Lots to do in this wintertime garden .
Last calendar week I heard a local plantsman tell an audience that the only gardening labor that could be accomplished in January is plan . No real horticulture . Which surprise me because I ’ve been gardening daily all fall and winter except for just two week when the ground was frozen , and temps have otherwise been somewhat meek . Through December and January I ’ve accomplished a HUGE amounts of work in the garden – proceed every damn works conceivable , planting 5 - foot - magniloquent conifers , creating borders , leveling pavers – really , I could go on . The modest - style winters of Maryland are swell for gardening . It ’s Zone 7 even in the burbs .
So I was proud of to read Adrian Higgins intoday ’s WashingtonPostrelating how busybodied he ’s been in the garden this year and excuse his winter activeness levels this way :
Lots to do in this winter garden.
This is my own temperature - activity mesa for wintertime horticulture . In the stripling : Do n’t get out of bed . mid-twenties : Fuss with seeds indoors . thirty-something : Bundle up and do what you must in the garden . mid-forties : Bundle up and go get ’em . Fifties : You ’re in trefoil ; make a day of it .
The drainage area is at 40 degrees . Below that and it ’s for die - hards , but above that , peculiarly if you are generating heat through work , it ’s concordant . Rain and a stiff wind will beat back you indoors , but a light mizzle ( I find ) simply adds to the ambiance .
Rooftop garden in business district Baltimore , late January .
Rooftop garden in downtown Baltimore, late January.
So if you garden where there ’s a winter , does this sound like your own activity level ? We require item here : How down in the mouth can the temperature be before you just stay in layer , or fiddle with the grow - lights ?
For me , the Higgins activity mesa works perfectly – with some tweaking , of grade , for sun and fart . Where subtlety in my garden is from deciduous Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree , not the house itself , the wintertime Dominicus is fabulous .
wintertime horticulture wearing apparel
It ’s all about the layers , lots of them , gravid for cast as you warm up up . In this photo , taken in the 30s , I was a happy nurseryman , though I might contribute a scarf today .
Warm - weather gardening is so great ?
Higgins is sure enough right that “ the idea of garden regularly in the wintertime is alien to many people ” and that ’s a shame . Here in the Humidity Belt of the Mid - Atlantic the ideal fourth dimension to do heavy garden job isnow , when it ’s in the XL and 50s . The 60 are fine but 70 degrees and up , you ’re talking about sweating . By summertime I ’m taking a breakage from heavy gardening , just keeping up with the tearing and weed and attain even those job in the early morning .
The pay - off from winter gardening
To cite Higgins again , “ The more you do in the winter , the more the former spring can be lighten of its unhinged scramble . ” He recommends particularly repairing the “ infrastructure ” – raised seam , patios , and paths , and so on – and rip out those wintertime weeds before they go nuts in the give . After get these things done you may “ greet the spring on nurseryman ’s term . ”
Then there ’s the pay-0ff of spend time in the garden and enjoying the ghostlike practice that weed can be for devout gardener :
This induce a reverie that is sometimes break by the red-blooded call of aCarolina wren , perched on the fence above me . Here is a wintertime migrant whose vitality is amplified elbow room beyond its piddling masses . In the most improbable of seasons , it is visit us into the garden .
