Winter gardening in a wet, soggy climate

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(Stares with exasperation at the weather forecast.)

Okay, this is not something I would have expected to apply to me, but I think I need advice about growing plants in a super wet climate. Specifically, cool weather crops.

I knew winter was our rainy season, but this is my first year trying a winter garden, and I’m starting to notice that we get rain or snow about 20 days out of every month in the winter. It doesn’t evaporate, either, because it’s cold. And while the ground freezes solid at night fairly often, it’s usually above freezing during the day. So our winter soil is almost always slick, wet, soggy mud.

If I want to overwinter bananas here, which don’t like soggy soil, I’m going to need to advice about how to help plants survive through soggy soil that normally don’t like it.

Meanwhile, many of my overwintering brassicas have mold on the leaves, which makes me think they’re not too happy about the overabundance of water either.

. . . Sheesh.

It just goes to show that growing conditions can be completely different in the same climate depending on what season it is.

I’m starting to wonder if it might be a good idea to put my winter crops under a hoop house, not to protect them from cold, but to protect them from rain on their leaves.

Would that help?

Any other ideas?

I’d love some advice from people who grow winter crops in a climate that has really rainy winters.

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I spent a bunch of time gardening in the PNW, which pretty much rains 8 months of the year through the winter. My soils were mostly pretty dense and slow-draining. Some thoughts:

Raised beds or gentle slopes are good, anything that can let the water run off and oxygen enter the soil.

A lot of overwintering plants got black spots on their older leaves, or the older leaves go yellow and thin and sort of dissolve/sludge off. This didn’t seem to hurt the plants at all, and happened with everything from brassicas to blackberries-- the same blackberry plant would then go on to completely engulf a house or a tree the next summer, so it definitely wasn’t necessarily a problem. Signs that I’d read as a problem are things like the whole plant going pale, the leaves feeling less turgid, and the new leaves (which often stall out at this time of year) getting signs of damage. Also if you rock the plant gently is it firmly anchored in the ground, or does it feel loose? All of those indicate root issues from soggy ground and would be a significant signal to me. Covering the plants, like with a hoophouse, will reduce the spots, but I bet selection could handle this too.

Bananas were wrapped, piled up with a layer of straw and then plasticked, which sometimes made them rot but was supposed to protect them from freeze/thaw. Some plants accept freeze/thaw a lot better than others and I guess bananas had issues with it.

Bigger hoophouses entailed a lot of work (watering, especially if waterlines were going to freeze/thaw) but I always kinda wanted to just run rain collection from a house gutter straight into a hoophouse, no collection container, and see how that did. Not sure if enough water would make its way through the soil for smaller hoophouses.

I always covered my tomatoes to avoid blights; they definitely went downhill as soon as the rains began. It sounds like folks are working on selecting around that issue though.

Assuming your soil isn’t extremely free-draining, anything dug into a hole (like an apple tree, or if you dig out a hole to put compost in for squash) and then you fill the hole with nice soil, all the airspaces in that nice soil will fill up with water and the hole will basically be an invisible, plant-drowning puddle. If you have that kind of soil (I think yours was sand, so this doesn’t apply) then try to bare-root anything as much as possible when it’s planted, so there’s no big difference in soil around the roots.

Beware areas of impermeable surface, like eaves and pavement and patios: they discharge a lot of water, and so avoid planting things that can’t tolerate soggy soil in their discharge areas.

Swales are magic. Plant on top, the roots have space to gather oxygen at the top of the swale, and then in the summer can follow the collected water slowly down deep into the soil.

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I feel like this is a weird year. I don’t remember getting this much rain over the last 6 or 7 years living here. But it would be cool to have plants that work well in these conditions for sure.

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This is all incredibly good advice, Erin. Thank you!

So you think having swales and planting on top of the ridges will be a good idea for winter? Okay, I can do that. I was thinking I’d do the opposite because of my dry summers, so that’s ironic!

But now that I think about it, I could still plant warm weather crops that can’t perennialize, like cucurbits, in the swales. Then I wouldn’t have to change the shape of my garden, just where I’m prioritizing planting.

Hmm. Actually, that may make for an interesting intercropping method anyway. Put perennials and cold weather crops in the ridges, put warm weather only crops in the swales, and when the warm weather crops die after frost, just leave the remains in place to rot down or serve as insulation to keep roots warmer. It could work!

I bet lettuce and bush green beans would intercrop well that way. They’re about the same size, so they wouldn’t shade each other out. Brassicas and tomatoes may, too.

Bananas are the toughest, because they’ll need lots of water in summer, and they’ll need protection from lots of water in winter. I’m thinking maybe they need a pit with a hill inside that pit that they’re planted into. That way they’ll get access to all the water in summer, and not be sitting in the water in winter.

I could also chop and drop mulch around the hill inside the pit all summer long, which would serve to keep water in the soil in summer, and then it will go on to keep cold off the banana’s roots in winter. Do you think that would work?

I really appreciate all your ideas and advice. A climate challenge of way too much water is not something I ever expected to need to research for myself! (Laugh.)

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We don’t have remarkedly wet winters, though with close to fifty inches of precipitation and heavy clay soil, our conditions tend to be on the wetter side. We’ve currently got pea, turnip, winter rye, Brundage winter wheat, barley, parsley, and then a few radish, mustard, and collard plants (ultracross) all growing fine. Though the parsley died back almost to the roots in December with the sudden and bitter cold.

Those I have some actual winter growing experience with. If I can suggest things that might be interesting or successful based on my knowledge of your conditions, brassicas are honestly one I would recommend. It’ll be interesting to see how they weather the wet conditions.

To the list of what I actually have limited experience growing in a wet winter (from which I would only exclude wheat from prime consideration), I might also add quinoa and many kinds of legumes especially hardier ones like great northern or northern adapted pigeon peas.

On the experimental side if you want to see what you can get away with, I might also try fall or winter plantings of buckwheat, potato, corn, sorghum, or peppers. In case there’s any possibility of symbiosis or epigenetic triggering of cold tolerance through interacting with cold tolerant plants, I would probably be inclined to interplant with compatible cold-tolerant companions. Obviously this is only if you’re okay potentially losing everything you plant from this group, but I feel like you may have already had the heart of a landracer before you started doing this

This last group of crops tends to be dry-natured and frost tender. Not clear to me if any of them has cause to be tender with a capital “T” though. At one time kiwi could only be grown in the tropics. At one time you couldn’t grow muskmelons in Paradise. And hopniss is a tuber that can reportedly take twenty below zero F without damage - - what genetic line in the sand would prevent potato from doing the same?

You may already have some, but at one time the EFN store had a sorghum or millet with a bent towards perenniallity in temperate climates, and they’ve certainly carried hardier tartary buckwheat.

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You have collards growing right now? When were they planted and what stage of growth when the cold hit at Christmas time. Did you cover or otherwise protect them during that?

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“The heart of a landracer.” Wow, I love the way you phrased that. You may be right. I love art, and my style tends to be, “Throw things at the wall and see what sticks! Do more of the coolest stuff! Get excited about weird surprises that happen, and take them and go running with them!” That’s how I write almost all of my books. I like to think that’s why I’m good at humor and surprising plot twists.

So doing the same thing with gardening is intuitive to me. Obviously playing around and relaxing and giving space for weird surprises is the best way!

Especially since, philosophically, it makes a lot of sense to me that it’s better to let my plants be equal partners, and to not seek to control absolutely everything. I don’t need to dominate. I prefer a role more akin to a guide, mentor, or teacher.

I’m fine with trying lots of things and losing most of them, just as long as the failures aren’t rare seeds. When I have very few seeds, I have to be careful with them until I get to the point of abundant seeds. When I have an abundance, though, I’m just like, “Okay, guys, show me what you can handle!” (Flings seeds on the ground at a nonoptimal time and maybe bothers to put soil on top of them.)

Now, that’s a VERY interesting point about potatoes. I’ve been wondering how I would get those to work in my climate, given that they like moisture and cool temperatures. I think you’re right that it may be a lot easier to adapt them to my winters than my summers. Plus, root crops tend to taste sweeter if they’re harvested when it’s colder.

Now I’m wondering if I should look at a lot of species that like cool and wet temperatures and see how they’ll do through my winters. It would be really neat to have populations optimized for my soil in completely opposite “climates.” That would greatly increase my resilience, because I’d have something adapted to my soil that is ready for almost any kind of weather that way.

I’m already thinking that sea kale on the north side of my house is a good idea.

Yeah, I think I should look into crops that like exactly the opposite of my summer climate more closely. They may be great for my winters!

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In southeast Indiana I have had success with planting potatoes in the fall but fairly late fall or even early winter, so they don’t start growing until spring. When doing so I’ve had better luck planting them whole rather than cutting into pieces like I would do in for spring planting.

A risk with fall planting and even with early spring planting is that they will start growing in a warm period and then get nipped by frost later. A few years ago, I had some of the prettiest potatoes I’d seen for a long time. The vines were pretty much fully grown and starting to bloom when they got burned down to the ground by a hard freeze. My grape vines that year had clusters of small grapes and they all got it too. I harvested no grapes that year and more than half of my vines flat out died.

Potatoes will also volunteer if some are missed during harvest. I have some little purple ones that are left over from when I tried TPS. They make a few tubers about the size of my thumb and lots of smaller ones. I don’t even try to find the smaller ones, so they have been growing volunteer for several years now, they bloom some but don’t make berries. To transplant them to a new spot I dig up several shovels full of soil and dump it someplace else rather than trying to find them.

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Fall planted. Don’t remember dates but it could have been as early as September. They really don’t have much to show for that long in the ground, other than still being alive. They got no protection other than snow cover for the big freeze.

The leaves might look puny even in a baby greens mix. This is in the beds that have gone three seasons on the same original inputs and no cover, growing just crops with presumably minimal genetic variation. Nothing had an amazing time in there last season except the corn, and that was storm ravaged. I don’t think we planted it optimally to be resistant to that kind of event.

I say “they” about the collards - - I will need to make sure after the snow thaws it isn’t just an “it”. There’s only one plant I routinely check in on because I really like it’s energy. It’s in the spot I put some ultracross and I think it may look different from the forage collards (though I also put forage there). I’m confident if not certain it’s been there since the fall and didn’t germinate in the warmer temps after December

Some critter keeps eating on it and it still manages to grow back just fractionally larger. If it makes it through the winter it’s one tough potato

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Yeah, the possibilities of fall-planting cool weather-loving root crops to have them grow in winter (or early spring, if they so prefer) are very interesting. That seems like a great way to expand the number of species I can grow successfully.

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Of the root crops that I have or do grow. I see little actual growth in winter. Potatoes and dahlias basically lay dormant and if they don’t rot or freeze, they will sprout in spring, sometimes before its actually good for them. Carrots, turnips and some radishes can green up with top growth during warm spells in winter, but they are bi-annual and the root itself isn’t much to write home about in the second year. Carrots can be harvested from the ground in winter, but they are not as good if the tops have regrown too much. Onions and garlic grow some in winter but not much else. Seems like I read somewhere that horseradish roots grow in winter but I’m not sure I believe that.

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Potatoes are one of the items I wilded at my old house. I never bothered to dig them up and see what kind of production they had. They just popped back every spring and died back when the summer heat hit.

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(Nods.) Winter growth happening slowly is the biggest downside of growing things in the winter.

I wonder if putting a hoop house on top of things like potatoes would help them live a bit longer in fall / sprout a bit sooner in spring / grow a bit more quickly?

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I don’t see why not. I never grew potatoes in my greenhouse, but their sprouting seems very much light and temperature dependent

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That sounds like maybe a hoop house would work great, then! Probably with jugs of water in there as heat sinks to make it a bit warmer. That seems smart in winter. I bet it’ll make a few degrees difference.

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My old greenhouse. When I did the small hoop houses I did a water jug about evert two or three feet.

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Wow, what an awesome greenhouse! That must have taken so much work to make. Where did you get the plastic panels from, and how much did they cost? Something like that seems way better than the greenhouse plastic sheets I’ve been using (which can tear and get blown up by winds).

Did you need to replace the milk jugs often? I’ve found that if I have those outside for longer than two or three months, they start to get brittle because of UV radiation. I’ve also been thinking maybe putting them inside a black trash bag would help heat them up more and make them more effective. Have you ever tried anything like that?

Your voice is beautiful, by the way. :slight_smile:

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I just got the panels from Lowe’s. Everything else was repurposed except the screws.

I would generally keep the water jugs in the house, rotating them out to the greenhouse oldest first as I used the oldest to water the seedlings in the spring.

Because of the way it was built, it had an average of 12 degrees difference between inside and outside during the winter.

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Nice! 12 degrees warmer in winter is a big deal. That’s a zone and a half difference! And I love that you were able to do it without needing to use any heat source except capturing it from the sun.

Rotating the milk jugs by watering the plants with the old water is a great idea. That sounds smart. That’s what I was thinking would make the most sense to do.

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Not as big of a deal as you might think. The higher the temperatures got, the smaller the difference, so if it was 4 degrees outside it might be 24 inside, but if it was 20 outside it might be 30 inside. These are night-time temperatures. For the most part I didn’t bother measuring during the day.