Winter Crop Flop

[mystical_mountain_9]

It is mid-April, and I have just come indoors from carefully weeding clover, grass and other undesirables from my backyard garden beds. Carefully, because I don’t want to disturb the peas, spinach, lettuce, radish and mâche plants that have peeked out of the soil in recent weeks and days. My garlic plants already stand a foot tall. A few days ago, the last vestiges of the April 7 snowfall finally melted away. So, how is it that I have garden vegetables growing outdoors during the tail-end of snow season in my part of Canada (latitude 43 degrees and change – roughly the same latitudenas Eugene, Oregon, Boise, Idaho, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Portland, Maine in the USA)? The answer is quite simple: cold frames!

I like to watch the look on fellow-Canadians’ faces when I tell them that I grow garden vegetables twelve months of the year. And that I do some with very simple, inexpensive “inputs” that consist of an ancient solar technology. In fact, I have been gardening year-round for 15 years. I have certainly learned a lot in the process, but despite all that knowledge, I must declare that my “crop” of Winter 2026 has been a “flop”. Well, I guess sooner or later it was bound to happen – and in my neck of the woods, this past winter was one for the record books.

I don’t think that there is such a thing as a “typical” Toronto winter during the first quarter of the 21^st century. True, we get snow every winter. But it is a matter of how often and how much snow, and what the weather is between snowfalls. More often than not, we get three or four good “dumps” of snow, with some mild temperatures and rain in between snow “events”. So, there is virtually always a mix of bare ground and snow-covered ground each winter. In the milder winters, it can be about 20% snow-covered and 80% bare ground during the period between mid-December and the beginning of April. During the harsher winters, it can be more a 50/50 mix of snow and bare ground during the course of the winter. And on rare occasion, the ground may be covered by snow up to 70% of the time.

I have experienced all these variations over the course of the past 15 years. And have managed to do reasonably well with my gardens through it all.

But this past winter was like none other in at least four decades; the proportion was close to 90% of the season the ground was snow-covered. Often very deeply.

It started with a salubrious autumn. Very mild temperatures prevailed all through September and into mid-October. “We’re going to pay for this great weather sometime down the road,” my dour self whispered in my ear (oh, how I wish it was wrong sometimes). My tropical vegetables were still thriving during Canadian Thanksgiving and so I had to apologize to the living plants as I cut them down, plucked the last of the produce off their vines, uprooted them, chopped them up and laid them to rest on the compost heap for the winter. But I still had some rutabagas growing. “Let me leave them in the soil for another week or two,” I told myself at the time, “so that they will get sweeter after the frosts.” Well, starting the middle of October, the frosts came – and refused to go! It was like a giant switch had been flipped in the sky one night – and it was switched only once. By the time I wanted to harvest them, the ground was frozen solid deep down. I could not remove my rutabagas until last week (at which point they were inedible).

As usual, last autumn I planted my seeds for the winter crops between mid-October and the first of November, confident that the cold snap would abate and that most of the seeds would sprout before the long, dark nights of late November came. I planted spinach, arugula, radicchio and mâche, along with plenty of nearly indestructible garlic bulbs. More cold weather came. And snow. We sure had a White Christmas in 2025.

There was a brief mild period in mid-January when nearly all the snow melted. That lasted about five days. Then back to the deep freeze. And then the snowstorms came: one after another after another until the third week of March. Between the snowstorms were consistent blisteringly cold snaps: the snow simply piled higher and higher. No sooner would I clear the snow off the cold frames then another dump of snow would come. This was not exactly an optimum growing situation for the wee veggie sprouts growing in my cold frames. But it couldn’t be helped.

Out of the hundred or so seeds that I had planted in October, a half-dozen Spinach seedlings, ten mâche seedlings and a couple of radicchio seedlings managed to make it through the harsh winter. An absolute flop! And because the winter has been so long, even the seedlings have been stunted. Nearly every year, I celebrate the last day of April or first day of May with a harvest of one or more gigantic spinach plants. By the looks of things right now, I may have to wait for mid-May for doing that.

Time to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Seeds to the rescue! With the help of a few covered saucers sitting atop my hot water heater, I managed to sprout a whole bunch of lettuce, radish and spinach seeds and got them into the temporarily thawed soil at the beginning of April (before the cold frames got covered with snow yet again). Now Brother Sun is strong enough so that Brother Snow can only make brief visits. So, I can cautiously say that now spring has sprung.

Now, I’m not one of those insufferable Canadians who complain about the winter every year. Actually, I love winter – yes, including shovelling immense amounts of snow and driving in snowstorms late at night. Every season has its own charms (which I tend to focus on) and its own inconveniences (which I tend to be prepared for and happily bear with). I’ll take the four-season climate of southern Canada over the one-season climate of Singapore any day!

I suppose that I could have paid closer attention to the harbingers of a harsh winter about six months ago. Last autumn the squirrels in my neighbourhood were even more frantic than usual: that’s a clear sign. I didn’t manage to see any woolly caterpillars last autumn: they are usually good winter prognosticators. Some years I consult a grand old maple tree in my neighbourhood about the weather – but I did not do that last autumn. And the official winter weather forecast by Environment Canada was waaaay off (as usual).

So, could I have done anything different? Yes. In fact, until just a few years ago, I was in the habit of using a dual-layer system over the winter: the first layer being a cold frame and the second layer being a small greenhouse that I made by covering my trellises with clear plastic held together with good old duct tape. In those years, I would have both layers active from mid-November until early March – after which time I would remove the cold frame and let the mini greenhouses do all the work. But in recent years, I have had similar success using a simple one-layer cold frame. Why do more work than necessary?

Oh, well – live and learn. Fortunately, my family does not rely exclusively on my winter harvests. And I see no reason why I won’t have a good growing season from April through to October (barring a huge volcanic eruption or other event that would dim the Sun), which we rely on a lot more.

Maybe I am odd, but I am happiest when I am contemplating the Divine while my hands are covered in soil. I find the smell of soil to be highly addictive. What could be better than being able to smell the sweet soil ten or more months of the year, regardless of the weather? I have taken care of plants since my mother got me my first indoor cactus plant when I was five years old. And I have been outdoor gardening for ages. But it did not occur to me to try vegetable gardening year-round until I read John Michael Greer’s series of posts on Green Wizardry in 2009-2010 (which he later turned into a book by the same name). After that I found a few books in my public library – my favourite being Eliot Coleman’s Four Season Harvest, which gave me lots of good, practical ideas.  

I even tried to “spread the gospel” of four-season gardening to other gardeners in my community. I joined a community garden and built some cold frames on my own dime. After demonstrating them on my plots in the autumn, I moved them into an unused hoophouse and planted some ‘winter crops’ there. Sadly, the hoophouse was on its last legs and it was not possible to use it for overwintering vegetables a second year – but fortunately there was a windfall, and it was agreed to purchase two small greenhouses for the community garden. Lots of people were interested now! And then – because the community gardens were situated on City property, the purchase had to be approved by the byzantine City regulators. Of course, it was forbidden. When we protested, saying that we have a hoophouse on the property, the regulators said, “Well, we didn’t approve that – take it down immediately!” So, the community centre that was the custodian of the money invested it all in a fracking hydroponics unit on their property which wasn’t even adjacent to the community garden. And that was that. Fortunately, my demonstration had stimulated enough interest that a few others began to house cold frames and mini greenhouses on their community garden plots and a nearby urban garden.

Hard-core ecological types may frown upon season extending solar technologies like the ones I use, as they are “unnatural” and even “harmful.” I agree that a hothouse (that is, a heated greenhouse) can be harmful, as the interior will not be cold enough to kill off insects that naturally die in the winter – and then unnatural infestations can easily occur. Enter pesticides, etc. But if the Sun is the only source of heat, in a temperate continental climate such as where I live, the winter temperatures still get mighty cold in the mid-winter, and nature’s cycles are pretty much still maintained. So, I’m not losing sleep worrying about how I am destroying the environment in my backyard. I figure that by maintaining vegetative life in my plots throughout the year (as opposed to letting them lie fallow and lifeless for half the year), this is better imitating a natural ecosystem, and the complex soil ecosystem keeps on ticking. So, I’m able to keep the soil happy while keeping my hands dirty for more months of the year. What’s there not to like about that?

Comments

[claire_58]

Hurrah for year around gardening! And good for you for sharing the practice with your community.

I've scaled back to three or four fairly reliable winter crops because even though weather protection is manageable most winters here on the west coast pests are not! Everything you can imagine is waiting to make a cosy winter home munching the cabbages from the inside and burrowing into the carrots.

I start cold season crops for early harvest in February and March and I plant for November/December harvest in July and August. I also have lots of perennials: chives, onions, artichoke, asparagus, lovage etc. That keeps us going fairly well.

I planted fiddleheads a couple of years ago but I'd need a few more plants to get any kind of a harvest.

[mystical_mountain_9]

Ah yes, the west coast: the land where slugs are the size of Godzilla! I can hardly imagine the winter pest problems that you must face.

Kudos for you on the perennials. If I had more garden space, I would use them a lot. The closest that I have used is collard, which is a hardy biennial. Sometimes when we have a mild winter, Swiss chard can also serve as a biennial, but most winters it kicks the bucket after the second deep frost. Otherwise, the only perennials that I have are the flowers that grow in the front and back yards (mostly native species).

Keep up the gardening!