What does season extension mean to you?

• Proper Storage
• Hoop Houses
• Late & Early Season Crops
• Elliot Coleman
• Permaculture

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Resources to Learn More About Season Extension:

Fall Vegetable Garden Activities, Posted on Cheshire County UNH Cooperative Extension Facebook Page

Vegetable gardens need some special attention in the fall. Finish harvesting frost-sensitive vegetables before the first frost or extend their harvest by covering plants on nights when frost is predicted. Many vegetables are hardy and will live right in your garden all winter long, where they can serve as a continual source of fresh produce or, protected under mulch cover, provide the first spring harvests.
Great Resource: The Winter Harvest Handbook
By Elliot Coleman; Book Review Posted on Four Season Farm

Choosing locally grown organic food is a sustainable living trend that’s taken hold throughout North America. Celebrated farming expert Eliot Coleman helped start this movement with The New Organic Grower published 20 years ago. He continues to lead the way, pushing the limits of the harvest season while working his world-renowned organic farm in Harborside, Maine. Now gardeners and farmers can use the innovative, highly successful methods Coleman describes in this comprehensive handbook to raise crops throughout the coldest of winters.

Growing Food on a Windowsill – Microgreens
Originally Posted on You Grow Girl

It is this short growth span that makes microgreens possible to produce on even the darkest windowsills through the dingiest months of the year. Even the most beginner seed starter can take this growing project on since the plants only need to be kept alive for a few weeks tops.

Use Low Tunnels to Grow Veggies in Winter: Quick Hoops
Originally Posted in Mother Earth News

Double your garden’s productivity with these simple, inexpensive low tunnels.  Which crops work well under quick hoops? Spinach would be an obvious candidate. New England growers have traditionally sown outdoor spinach in the fall, giving it a little protection with evergreen boughs, in order to get an extra-early harvest in spring. Many other hardy greens, such as lettuce, could also be planted in the fall for early spring harvest. We have often seen our latest-planted baby leaf salads for fall harvest successfully winter under a layer of snow and come up again in the spring much sooner and more vigorously than a spring-planted crop could ever do. Because one can’t count on snow cover, quick hoops are an excellent substitute. And what about a late-fall sowing of early-spring crops such as peas, carrots or beets? Hopefully, they would survive to germinate and start growing a month or two ahead of schedule – in the protected shelter of the low tunnel. A new idea always leads us to more new ideas.

Want to take it to the next level?  Visit Season Extension Techniques for Market Gardeners.

In Case You Missed These Past Localvore E-Newsletters: Season Extension Related Topics
•    Preserving Fruit
•    Root Cellars