You'd be Crazy Not to Plant this in August

In this video, 3 reasons you'd be crazy, crazy not to plant a winter harvest garden. Plus, I'm going to show you step by step how I'm going to convert one of these raised beds for our winter harvest garden. Winter harvest garden is the most underrated garden out there. It's July, it's August, it's hot, it's not too late to plant. And once you get through that warm season and into the cool, shorter, lighter days, there are no bugs. No bugs. Secondly, there are no weeds. And thirdly, you don't have to can this food. You can eat it fresh out of the ground all winter long. In fact, here's an old clip of me harvesting breakfast in 6 inches of snow. Look at that, look at that. All right, first rule of the winter harvest garden: plant when it's hot. You're planting in July, August. You're also planting cold hardy crops. I mean, we got some of this for our fall garden, you could do some of it for winter harvest garden. We got some onions going, collards, cabbage, broccoli. I don't have it, I thought we had— we're gonna start it soon. Uh, cold hardy crops like lettuce, kale— kale, no for me— Swiss chard, turnips, the same things you would plant in the spring you can plant for your winter harvest garden. Now don't go trying to grow tomatoes unless you want to do a heated greenhouse. We're not going to do that. We're going to do this really simple. Let me show you this trick, and I got to get out of the sun, it's so hot in here right now. Bug netting over our brassicas. If you're planting brassicas, the bugs really like it, and especially when they're young, they're going to be more vulnerable. Got to get that bug net on them. Getting out of that sauna. Okay, Shabbat Shalom, y'all! That means Peaceful Sabbath. We've pre-recorded this thing. Our family is resting on this Saturday, but I still wanted to get you some content. Better shut this door, Beauty. You don't have my head. Birds will take up house in our basement. Come, this is not a vlog but a special video. I thought, why not share the winter harvest garden tips with you? Hey, you got your Crocs! You got you some Crocs. You're the only one, well, and other people your age, who can wear Crocs with socks and just look adorable. I'm sharing a gift for you guys. Free interview of us. It'll inspire you to do the winter harvest garden. What are we looking for here? I'm looking for the hoop houses. Aha! I'll also use it, use this Agribon. You guys use some 10-foot-wide Agribond. Setting this up quite yet, we're not quite ready for the, for the raised bed winter garden, but I'm gonna show this, guys. Get the 10-foot-wide Agribond, and what Agribond does is it, it protects you from frost. You plant these crops before frost. When it— when you're a threat of frost, you put the Agribond over it, and then when the frost comes, it's safe and sound under there. What am I looking for? Okay, here we go. Idiot, you left our nice hose out! Where I should just get cheap hose. So then, you know, you could— I think we probably have some greenhouse plastic in here. Definitely if you're in snowier areas, 10-foot-wide greenhouse plastic. Why 10-foot? Well, we're gonna put it over this 1/2-inch, 10-foot-long electrical conduit poles. Let's show you how this easy— how easy it is to set this up in one of my do-it-yourself raised beds. Get the pole bender from Johnny Seeds and you can bend them into the shape. I'm going to show you. These are— it's more designed for— Elliot Coleman, I believe, designed this system. Let me show you. This is for more a market-style crop garden, which we have over here. We are eating less greens, we're eating more animals these days, so we only gonna need to cover some lettuce, maybe some collards. Growing what's close to our heart. What we would do back in the day when we used to eat a lot of greens— maybe you still like greens, you know— just jam this in, put it about every 4 feet, and then you put that Agribond over it. That's it. Weigh it down with sandbags and say that was our cold-hardy crop. Frost comes, we've protected it. It's that easy. Like, winter harvest garden can be that easy. I mentioned Elliot Coleman. He's the go-to this man for Four Seasons Harvest, that book, total inspiration. Here, let's grab our stuff. Let's walk and talk. He's in Maine, okay? And he did a CSA garden where he sold produce all winter long from his winter harvest garden in Maine. There's no excuse. Anybody can do this. But speaking of Elliot Coleman, I'm sharing the stage with him, so to speak, in this summit with him and my gardener. We both have classes. I forget when we are, but the whole weekend seminar whatever it is. Pre-classes starts Sunday, tomorrow, July 28th. Cannot wait to show you how easy it is to set this up. I mean, we still got to start our lettuces, so we'll be transplanting in about 4 or 5 weeks. You can start all your cold hardy crops now. They'll grow 4, 5, 6 weeks, transplant them out. I was reading today, Shoe Dog, Shoe Dog story of Phil Knight, he was saying he's had some lucky times, but he also says hard workers tend to get into more luck. So I don't know if this was hard work, luck. To convert this, we'll have to go get two more. To convert one of my raised beds to a low tunnel— I hope you can see that. Did you see me? Annoying errands like going back for something you should have remembered in the first place definitely works better with the camera and certainly works better if you do a foolish run. Okay, we have— ta-da! Somebody helping me. This is Grace. All right, Grace, stick one in. Oh, do you want it to be like that? Uh, I do. Okay, jam it in. Hey, even Grace, despite being from Nebraska, has never put in a low tunnel. You do a winter harvest garden, Grace? Yeah, in Nebraska. Yeah. What do you put? What are you harvesting in the winter? Everything, basically. Let's pretend we planted lettuce. That's what we're going to plant in here. We're going to put it close to the door. You don't want to go far. From your house in the winter. So get it to your closest— your front door, socially acceptable, flat, most sun, as close to the front door as possible. How many lettuces do we want in the 4 or 5 winter months? That's 5 times 5. It's not supposed to do math in public. You did it! It's 25 weeks. How many heads of lettuce do we want a week? 1 or 2? This will hold 36 lettuce beds, I'm pretty sure. You want to do this math? No. Should we involve ChatGPT? She already said no. It's 4 by 8. So what's 4 times 8? 16, 32. So there's 32 square feet in here. What's 32 times 4? Oh boy, uh, hang on, 128. Yeah, wait, yeah. Wow, wait, we can plant way more than— okay, how many lettuces did I say we wanted? I don't know. Okay, whatever I said, this is plenty, this is plenty of room. How is that true? I think we'll plant that. We'll just, we'll give people lettuce for Christmas and they'll be like, what? This Agribon It is so hot. It's weird to be planting a winter harvest garden in such heat, but just trust me, your produce needs more time than what it says on the seed packet. That's assuming spring planting. Days are getting shorter. I think it's time and a half is what you plan on. If it takes 40 days to maturity, say for easy math, you're going to need 60. We're going to cut this to size, get some sandbags, weigh this down, and all winter long, once or twice a week, one of the fried chicken salads salad, something like that. We just come out here, pull the tarp, pull the sandbags off, and go in there. You have snow, do a 10-foot-wide piece of greenhouse plastic. Ta-da! That's what we're doing. If you want to know more about our winter harvest garden, Elliot Coleman's, and the whole concept in general, and you want help planning yours, you got to check out this Seedtime event. Link down in the description. Shabbat shalom!