Maintain a vegetable garden throughout the year and eat fresh-from-the-garden veggies all year long – even in winter. While I do preserve vegetables by various means, timing is the key to success in cold weather.
I maintain a vegetable garden all year round. On our homestead, I rarely buy any produce because I grow nearly everything we eat. And while I do preserve vegetables by various means, my family also eats fresh-from-the-garden veggies all year long – even in winter.
No, we don’t live in a warm, southern climate. And yes, we typically get some snow in winter. I don’t have a heated greenhouse that I use in the colder months. I don’t grow food inside our home, either. In fact, our winter vegetables come from the same garden I use during the warm months.
Like me, most people in the United States can grow food nearly year-round, even without the aid of a hothouse, hotbed, or cloche. Let me show you how.
Careful Planning
In spring, when the last threat of hard frost has passed, I transplant seedlings or directly sow seeds into the garden – just like every other vegetable gardener. This is when I plant most of my cool-season crops, such as lettuce, Brussels sprouts, and peas. Not long after, once the soil has warmed a bit, I plant my warm-season crops, such as tomatoes, basil, and corn.
As summer rolls around, I don’t rest on my laurels. By early July, I’m planning my fall and winter garden, and soon thereafter, I start sowing seeds for these cool-season crops, which will give us food from October all the way through early spring. Some plants, such as beets and turnips, I direct-sow into the soil, while others, such as broccoli and cauliflower, I start elsewhere and then transplant into the garden as soon as they’re mature enough.
Before the last hard frost, I’ll harvest anything that’ll be damaged by cold temperatures in the garden, including all warm-season crops (cucumbers, green beans, and squash, for example). All of my winter crops, such as Brussels sprouts, kale, collards, and cabbages, will stay in place in the garden.
Many people think it’s cold temperatures that prevent vegetables from doing any actual growing during the cold months, but I’ve found it’s mostly a lack of sunlight. Because I’ve timed my winter crops carefully, they’ll be fully mature before my garden finds itself plunged into winter darkness. Instead of thinking of my winter garden as a growing spot, I think of it as a sort of holding location; my winter veggies patiently sit in the garden – not growing, but “chilling” until I’m ready to harvest them. As a bonus, these winter vegetables taste sweeter than those same crops harvested during warmer times of the year. (This is because low temperatures cause the starches in these vegetables to convert to sugar, which acts as antifreeze for plant cells.)
When temperatures begin warming in early spring, it’s a race to eat or preserve what remains of my winter garden, because soon the plants will go to seed. And then there’s the “hunger gap” – that short period after the winter garden goes to seed and the new spring vegetables are ready for harvest.
That’s when all the food I preserved earlier in the year is most valuable.
What to Grow in the Cool Months
There are two types of plants you’ll put in the garden in autumn: fall vegetables that you plan to harvest before the first hard frost and winter vegetables, which you’ll leave in the garden until spring.
Excellent plants for the fall garden include Asian greens, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, cilantro, collards, green beans, kale, kohlrabi, lettuce, mustard greens, parsley, parsnips, peas, radishes, rutabagas, spinach, Swiss chard, and turnips.
For the winter garden, only the hardiest crops will succeed. Beets, Brussels sprouts, carrots, collards, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, parsnips, rutabagas, and turnips are good choices – cabbage, too, although you should choose winter varieties that’ll hold up well in freezing temperatures and snow.
Timing Is Everything
The key to making fall and winter vegetable gardens work is to get your seeds or seedlings in the ground at just the right time. Too often, I see people planting their fall and winter crops much too late. The result is that those plants either never become mature enough to harvest until the following spring, or they go to seed before a mature crop can be harvested from them.
To get the timing right, you’ll need to know a couple of things. For your fall garden, knowing your first frost date is essential. To find this information, call your local extension office, or do an online search for “first frost date” and your ZIP code.
For your winter garden, plan to have your crops at full maturity before daylight drops to 10 hours or less per day. This dark time is called the “Persephone Period” (harkening back to Greek mythology’s Persephone, daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter). Look at the sunrise and sunset dates for your area to discover when your Persephone Period begins; your local extension office should be able to provide this information, as can many weather apps.
Then, check your seed packets for each plant variety’s “days to maturity”; use that number to count backward from your first frost date or the start of your Persephone Period. Finally, add two or three weeks as a hedge against slow growth due to unusual environmental conditions and dwindling daylight hours. This is the date you should sow seeds for your fall or winter garden.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you want to plant broccoli for your fall garden and your seed packet says it takes each plant about 64 days to reach maturity. Let’s also say your first frost is around Nov. 21. Therefore, you’ll need to sow your broccoli seeds no later than Sept. 18. Adding in some buffer time, you can plan to sow them on Aug. 28.
Now, do the same type of calendar planning for your winter garden, using the start of your Persephone Period, rather than your first frost date.
What About Snow?
Many people imagine snow will kill their winter garden, but, in most cases, you’ll have to fight snow a lot less than you probably believe. If you get a lot of snow in your area, choose slower-growing varieties; they’ll have more resistance to frost and snow. For example, if you’re selecting kohlrabi for your winter garden, don’t choose the ‘Konan’ cultivar, which matures in just 42 days. A better choice would be the ‘Gigant Winter’ kohlrabi, which matures in about 130 days. In fact, the name of many cool-season vegetables will give you a good indication of whether they’ll do well in a winter garden. Look for names that include words like “hardy” or “winter,” or names that indicate a cold location, such as “Alaska” or “Russia.”
Hard frosts and snows will kill the leaves of root crops and kohlrabi, but the rest of the plant will thrive in or above the ground, happily biding its time until harvest. Nevertheless, you probably don’t want to shovel several feet of snow just to grab some beets for dinner. Therefore, if you tend to get a lot of snow in the cold months, consider planting your winter garden in containers placed in a sheltered location, such as a covered porch. If you only get a foot or so of snow, no special precautions are necessary.
One additional thing to bear in mind is that vegetables that are frozen solid rarely harvest well. (An exception might be collards or kale that you plan to boil or sauté right away.) Under freezing conditions, allow the vegetable to thaw on the plant in the garden, and then harvest. If you see a lot of freezing temperatures during winter, protect your plants against frost by planting them in a sheltered location and by insulating them with thick layers of organic straw.
More Problem-Solving
Sometimes it’s hard to find space to add fall or winter vegetables to a garden when you still have warm-season crops growing. One simple solution is to plant cool-season crops beneath your warm-season veggies. For example, lettuce, which prefers cool temperatures and will go to seed and become bitter in the hot sun, can be planted beneath tomato plants. The tomatoes give the lettuce some shade – and the lettuce is shallow-rooted, so it doesn’t interfere with the tomato’s root system. Another option is to plant your fall and winter crops in buckets or pots that can be easily moved around. (Just make sure any buckets you use have adequate drainage holes.)
In the heat of summer, it can also be tricky to keep cool-season vegetable seedlings happy. To work around this, you might sow some seeds indoors; nevertheless, certain vegetables, such as carrots, do best when directly sown into the garden. For such veggies, water the garden soil thoroughly. If the seeds are tiny (as carrot seeds are), sprinkle seeds on top of the soil, then add a thin layer of soil over the tiny seeds. If the seeds are bigger, sow them as you normally would. Always pat down the soil, ensuring the seeds are making good contact with it. Now, either put a shade cloth over the area or cover the seeds with a piece of cardboard weighed down on both ends with rocks or bricks. The latter does a great job of keeping soil moist, which is essential for germination – and is especially tricky with tiny seeds, such as carrots. Every day, check under the cardboard to ensure the soil is still moist and, as needed, gently water with a spray wand. Replace the cardboard when you’re done. Once the seeds have germinated, remove the cardboard permanently.
For cool-season seedlings that need to go out into the summer garden, extend your hardening-off process. Start by putting these seedlings in open shade for one hour; then, every day for the next seven days, give them an additional hour in the shade followed by an hour in the sun. Every day thereafter, put them in the sun for an additional hour, until an additional week has passed. If temperatures are excessively hot, skip the week of sun exposure and instead plant out the seedlings in the cool of the morning or evening and shelter them with a shade cloth. Mulch around the seedlings to keep the soil moist and cool.
Once your Persephone Period ends, winter vegetables will bolt (i.e., grow flowers and go to seed), which tends to make the edible parts of the plant bitter. You can delay this problem by cutting off any flower buds as soon as they appear. However, once bolting begins, you can’t keep nature from taking its course for very long: It’s time to harvest. Hop right on it, or the vegetables will become so bitter they’re only good for livestock or the compost pile.
I also find that once my Persephone Period ends, aphids tend to appear in my garden. They love bolting plants! This is another time to take prompt action. Since you’ll need to harvest your crops at this time anyway, simply wash off the aphids. Or, do as I do and give aphid-infested plants to your chickens. The chickens love the aphid protein combined with the fresh greens – and they’ll stop the infestation in its tracks.
Kristina Seleshanko has been homesteading for about 20 years and loves feeding her family fresh homestead produce all year long! She blogs about homesteading at www.Proverbs31Homestead.com.
Originally published in the July/August 2025 issue of Grit magazine and regularly vetted for accuracy.
