| Kitchen Gardening in Winter
Discover how to garden in your kitchen during winter—by growing from veggie stumps or starting from seeds. |
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 | Dear Winter Gardener,
Everybody needs a food garden. No matter how small your garden and meager your harvest, the fresh food that you produce there will will be tasty and nutritious. It will connect you with the natural world.
Okay, maybe you don’t have much or any outdoor space. Or perhaps it’s not spring and seed packets are hard to find. But you could also start an indoor salad garden by using the produce from your local grocery store!
Did you know that you can grow celery from a stump? Just cut the bottom 2 inches from a bunch of celery (refrigerate the stalks for later use) and “plant” it, root side down, in a saucer of water or in 1 to 2 inches of moist sand or potting soil. Leaves, then tender stalks, will slowly emerge from the center. When the stump is well rooted, transplant it into a larger pot. You’ll be able to harvest tender stems and leaves for soups and salads for many months.
You can do the same with romaine, onions, and fresh herbs. And there are other methods for sweet potatoes, beets, radishes, and turnips in the January 2019 issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac EXTRA! digital magazine. |
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| Starting Seeds | Long before the final frost, you can start the seeds for your garden indoors. A fast, almost foolproof, space-saving, no-mess way to start plants begins with a damp paper towel. You can spread rows of seeds across half of it, then fold the unseeded half over to keep the seeds moist.
Then, if you smooth the folded, seeded towel and slide it into a plastic bag, keeping it flat, you can store this in a place that is 70° to 80°F and wait for the seeds to start growing! Every couple of days, check the seed towel to make sure that it is not too dry, then sprinkle a little water on it with your fingers if it is.
In the days leading up to the germination date given on your seed packet, hold the plastic bag up to light to see if any seeds have sprouted. When they have sprouted, transplant them to flats or individual pots filled with potting soil.
Learn what to do once your seeds sprout in the February 2016 issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac EXTRA! digital magazine. |  | | Planning Your Cold-Resistant Outdoor Garden | We may be in the dead of winter, but you can start planning your outdoor garden right now. The secret to a bountiful early harvest is choosing the right seeds. As you peruse catalogs or seed kiosks, keep this in mind: Choose cold-resistant vegetables to plant this spring, and well begun, you’ll be half done.
Snap peas are cold resistant but not tolerant of heat, so get them into the ground 4 to 6 weeks before the last frost has passed. One of the most versatile and nutritious greens, spinach (Spinacia oleracea), is simple to manage and can be harvested multiple times in a season. It’s best planted in early spring while temperatures are still cool, about 1 week after the last frost has passed. Beets are another cold-hardy and frost-resistant root crop that flourishes in northern gardens.
Learn more about planting these cold-resistant crops in the February 2018 issue of The Old Farmer’s Almanac EXTRA! digital magazine. | Only The Old Farmer’s Almanac can offer you such a great combination of resources and tools—and packed with the guidance, folklore, trivia, and insightful and practical advice that readers have come to love in the Almanac.
Sincerely,
Janice Stillman
Editor
The Old Farmer’s Almanac |
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