The 5 EASIEST Winter Veggies To Grow RIGHT NOW!

In this video, I share the 5 easiest winter veggies to grow right now! These easy to grow winter crops are cold hardy, require little maintenance and are the perfect additions to a winter garden for new gardeners and experienced gardeners alike.

This video explains why these cold hardy winter vegetables are so versatile, how to sow each vegetable from seed, and I provide helpful gardening tips along the way to make growing each winter vegetable simple.

Cold Protection Methods Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1gY7BoYBGIG1w1u_K6CDIhfsqG8dMnPj&si=h3l-pKG_cSPnUiLd

TABLE OF CONTENTS
0:00 Easy Vegetables To Grow
1:19 Easy Veggie #1: Kale
4:27 How To Plant Kale Seeds
5:53 Easy Veggie #2: Carrots
7:11 How To Plant Carrot Seeds
10:09 Easy Veggie #3: Radishes
11:38 How To Plant Radish Seeds
12:08 Easy Veggie #4: Red Leaf Lettuce
13:54 How To Grow Lettuce
14:55 Easy Veggie #5: Leeks
17:27 How To Harvest And Use Leeks
19:45 Adventures With Dale

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MiracleGro Organics (1lb): https://amzn.to/46dta3L
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If you have any questions about these winter garden vegetables and are looking for more winter garden tips, want to know about the things I grow in my raised bed vegetable garden and edible landscaping food forest, are looking for more gardening tips and tricks and garden hacks, have questions about vegetable gardening and organic gardening in general, or want to share some DIY and “how to” garden tips and gardening hacks of your own, please ask in the Comments below!

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ABOUT MY GARDEN
Location: Southeastern NC, Brunswick County (Wilmington area)
34.1°N Latitude
Zone 8B

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#gardening #garden #gardeningtips #wintergarden #wintergardening

What’s growing on gardeners it’s Saturday December 30th and another year is coming to an end here on the Southeastern coast of North Carolina are you a new Gardener that is looking to begin a winter garden for the first time or maybe you are a more experienced Gardener and you’re looking for really

Easy to grow winter crops to add to the list well today I’m going to share with you five winter crops that no winter or spring garden is complete without because they are some of the easiest to grow crops out there if you’re new to the Channel please subscribe and hit the

Bell to receive new video notifications and check out our Amazon store and spread shop links in the video description for everything I use in my garden and awesome custom designed to power another gear your support is greatly appreciated now before I begin I live in zone 8B North Carolina and all

Of the crops that I’m going to list in this video can easily be grown pretty much unprotected all winter long in zone 8 and a lot of mild Zone sevens as well however if you live in colder zones than I live you can still grow most of these

Crops all winter long but they will benefit from a little bit of protection like a little cheap hoop house with a row cover like this so down in the video description I’m going to link to a playlist of the different ways that I build these hoop structures and protect

My plants from cold if you build a little structure like this you can grow them deep into the winter even in cold zones the number one veggie that no winter or spring garden is complete without is kale and I think kale is probably the easiest to grow of all of

The leafy greens here in 8 I have never had my kale take any damage and I never protect it except for a freak 100-year event that we had back in January 2018 where we had backto back 8 degree nights and we never got above freezing during

The day when that happened that burnt up some of the kale leaves but I just peeled them back to the stems and they still survived and they all grew right back as soon as the temperatures warmed up again every year I grow three different types of kale in my garden

There’s red Russian which you see right here and is probably the most cold hearty of all the varieties of kale there’s lado kale which is sometimes called Dino kale which you see right here this is often the most well-known and most popular varieties of kale but

My favorite variety of kale by far is the dwarf blue curly kale not only is it extremely cold tolerant but for whatever reason it is also very heat resistant and the last variety of kale to bolt in my garden and I think it has something to do with these really ruffled leaves

That probably protect from both damage and the over absorption of sunlight and also because of these ruffled leaves they tend to never get any problems with pests my other varieties of kale tend to have problems with caterpillars and worms and white flies but this is by far

My most insect resistant kale variety so I’ve been slowly converting a lot of my kale over to this variety and it is also one of my favorite varieties of kale to eat fresh it is wonderfully tender and juicy now the interesting thing about kale is it is a bani it doesn’t flower

And go to seed until its second season so this kale that you see right here is actually 1 year old it was planted last winter and the the kale that I predominantly Harvest during the winter time is the one-year-old kale because it’s not going to flour and Seed until

The next spring or summer so what I like to do actually is I plant new kale transplants every single winter and I have a very minor Harvest of them and only Harvest a little bit of the leaves then throughout the spring and summer the plants will continue to grow but

They tend to get a lot of pests like moths and cabbage worms and uh White flies and they will actually damage the kale so what I will do is I will strip them back and you will get these long basically naked stalks that will come back in the fall when the pest pressure

Decreases so these kale which will have a very highly developed root system immediately come back in the cooler fall weather when the pests are gone and I get big Harvest of them I pick off these plants several times every single week and it just produces non-stop here in

North Carolina the kale plants that you see right here were actually started from seed in the fall and they were planted in late fall so this is going to be my dwarf blue curly kale that I’m actually going to harvest next winter I stagger my Harvest by a whole year yes I

Will get a little bit of a harvest off of the leaves that you see right here but overwhelmingly I’m going to mostly let them sit and let them mature because I tend to harvest my kale on a delayed schedule that’s how I get the best production when growing kale from seed I

Re recommend starting them in seed trays indoors because they like to germinate at around 70° F and it’s just too cold this time of year in most climates in order to approximate those conditions now in order to do this you want to fill your seed trays with a a potting mix of

Some type and then leave them about half an inch shallow and then simply pre moisten them because it’s easier to work with pre moistened mix then we will take our kale seeds with a chopstick because a wet Chopstick tip will make it very easy to grab the seed and I will place

Two to three seeds in every individual cell and that’s because we want to overseed them all because only around a little bit more than half of the seed will probably germinate so if we put three in every single one we can probably expect two of them to come up

And then once they reach about 3 in in height and they get a couple sets of true leaves we will simply thin them down to the strongest individual transplant and then once all of the kale seeds have been placed we’re going to lightly cover them with about a 1/4 in

Of potting mix you want your kale seeds buried 1/4 in so that will also leave about 1/4 in on top in order to hold water as well and then finally we will water them in and indoors we can expect them to germinate anywhere within 7 to

14 days and if you have a Seedling heat mat and a thermostat I recommend you use it and you set bottom heat somewhere between the 70 to 75° range veggie number two that is so easy to grow that it simply cannot be left out of your winter and spring garden are cat carrots

Now when it comes to growing carrots I’m pretty variety agnostic I just go to a seed stand and I buy whatever the average length carrot is that is the average number of days to maturity and this year this is the variety that I came up with that was sitting on the

Shelves at the store the reason why carrots simply must be a part of your winter and early spring garden is twofold number one a carrots sugar content is inversely proportional to temperature that means the colder the weather is that your carrots start to mature the higher the sugar content it

Will have the warmer the weather the starchier the carrot would be simply put carrots grown in the winter and the early spring are way sweeter and more delicious than carrots that mature in the warm weather in late spring and summer and number two carrots are some

Of the most cold hearty things that I’ve ever grown in my garden when we got down to 8 degrees and backtack nights and that freak 100-year freeze back in January 2018 it didn’t even fade the carrots I’ve never found the cold tolerance of a carrot I think it’s

Probably somewhere around 0° F or something like that especially if you cover it so they are just bulletproof in most winter climates the challenge to growing carrots is that you can’t start them from transplants they are a root vegetable so they need to be direct sewn

So they are at the mercy of your soil temperatures now carrots are going to germinate better in warmer soil temperatures but as long as your soil is still workable they will eventually germinate they just may take 2 weeks the other challenge with planting carrots is that the seed needs to be buried very

Shallow only at about a quarter inch of cover so they are pretty much surface Zone and the seeds are very small so they are liable to be washed away by heavy rain so you need to be careful in your planting methodology now the way I

Like to sew carrots is I like to take a piece of rebar like you see right here and just roll it back and forth and that will make a very shallow Trench in order to sew your carrot seeds and that is going to be a perfectly straight trench

That is about a/4 in deep you may just have to use your finger in order to uh even it out just a little bit then we are going to take the very small carrot seeds that you see right here and we are going to sprinkle it along the trench we

Really want to make sure that we overseed everything and we can thin our carrots later the germination rate of carrots is going to be low so it’s always better to have way uh more seed and have way more little baby carrots come up than to have really spotty

Germination and have big holes in our rows now it’s time to backfill the carrot seeds now you could just back fill it with the soil that are in your beds but what I have found is that this soil is very light and Sandy and it

Tends to wash away if we get very heavy rain so what I do is I cover it with a little bit of pre-bagged potting soil because that is very heavy in Pete and when Pete M gets wet it tends to lock into place so it is a lot harder to wash

Away and I’ve gotten much better germination results doing that you just have to make sure that after you press the Pete down you quickly and gently water it that way the Pete expands and it gets nice and heavy and it locks all those carrot seeds into place in order

To further increase the germination rates of your carrots one thing I’ve recommended in the past is to place a wooden board on top of your trench because that will lock all of the carrot seeds into place and then you just water on top of the board and around the

General area and keep it moist however some of you have mentioned that by placing a board on your garden soil like this m bugs or pill bugs have taken up residence under the board if you’re having issues with that you could also take something like agricultural Fabric

And you can lay it down in the area and then Place some bricks or rocks on a location on the ends to weigh it down but if you do that you have to keep the agricultural fabric moist so you need to water it every single day but not too

Much you don’t want the soil to be saturated you just want the area lightly moist and this is what you can expect about 2 weeks after you plant your carrot seeds in terms of germination one of the issues that many gardeners at high latitudes have growing food in the

Winter is even if their temperatures are mild enough the sun is not strong enough and the days are not long enough in order to supply effective enough photosynthesis to the plants well that’s why I’m recommending veggie number three which is super easy to grow and that is

Radish es radishes are some of the easiest things to grow in our Winter Gardens because they mature very quickly they germinate in only about 5 to 7 days and they’re ready to harvest in as little as a month sometimes even earlier so if you live at a high latitude and

Sun is very weak make sure you check the days to maturity that are on the package here as you can see the days to maturity of this variety is only 22 to 25 days so the lower the days to maturity the less they need strong Sun so look for those

Low numbers to be successful radishes are very cold hearty but because they are a root crop you want to keep the soil from freezing in order to be successful if you live in a climate where the soil doesn’t freeze no problem you can grow these freely all winter

Long if your soil does freeze that’s when you want to build a little hoop structure like this and put a cloth over it that way it holds in the heat of the sun all day and it will keep your soil from freezing now here in zone 8 all I

Need is agricultural fabric if you live in a cold Zone you may need to use greenhouse plastic no problem I will make sure to link to all of those things down in the video description I have direct links where you can purchase these various different items so right

Here I already have a nice crop of radishes coming along but I want to make another small planting in order to extend my Harvest when these are all complete so I’m going to place a series of Holes about 2 in away from each other and then I’m going to place my radish

Seeds and we want to sew them about half an inch deep and then we’re just going to cover them up water them in and we can expect these radishes to germinate in about 5 to 7 Days veggie number four that you simply must grow in your winter and early spring garden are

Red leaf lettuces and I’m specifically stating red leaf lettuce for a reason when most of us think about lettuce we think about the big heads of Roma lettuce that we find in the grocery stores but the truth is Roma is generally a fair weather plant it does

Not do well with hard freezes it can only take the lightest amount of frosts before it takes damage for that reason I actually grow my Roma in the middle of spring they like the temperatures of late March April and May they do not do

Well in the cold and you can see this on this head of Roma right here it was my one leftover head that I had growing underneath some milk jugs and even protected underneath the milk jug Greenhouse it took some damage in the mid 20s that we got down to about 2

Weeks ago and you can see that it has some rotting and splitting along the veins of the lettuce from damage from the cold and the head is also deformed and funny looking as a result red leaf lettuces with those curly ruffled leaves are way more cold hearty than your Roma

Types and I’ve been experimenting with numerous varieties in my garden over the years and for years I have had great success with the Marvel of Four Seasons and the Red Sales varieties that you see right here but this year I also took a gamble on another variety called new red

Fire and I am very impressed so far all of this lettuce that you see in this raised bed right here is the new red fire variety and whereas that green head of Roma I just showed you was suffering from all kinds of deformities and some cold damage even when under protection

This new red fire variety is just thriving it looks absolutely perfect there’s no deformations there is no coal damage at all and I will be harvesting this probably within the next 2 weeks now a lot of these red leaf lettuces don’t make very good heads they’re made

To be direct sewn in rows very tightly together in your garden and then you’ll come in with a pair of scissors and then you’ll cut off the leaves that you need hit them with a higher nitrogen fertilizer and then they will grow back we call this cut and come again style of

Harvesting but this new red fire variety you have the flexibility to either grow them in rows and harvest them as individual leaves or you can let them form small heads now I direct sewed these into my garden something like 6 weeks ago and they are making really

Nice tightly clumped heads so I’m going to let them keep going whatever you want to do if you want to grow a heading type or a row type that is going to be up to your personal preference a lot of these red leaf lettuces though do grow better

In rows than as heads so if you’ve failed growing lettuce in the past try growing these super curly leafed Red Leaf types they tend to grow best in the winter and they do better with the weaker sun and the colder temperatures n veggie number five may be the easiest to

Grow on the entire list and that is the leak the leak is part of the alium family so it is in the same family as garlic onions and shallus except for anything but maybe hard neck garlic this is probably the most cold hearty on the list hard neck garlic would be number

One then you’d have your leaks as the second most cold hearty and what is great about this is this is truly something that you can grow 365 days a year because you actually Harvest it for the stem that is what you eat so it is basically a tic to day length on like

Something like an onion and garlic which has to be planted at very specific times of the year so what I like to do with my leaks are I like to sew a six-pack of leak seed and that is what you see right here these are almost ready for

Transplant you’re going to sew these in seed trays just like I showed you how to sew my kale you want to let it germinate indoors and they will be ready for transplant in about 8 weeks and that is what you see right here these are approaching the 8we mark so I like to

Have my leaks in all different different versions of maturity the leaks that you see right here are leftover leaks that I left standing from the summer I have some leaks over here that are a couple of months behind them and I have a few more small leaks planted over here so

When you stagger them a sixpack at a time you will make sure that you always have various leaks in some form that you can always have some for Harvest now here in zone 8 North Carolina I have been growing exclusively this King Richard variety of leak and this is

Appropriate for all year planting here this is more than cold hearty enough for my zone all winter and it is more than heat tolerant enough for my Summers so if you’re in zone 8 zone 9 Zone 7 this is probably a fantastic variety now if you need a more cold hearty leak you

Could grow something like the variety blue Cay which is an heirloom leak you can grow them all the way down unprotected out in Vermont and have them stand all winter if you want winter leaks in a very cold climate what you would do is you would place your leak

Transplants out in late summer and then let them grow and have them mature in the middle of fall and then you just let them sit in your garden all winter long when they are mature they will tolerate temperatures well below 0 de fahit they can even sit in snow pack and you

Basically treat your Outdoors like a giant refrigerator and then you just come out and cut what you need when you need it if you live in a desert climate you may have to get yourself a more heat tolerant leak or place them under shade cloth in the summer to keep some of the

Sun off of them one of the problems I’ve found with leaks is that people just don’t know how to use them well a leak is kind of like a cross between a shallot and green onions and you can basically use them anywhere that you use an onion they’re incredibly versatile so

What you want to do is you want to go through your garden and find yourself a really nice thick boy the thickest stem one that you can find and then you’re going to yank that guy out and you’re going to cut off the roots and then what you’re going to do

Is you’re going to basically cut off all the greenery hanging H off because what we want to use is we want to use the white part in the center and that is what you see right here this is the white part of the leak so what you’re

Going to do is you’re going to take this inside you’re going to Slit the top you’re going to wash everything out really nicely and you’re going to eat it between here and here and you’re going to chop that up finely and you’re going to sauté that however you wish so this

Is excellent in any kind of pasta dish as a base for any kind of soups stews fried rice pretty much anywhere where you would like a very mild onion flavor that is basically what you would consider this a mild onion so it’s incredibly versatile so you’re on

YouTube right now you can just type in anything like leak pasta or leak soup there are countless things you can use this for as many things as you can use onions and garlic for you can use a leak for and that right there are five of the

Easiest veggies that you can grow in a winter or early spring garden so everybody I sure hope you found this video helpful if you did please make sure to hit that like button subscribe to the channel and please ring that notification Bell so you’re notified when I release more videos like these if

You have any questions about the veggies featured in this video please ask the questions down in the comments below and I will do my best to answer those questions and down in the video description I will drop a link to that playlist that has all of my hoop house

And row cover builds in case you need a little bit of cold protection while you’re down in the video description check out my link for my Amazon storefront it has everything I use in real life in my garden and I’ll Place some direct links for things like frost

Blankets and agricultural fabric if you need some cold protection and while you’re down there check out my spreadshop link as well for custom merch if you want to support the channel thank you all so much for watching and I hope to see all of you again on the next

Video we’re having a freak winter storm right now with all types of severe weather and tornado watches and everything and we actually had to put Dale in his Thunder shirt because it was so windy all day all of the wind noise was making him really nervous but he’s

Been in the shirt for a few hours and he’s doing so much better if you have a dog that struggles with loud noises or with uh fear of storms and things like that really recommend this Thunder shirt it hugs them very tightly and it’s been really good for Dale so if you’re

Interested in something like this I’ll place a link down in the video description it was a really great buy and it’s really calmed them down a lot so if you have a dog that struggles with loud noises and things like that and anxiety I really recommend it he’s such

A good boy look at this good boy he’s so handsome