We had a very hard winter: freezing rain followed by lows around 9F, a sheet of ice covering the ground for several days. Despite this, a number of plants in the garden survived and have gone on to thrive in our early spring warm period. Many of the plants that survived are the products of local adaptation projects so it’s wonderful to see those paying off 
Most of these winter plants were sown in very late fall, I think in September. It was later than I wanted, because so much garden space was taken up with summer plants that I didn’t want to cut down. This fall I’m going to try underplanting so I can start winter plants while summer plants are still producing.
Plants were all given minimal care. I watered them with diluted urine for their first few weeks, sometimes with wood ash mixed in and sometimes with just plain water. After they were established I would sometimes water them, but mostly they were on their own. I significantly over-seeded most of the beds, and had to spend a lot of time thinning plants which was a hassle. Given the unknown germination of my mysterious and varied seed collection, I’m probably going to keep having this problem.
My garden is much smaller than a farm, so I worry about inbreeding and limited gene pool. However, I think as long as I introduce a some new seeds from other people’s gardens each year, I should have enough fresh genetics to avoid inbreeding depression. That’s the idea at least! I’m still a complete novice at seed saving and understanding genetics so I’d love to know if this idea is a good one.
Here’s a full list, and then all the photos:
Lettuce (from a microgreens package and a few commercial varieties): Complete failure. After the ice, it looked like a few might survive, but they didn’t last. I think an overwintering lettuce is possible here, so I’ll be trying to get more cold hardy lettuce seeds this fall. But wild lettuce doesn’t grow in the winter here, so maybe it’s a foolish idea.
Daikon (open pollinated food variety and cover crop variety): Grew really well in the fall, but the ice killed every single plant. I hear this is what people use them for - since they reliably winter kill, they make good tillage. Still, I was disappointed given how well they survived the rest of the cold weather, and I’m on the lookout for a winter hardy daikon.
Arugula (misc commercial varieties, saved seeds from last year): 100% failure after the ice storm. It was holding up really well until then so I’m holding out hope for finding an overwintering arugula!
Fava beans (conventional online sellers): Pretty sure they’re all dead, one has a little bit of green and might pop back up but I’m not expecting it to. Planting fava beans has been an expensive and unsuccessful project, I think we just don’t have enough cool weather to grow them here.
Peas (misc commercial varieties): Killed by the ice. Again, I really think there’s got to be a way to grow peas all winter, but the ice storm destroyed every single plant. Oh well! I keep planting, because I love pea greens.
Turnips (misc open pollinated varieties): A few survived, but they are very bug eaten and generally look really pathetic. They are in mostly clay soil with very little compost, so they might just be deprived of water and nutrients? Or maybe I put too much wood ash on them.
Beets (misc commercial varieties): One actually survived! But it seems most beets will no survive uncovered here, at least not without more adaptation.
Carrots (misc commercial varieties): Easy survival, I don’t think the cold killed any of them even though they were sown very late in the fall and are only a couple inches tall.
. Cilantro (cold hardy variety from local seed swap, sorry I forgot the name of the grower): Did pretty well! Some of the leaves were wilted from the ice, but it bounced back and is doing just fine. Sown in with the carrots.
Collards (Saved in friends garden, originally from Utopian Seed Project, thanks @chrismith82): Collards did incredibly well and are currently going to seed. They also got wilted by the ice but not a single plant died from it and they are growing extremely quickly in this period of pre-spring warm weather.
Parsnips (misc online): Parsnips overwintered beautifully. All the ones growing now were sown last spring - for some reason none germinated in the fall, I probably spoiled them by getting the seed packets wet. There are maybe 20 plants alive now and I’m going to let them all go to seed
Grocery store onion greens: Planted the base after cutting up the greens, in late fall. The continue to grow just fine! I plan on adding a lot more onions of all kinds next year after seeing how well these handled the ice. If this makes seeds I’ll keep those too.
Grocery store garlic: Sadly no seeds will come of this, but propagating garlic from grocery store bulbs is extremely cheap ($2 of 3 bulbs = a few dozen cloves) and adds pest deterrence without having to wait.
Emmer wheat/farro (commercial variety, pantry, misc heritage wheats incl. black bearded): Had no problem with clay soil and neglect, and didn’t even notice the cold.
Also some herbs did really well: Thyme and Yarrow actually grew during the winter, and Feverfew overwintered underground and is quickly coming up. Nipplewort is clearly going to make itself into a weed, I don’t have a use for it but maybe someone will. Mugwort is already coming back up through some mulch, I guess there’s no sense in killing it especially since it makes such a strong relaxation tea. Chives have sprung up vigorously. Edible weeds have also contributed a lot of fresh food in early spring: dandelion, bittercress, violets, deadnettle and chickweed have been very nice to graze, and they’ve been cooked into many omelettes and stir fries this month.
Early October:
Onions, collards, arugula, peas, and daikons are established, only collards and onions will survive the icy winter though.
February right after the ice thawed:
Arugula and peas burnt down by the ice. They seem to have some life still, but it doesn’t last through the rest of the winter.
Collards look a little sad, most of the wilty looking leaves end up being shed but they all survived.
Fava beans were almost a foot tall, but were burnt down by the ice. I really thought they’d come back but by mid March there’s nothing left.
Carrots, cilantro, and garlic all look extremely good! I will be planting these three together every year now, from seeds saved from this patch.
March 14th:
Garlic, cilantro, and carrots looks awesome, this is definitely a guild to save and keep planting Chickweed is growing as a weed, but I think it’s helping keep in moisture and I do have to keep harvesting the chickweed to avoid letting it choke out the cilantro and smaller carrots.
Yarrow looks great too, I harvested a LOT after a run in with some dormant poison ivy. Yarrow mash worked better than anything for relieving poison ivy itch so I wouldn’t scratch my skin off. In the summer I use (sorry, forgot the name, little yellow and red flower w exploding seed pod).
Some of the parsnips. I wish we had more but after bad germination failure last fall I’m happy to have a few dozen individual to make up a probably sufficient gene pool.
Emmer wheat, I’m curious how productive this will be since it’s such a small amount.This patch did better than any of the others that are scattered around though.
Collards, exploding and bolting Finally healthy enough to snack on and bring to friends! The bittercress and other weeds growing between the plants makes me think there’s some other tastier plant I should be intercropping with my collards, to make a fully functional guild.
That’s all for this winter, I’ll follow this up based on this coming winter and hopefully have even more survivors and variety!
