Tips for Extending Your Garden's Growing Season

Table of Contents

• Timing the Fall Garden

• Cold Hardy Vegetables and Variety Selection

• Winter Gardening and Cold Protection

• Easy DIY Grow Bag Cold Frame

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With a little planning, growing food well into the fall and winter can be both easy and incredibly rewarding. Several factors contribute to a successful fall and winter garden, with the most important being sun exposure, timing, variety selection, and protecting plants from frost. Keep reading to discover tips and tricks that will help you extend your growing season.

Fall Garden Timing

Timing a fall garden can be tricky since it requires careful planning and planting seeds or seedlings during the summer. This can be challenging because, at this point in the season, the garden is usually in full bloom. If you’re anything like me, it’s likely filled with tomatoes and peppers, leaving little room for much else. Then there’s the issue of heat.

August is generally the best time to plant fall crops like lettuce, kale, radishes, kohlrabi, and other quick-maturing vegetables. However, crops such as parsnips, rutabaga, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, Romanesco, and many carrot and broccoli varieties need more time. If you’re starting those from seed, it’s best to get an early start in July.

Every garden is unique, and the only way to find what works for you is to experiment. Even if you get your 'fall' garden in a bit late, you may still be rewarded with an amazing winter harvest (more on that later).

Fall Planting Tips

• The most limiting factors for plant growth in the fall and winter are decreased daylight hours and the lower angle of the sun—not temperature.

• Always plant seedlings where they will get the most sunlight (preferably in a south-facing spot).

• Except for root vegetables, sow seeds indoors early in July, ensuring they develop a few sets of leaves before transplanting.

• For the first two weeks after transplanting, check seedlings daily to see if they need water.

• Provide shade cover by using shade cloth, or get creative by planting seedlings under taller plants like okra that can act as a natural canopy.

• Mulch around seedlings to help keep the soil from drying out.

• If garden space is limited, use containers or grow bags.

• Plants in the brassica family (e.g., broccoli, cauliflower) have shallow root systems and are easy to transplant if you notice they aren’t getting enough light.

Choosing the right plants and varieties for your cold-weather garden is crucial. Warm-season plants like tomatoes and peppers struggle when temperatures drop below 50°F and won't survive prolonged freezing. However, many other plants can tolerate cooler temperatures and even thrive in the fall and early winter. An added bonus of growing vegetables during the colder months is that they become sweeter! As temperatures drop, plants convert their starches into sugars, which helps prevent their cells from freezing. Below is a table listing the cold tolerance of popular fall and winter garden vegetables.

Best Varieties for Fall and Winter Gardens

• Early or quick-maturing varieties

  When selecting varieties for fall or winter, opt for early or quick-maturing types. For example, while some carrots take over 75 days to mature, others are much quicker. Here are some carrot varieties suitable for fall or winter, with their days to maturity in parentheses: Adelaide (50), Aranka (56), Carnival Blend (70), Goldfinger (60), Mokum (54), Napoli (60), Parisienne (65), White Satin (68), and Yaya (56).

• Purple varieties

  Purple vegetables, like purple sprouting broccoli, get their color from the pigment anthocyanin. This pigment not only gives them their vibrant hue but also helps them tolerate cold better and resist rotting from winter rains. Other purple vegetables include cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, carrots, asparagus, and more.

Winter Gardening and Cold Protection

There are several effective ways to protect your vegetables from the cold, allowing you to extend your fall crops into winter and get an early start on spring planting. The key to a successful winter garden is ensuring that your vegetables are nearly fully mature before the daily sunlight dips below 10 hours (which, for me, usually happens around mid-November). After that point, your plants won’t grow much until February, but they can happily overwinter in your garden with some protection, offering harvests even during the coldest months. Most of my overwintered crops are planted in August or September, but you can also count backward from your last frost date to help with timing. Continue reading to discover different methods for protecting your winter garden.

Frost Blankets

Breathable frost blankets come in various sizes and weights, from lightweight options for insect protection to medium or heavy-weight blankets designed to protect crops from frost and freezing. Simply lay them over your vegetables when temperatures drop below their tolerance level.

Floating Row Covers

For more robust or longer-term protection, consider building a structure to support your frost covers. Thin, flexible PVC tubing can be cut and used to create a hoop structure to fit the area you need. Build it to cover a row in your garden or to fit the dimensions of a raised bed.

Cold Frames

One of my favorite methods is using a cold frame—a simple wooden box with a clear cover that allows sunlight in. This helps store solar energy and keeps your veggies cozy. Typically, the back of the cold frame is higher than the front to maximize sun exposure and allow rain and snow to run off. An old window or greenhouse plastic can make an excellent cover. Cold frames can be built as portable or permanent structures. Since ventilation is limited in cold frames, be sure to lift the cover on warm, sunny days (a thermometer inside can be very helpful).

Mini DIY Greenhouses

Also called hot caps or cloches, mini greenhouses can be made from everyday items around the house. Large soda or Gatorade bottles can work for small seedlings, with the caps serving as ventilation. Glass punch bowls or large Tupperware containers also make excellent covers for larger plants. Like cold frames, you’ll need to ventilate and remove covers on warm, sunny days.

Mini Hoop Tunnels

If you already have hoop trellises in your garden, you can modify them for winter gardening by wrapping greenhouse plastic around them to create a homemade polytunnel. Keep in mind that bigger isn’t always better—larger structures can be harder to keep warm.

And don’t be afraid to get creative! Check out the hybrid lean-to structure we built off one of our hoop trellises to protect my “fall garden,” which turned into a winter garden. It may not be the most practical option, but it worked well and was built using materials we already had on hand.

Easy Grow Bag Cold Frame

Another hybrid option that combines different methods is the grow bag cold frame. This is a new technique we’re trying out this year, and I’m already a huge fan. It’s a portable solution, with a wooden frame that can be moved as needed. Plus, you have the flexibility to relocate the grow bags themselves. You can even plant your vegetables in the grow bags well before constructing the rest of the structure. Any excess water drains easily from the grow bags, though this usually isn’t an issue during winter when watering is rarely necessary.

Since you’re not planting directly in the wooden frame, you can use any type of wood. We repurposed cedar boards from an old barn that had fallen down. If you make sure the inside dimensions of the wooden frame are 4 feet by 2 feet, it will perfectly fit eight 5-gallon grow bags, each with a 12-inch diameter.

To support greenhouse plastic, use thin, flexible PVC tubing to create hoop structures. You can build the base of the structure using PVC or wood. We opted for wood, which allowed us to attach a metal hinge for easy opening, though this step is optional. Build the base to match the size of the wooden frame, and create hoop structures using three pieces of tubing (as shown below). Wrap greenhouse plastic (not painters plastic) around the tubing and secure using staples or PVC clamps.

With a bit of planning, you can enjoy homegrown vegetables all year long. The veggies pictured above were harvested from my grow bag cold frame in late December, after enduring many nights in the 20s and even snow. I hope you find the tips in this post helpful and feel inspired to extend your growing season. Stay tuned for upcoming guest blog posts from seasoned gardeners, sharing their insights on cold-weather growing and more.

Please note: I have included links to products on this page for your convenience. Some of them are affiliate links meaning that, at zero cost to you, I will earn a small commission from purchases made through those links which helps me maintain this site. Thank you!

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