If you live in a mild winter area, you can have a bountiful winter harvest of cool-season vegetables if you set out seeds or young plants at the proper times. Temperate-climate vegetables, like cabbage, chard, broccoli and peas, which don't do well in hot summers, flourish in the cool, rainy winters of U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 8 through 11. The trick is to get seeds or plants into the garden in late summer or fall while there is still enough warmth to germinate the seeds and establish good roots before winter's cold sets in.
You can have great salads and cooked greens all winter and into spring by planting lettuce, Swiss chard, arugula, mustard greens, kale and spinach. In cooler summer areas, begin sowing seeds in August so they get a good start before cold weather slows down their growth. In warmer zones, wait until September. Greens are also ornamental, with the rich reds of Swiss chard stems, colorful lettuces, like red-tinged "Blushed Butterhead," "Red Oak Leaf" and "Skyphos," burgundy-leafed "Red Salad Bowl" or "Gabriella" and purple-splotched green leaves of "Flashy Butter Oak" and "Speckles." If you pick just the outer leaves instead of the whole plant, lettuce harvest can last through the entire season. Or, plant seeds every three to four weeks for a continual harvest of whole heads. Greens planted in early fall will give you home-grown salads for the holidays.
Except for radishes, root crops take more time than greens to reach maturity. For example, carrot seeds planted in October are ready for harvest in mid-February. Sow carrots, beets and radishes sequentially for a prolonged harvest. Seeds sown in November won't mature until spring. Root crops should be grown from seed rather than put in as transplants, and include rutabagas, turnips, parsnips, radishes and carrots. To estimate a crop's planting time for your garden, look at the time to maturity and calculate backward from the time you want to harvest them to when you need to sow them. If you harvest beet greens, it will take longer for the beet to develop. Root vegetables take on added sweetness when grown in cool weather.
Cabbage Family Vegetables
The sooner you can get in plants or seeds of cole plants in the cabbage family the better, because it takes more time for these to get established. Aim for early August in cool-summer areas. Cole vegetables include cabbage, collards, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy and kohlrabi. Most of them need more space per plant than other winter-harvest vegetables. They are also ornamental, with leaves of many developing flushes of purple or pink in cold weather. Frost doesn't affect cole plants, and actually makes them sweeter. Setting out transplants instead of seeds gives a head start. Prolong harvest by choosing several varieties that mature at different times.
Peas also need direct seeding. They require trellising to support the 4- to 6-feet-tall vines. Snow peas and snap peas with crisp, edible sweet pods mature more quickly than shelling peas and have decorative pink and purple flowers. Plant peas as early as possible for your area, either August or September, and make successive sowings. Peas grow better if you inoculate the seeds before planting with rhizobium bacteria, which form root nodules that help the plants fix nitrogen, giving them their own source of this essential plant nutrient.
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