Vegging in the Shadows

After years of market gardening in the east, I already knew some vegetables were surprisingly hardy, so that got me started trying to see how much I could harvest over the winter on this coast. The more I learned about gardening here, the more I saw how unique this climate is. Rather than being finished in September, our gardens—whether urban or rural—can be living refrigerators, full of vegetables for harvest through the winter. Rather than planting everything at once in May, we can sow over a six-month season. Root cellars don’t work here (the winters are too warm) but leaving root crops in the garden works beautifully. And when overwintered plants start growing in February and March it is astonishing how much a local garden produces when gardens elsewhere are empty.

As I kept meeting people who were still gardening on the same timetable they learned when they lived elsewhere, I discovered an evident need for local information. I wrote gardening articles and gave talks, which eventually led to developing year-round gardening courses, and to write books specifically for coastal British Columbia. My goal continues to be encouraging experienced gardeners to reach out and help those new to gardening here. It is amazing how much one can produce!

1) Start small
You can grow a surprising amount in a small space because your garden can produce food all year round (looking at you, urban gardeners!). Get one or two beds going first and add more after you have those established. There are still things we can sow in June, July, and as late as the last week of August.

2) Relax
Shifting to a year-round schedule takes the urgency out of spring planting. You could still be eating leeks, carrots, beets, and other roots from your garden, as well as kale, lettuce, Swiss chard, spinach, and other hardy greens. From March onward, winter broccoli and cauliflower plants that spent the winter in the garden start to produce heads. Our cool spring means that you still can’t plant tomatoes, squash, and corn until May, but with all of the other vegetables still in the garden, the only things I am in a hurry to plant are peas and potatoes.

Vegetables for winter harvests have to be sown early enough in the growing season to reach full size by the end of October. Nothing grows much in the short days and low temperatures of winter, so aim to have a garden of fully mature crops (good sized leeks, carrots, heads of cabbage, etc.) ready to be harvested on nice days from your living refrigerator.

6) Watch the weather
It was easier to garden in this region in the 1980s than it is now because climate change has brought us more extreme and variable weather (plus we have new diseases and pests that have arrived since then). Keep an eye on the forecast and take simple precautions to protect plants. Have shade cloth or lattice screens ready to shade young plants in heat waves. Stockpile plastic sheets or floating row covers to protect tender plants if unusually cold weather threatens. Build strong, wind-resistant trellises for staked plants.