail control, such as Sluggo.) You can also find transplants of bunching onions. Bunching onions can be grown from seeds but the seeds sprout inland better and not as well along the coast. You can also plant herbs now from transplants, including thyme, marjoram, rosemary, sage, cilantro, and arugula. (Since growers usually plant these in crowded pots, separate the roots and pull them gently apart to make separate rooted plants of cilantro, parsley, and arugula, and spread them down a row. Borage is most easily started from a plant also. The seeds are difficult to germinate, but will always come back from seeds once you have grown them.

Plant asparagus from roots and plant artichoke from transplants. These are easier to grow that when you plant the bare root type. Many of these crops are tricky but most are easy. I hope you have a copy of my book since it will tell you all the tips and hints. I think it’s best to skip things like asparagus right now and concentrate on the easier plants. (Asparagus won’t give you a harvest for 3 years.) Artichoke is easy though if you give it plenty of room and also feed and water it well.

In addition to all the items above, plant all these from seeds: fava beans (they are easy), spinach, lettuce, mesclun, leeks (leeks are not easy however), parsley, all the Chinese greens such as bok choi and mizuna, and finally peas. Plant sugar snap peas for sure. You will need a trellis. Easy way is to put in fence posts and hang a string trellis on the fence posts. Put the trellis north and south and plant a row on each side, or, alternatively, put your trellis across the north end of your bed and plant the south side only. Be sure to soak the seeds in lukewarm water overnight before planting them. If they have crinkled seeds (which are super sweet varieties) as well as soaking overnight, also pre-sprout them as described in my book, or pour out the warm water from the jar in which you soaked them and keep the jar of seeds in a warm spot for a day or two and they will sprout. As soon as they sprout a little root, you will see it and immediately plant them into a prepared row. Otherwise they will rot or mildew. Cover the seeds with an inch or two of potting soil and pat it down. Keep the row moist by sprinkling. Always sprinkle all your seeded rows every day until seeds come up. Sprinkle with a light mist to keep the ground damp until seeds germinate.

I am just guessing that you live in Southern California. We have been having some good rains. When it just drizzles it’s not enough to water crops—they need an inch or two of rain per week. If rainfall doesn’t provide it you will need to water your cool-season crops after they are planted with the hose or a drip system and make sure it waters that much per week or you will only be watering the surface roots. Water must sink into the ground and go deep enough to make roots also grow deeply and also to give them enough moisture for growth. But last night there was heavy rain and it must have gone down to deeper levels. This is really a plus.

A word about soils: I am wondering if you have sandy soil, clay soil, silty soil, or loam (which is a mixture of all three). Or perhaps you have decomposed granite? (If you have a copy of my book it will explain all this on pages 23 and 24.) I won’t go into all the differences here, but I should tell you that you will know if you have clay soil since it sticks together in a lump if you squeeze a damp handful of it. Tilling clay soil and digging it when it is really wet has a negative effect on clay’s ability to drain. (Silt and loam soils can also get compacted when dug up after rain.) There is a result with clay soil called “puddling”. (This word is in the dictionary.) It means that the particles combine in such a way as to make clay soil bind together and become waterproof. So with clay you need to wait until it’s drained a bit and is just moist, not soaking wet, before you dig and work it and turn over the ground and then you need to add lots of organic amendment to it, as explained below. If you have clay soil, be sure to add gypsum also. Sprinkle it all over the ground about as if a light snow had fallen and dig it in. It will help the soil to drain.

Secondly you need a spot in full sun and free from the roots of invasive trees or invasive ground covers such as Algerian ivy or ice plant, but I trust you have that. And thirdly there are a couple of things you need to do before planting: One is to add a layer of aged compost (not mulch!). You can buy this by the bag or truckload, but it is fine to use aged manure if you have sandy soil because the salts in manure will drain out of sand, but maybe won’t drain out of clay. The layer of aged (or nitrolized) compost should be 3 or 4 inches thick all over the top of the ground, then dig this into the ground, like mixing a cake, get it mixed in to the depth of about 8 inches or one foot. After that, add the right amount of organic fertilizer for vegetables. (To find the amount to add, read the package directions and follow them.) You could use aged bagged chicken manure instead, if you want. Or you could use fossilized seabird guano, but be sure to follow directions. Anything else you want to add such as humic acid or “John and Bob’s Soil Optimizer” will make the soil all that much better. After sprinkling these fertilizers on top of the soil according to package directions, then use a cultivator with hooked tines to combine them with the top 6 inches of soil.

After adding the soil amendment and fertilizers, rake the top of the bed level and then water it well and let the ground settle overnight. The next day plant your crops. I have made videos about all of this and will post them on this site as soon as my editor gets done with the editing. They had better be great since it seems to be taking time!