Sara's Garden MarketSustainable Living, Gardening, Flowers, and Food

The Winter Harvest Handbook, Year-Round Vegetable Production Using Deep-Organic Techniques and Unheated Greenhouses, by Eliot Coleman is a very detailed and exhaustive look at winter greenhouse gardening in zone 5. I am loving the look of the greenhouses on page 64, with snow piled up around the bases of a few large greenhouses!

This book not only talks about traditional greenhouse structures in winter and how to utilize them, but many other alternative ways of gardening in the winter time. Good tips on which vegetables to grow, pest control (different season = different pests!), and garden tools are peppered liberally through out the entire book.

This is an EXCELLENT companion to Carol and Chuck’s Winter Greenhouse book.

I look forward to using both books this Spring/Summer and into next Fall and Winter as I take on the adventure of building and using my own greenhouse in the winter in zone 4/5!

If you haven’t heard, here in Minnesota we are experiencing some seriously warm weather for this time of year. Last week and this week typically being our coldest weeks of the entire month temperatures have reached the 40’s more than a few times and as I type this to you now it is 50 degrees!

I had to go out to the garden to show you what’s happening out there. Things are ALIVE and growing. Albeit slowly my salad greens, strawberries, onions and carrots are alive and growing right now in the middle of winter.

Keep in mind when you read this that last year these same beds were under a few FEET of snow, and it was so cold you could not breath well without something covering your mouth. I did not tend these beds or intend for these plants to be well now. I just went out to see if anything was happening after seeing that a friend of mine harvested salad greens after Christmas! (Needless to say, I will be starting salad and radish seeds inside now and covering these beds just to see if I can get a pre-Spring harvest!!)

New baby strawberry plants green and soft. Uncovered, in ground.

Carrots still green in January - uncovered raised bed.

Onions growing in January 2012 - semi-covered raised bed.

Lettuce in January 2012!! Semi-covered raised bed.

I am so excited because I just read this great book. I highly recommend it to anyone looking to have a permanent greenhouse in zone(s) 4/5. They do use some supplemental heat and a small amount of electricity in the coldest/darkest months. Their greenhouse employs many innovations for keeping it’s cost and carbon footprint to a minimum and returning a yield of winter crops for 18 families in their winter CSA!!!

Watch for future posts where I will be visiting their greenhouse, and making plans to build my own this Spring/Summer!

I’ve been out of touch recently, but I’m back in 2012 with new inspiration!

I have found a few great resources about winter gardening in Minnesota! Can you believe other people are as crazy as I am? 🙂

After my little plastic greenhouse got ripped apart by all the wind we’ve been having this Fall/Winter I was inspired to look into building a permanent structure. I went to my local building store and looked at their shed kits/structures and greenhouse poly/plastic sheeting and corrugated sheet metal and recycled material. It was very exciting and totally do-able.

But NOW; An even better solution has come into focus from a link shared on facebook. (Thank you Lara!!!!) A couple in Minnesota started a solar powered organic winter greenhouse. It grew into a winter CSA which now provides organic veggies to 18 families all winter long!!!

What’s more is that they are very nice, and will support anyone who wants to try to do what they did, AND they wrote a book all about it. What better way to pass this winter than learning how to garden year-round starting this Spring??

The book is titled, Northlands Winter Greenhouse Manual, by Carol Ford.

While searching for this book I also found, The Winter Harvest Handbook, by Eliot Coleman.

Both are about sustainable organic winter greenhouse gardening. Watch for more posts as I read and review these books and start planning my permanent greenhouse project this Spring.

I could not be more excited and I am so grateful that I found these books/resources before I went ahead and started my own pioneering project with this. I will be leaps and bounds ahead of where I would have started out with all this.

Who wants to by in my Winter CSA??? 🙂 (I am only half kidding.)