Winter Garden ups & downs & seed starting in January

I've heard that a winter garden here in the Pacific Northwest can be very abundant. Leafy greens and rooty things are what grow this season. I'm overwintering some veggies to try and minimize that hungry gap we all feel when I miss the summer garden and trying my hand at gardening in all four seasons.

The first upside to winter gardening is that is requires a lot less work than your typical summer garden. In the past I have accidentally found leftover carrots that grew in the garden over the winter. They were perfectly delicious, but I never really cared enough to do the garden work in the fall and winter. I don't usually water and can get away with checking on the plants weekly to every couple of weeks (I just like going out to check on them more often).

The second upside to the winter garden is there are less pests. I do notice a few holes in leaves, there are some slugs around, and I usually plant more seeds than I need to cover for loss of crops to pest damage. I have also surprisingly found some cabbage worms and a mild infestation of aphids even after a hard frost. I usually just remove these both by hand if I see them or spray them off with a blast of the water hose.

Third and final upside to the winter garden is I don't have to miss my garden all the way up until the spring. I can run out during the bursts of sun or just in between brief breaks of heavy rain and walk past my raised beds while the chickens are underfoot, maybe lift the row cover, take a peek and harvest some veggies for dinner.

I'm no garden expert but I find myself wanting to get started in the garden now, so I grab my basket of seeds and put on something warm before I make a dash out in the rain to the greenhouse. My first seed order of the year has arrived from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Maybe you might be wondering what you can seed in the winter. So, to wrap up this post I wanted to share some of what I have been seeding in the unheated greenhouse so far:

Leeks

Onions

Spinach

Lettuce

Cabbage

Artichokes & Calendula flowers (an experiment)

Parsley

Cilantro

That is only the beginning of the spring season crops and though that may sound like a lot of food already there will be plenty more seeding in my future. Instead of just planting seeds willy-nilly with no direction or established goals, I'm following a garden plan this year using a free garden calculator.