Duration of Daylight Calendars

Some winter gardening help - www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/vegetables/winter-growing-guide-high-tunnel-scheduling.html

Winter harvest - www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/vegetables/winter-harvest-planting-chart.html

Overwinter - www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/vegetables/overwintering-planting-chart.html

PDF guide - www.johnnyseeds.com/growers-library/winter-growing-guide.html

Most of us don't have anything like high tunnels, but we can make and use low tunnels and cold frames - that's what I do.

Me too, Mumsey , I am already getting to the point of being ready for the break. But it's good to know about winter gardening , should we ever have to fully depend on growing more food for our survival, dont'cha think?

I really enjoyed playing with the sunrise/sunset calendar and looking up lots of different places. Seasons are important for my mood and I don’t think I would enjoy living on an equatorial tropical island where every day was a very similar daylength and temperature. Change gives me something to look forward to, variation, avoids boredom, and helps minimize pests and diseases.

I really liked the Johnny’s links as well. Personally, fall and winter is my absolute favorite growing season. I do not particularly like spring or summer. In the winter, my shortest days are 10 hours, and morning lows do dip into the low 30s regularly, but daytime highs are often upper 60s or 70s with lots of sun. A couple days it will dip down to low 20s for an hour or two in the morning, but we also sometimes get daytime highs above 80 in February. I’m very close to being tropical, but a dozen or so frost events occur each winter, so I have to bring frost intolerant plants inside.

I hate summer because we start getting 100 degree temperatures by May, and then July-September is 105-115 with the heat index and it rains every single day, it’s a gross sticky snake and mosquito infested swamp in the summer. Everything gets insanely overgrown, grass and weeds taller than me, all the diseases, and I spend hours a day just mowing and weed whacking and doing machete work. Pretty much nothing grows well in summer other than peppers, okra, eggplant, ginger, and cowpeas.

I’m so excited summer is almost over! I love my neat and clean and tidy winter garden with neat little rows of kale and cabbage and carrots and onions, chards, lettuces, etc. Very few weeds or pests in the winter and garden work is easy and pleasant.

I try to squeeze in a quick tomato and squash crop in early spring, start the seeds in the greenhouse in December and transplant out the end of February. It’s tricky because my last frost is usually early March, but the 100 degree weather and diseases arrive by early May. I’d rather overplant early and lose some to a late frost than plant “on time” and have heat and disease destroy them before I get a good harvest. I actually had a frost in April this year, which hasn’t occurred in many many decades. Almost no citrus crop this year because of that late frost. Took out all my Meyer lemons.

I built a high tunnel greenhouse that doubles as my tanning / sunroom , it’s large enough for a couple people to stand up in, has shelves for 10x20 trays and chairs and whatnot, built it for less than $100. The floor is dirt and usually cover cropped in crimson clover and the structure is just some PVC pipes, scrap wood, and rope. Pretty much the entire cost was the plastic and some hardware for building two doors. When it is 60 degrees in the afternoon in winter, the greenhouse will be 85-90 but when it gets down to 25-30 in the morning, the greenhouse will only be about 35, the wind protection and humidity is really great for protecting frost sensitive plants though. I’ve had tomatoes survive dips down to 34 for a few hours in the greenhouse because the high humidity protects them.

My other favorite part about winter is tilling up all the nasty bermuda grass in my front lawn and planting a beautiful lime green rye lawn and doing rows of crimson clover!

Have a great winter season.