Experiments in Winter Growing

Time to Get Growing

Baby lettuce

I've been antsy to grow things, now that we're living in house again, rather than our rv.  We have a south-facing room that has been serving as a catch-all for things such as recycling, pantry foods, and the pet foods.  I have a vision of this room filled with plants providing us with fresh greens throughout the cold winter months. We also have a small unheated greenhouse attached to the house.  I'm been curious if I could get anything to grow there. The daytime temperature reaches the 80s, but it gets below freezing at night.

The Sun Room

In the second half of December, I planted a tray of lettuce, one of basil, and another of spinach in the sun room.  The lettuce and basil germinated and seem to be growing happily, though slowly.  Or maybe I'm just impatient.  The third tray, spinach, had no germination at all.  The seeds expired in December so I suppose that's not surprising. I've read that spinach seeds are not long-lasting. 

About three weeks after the lettuce germinated, I planted a second tray of lettuce.  It, too, is doing well, despite the shortness of the winter days.  In fact, the direct sunlight is too intense and the leaves were wilting during the peak daylight hours so I had to put up a thin curtain to filter the light.  I've been sampling an occasional leaf from the first planting and doing some thinning of the plants; the taste was a bit too bitter for me.  I chalk this up to the intense sunlight.  The second tray has spent most of its life growing under the filtered sunlight and yesterday I did a thinning and ate the pulled baby lettuce on my taco.  Nice and sweet. 

I planted a tray of mixed greens three days ago and those have begun germinating.  

Mesclun germinating

The Greenhouse

At the beginning of January I planted some tatsoi seeds in one of the beds in the greenhouse.  Tatsoi is similar to bok choy and tolerates slightly below freezing temperatures.  Suggested growing times are spring and fall.  I thought perhaps the greenhouse would provide enough protection for it to grow in the winter. 

Well, so far, not much success.  I've been checking every day and yesterday I saw my first germinated seed.  The package says germination in 10-21 days, so there's still a possibility that more will germinate.  But I'm not holding my breath; the temperatures in there have gotten down to the teens.

I was curious how germination and growth in the greenhouse would compare to those under indoor conditions in the sun room so three days ago I planted a tray of tatsoi inside.  Yesterday, quite a few had already germinated.  So, yeah, much quicker germination inside where it stays warm at night.

Soil Sprouts 

I came across a really good book about growing greens indoors during the winter: Year-Round  Indoor Salad Gardening by Peter Burke.  He describes how to grow what he calls soil sprouts, seeds that grow in soil, unlike the usual jar seed-sprouting method, and that are harvested as sprouts, prior to the micro green stage.  The idea is to plant some every day so that as some of the plants are ready to harvest, others are always slightly behind them in maturity, ready to be harvested the next day. This way there is a constant supply of greens.  The seeds are soaked, planted and placed in the dark until they reach a certain stage of growth, and then moved into the sunlight to finish off.  The whole cycle, seed soaking to harvest takes about 8-10 days.  Sprouts can be eaten raw or, in some cases, stir fried. 

Sounds good to me.  The lettuce trays I'm growing take much longer to mature, and I've always wanted to try growing sprouts, so I've ordered a few types of seeds: red Russian kale, purple stem radish, alfalfa, broccoli, and black stripe sunflower seeds.  Now I'm waiting for them to come in the mail.  Stay tuned for more winter growing updates.