Carrots All Winter

Now that the winter’s first hard freezes have arrived, fresh homegrown produce is in short supply. The season my be over for frost-tender summer squash, vine-ripened tomatoes, peppers and eggplant, but with some preparation, you can enjoy at least one crop that can be harvested from mid-summer through fall and winter, until the days start to warm again. There’s nothing like going out to the garden in December, brushing off some snow, carefully digging into the cold soil, and pulling up some crisp, bright orange carrots!

Keeping carrots fresh and edible all winter isn’t hard. The trick is to keep them from freezing. Here along Colorado’s Front Range, it takes a two-foot thick layer of straw laid over the carrot bed. Top the straw with a moisture barrier such as a small tarp or large trash bag. This keeps it dry when warm days melt a recent snowfall. (You could also use autumn leaves, as shown here; any form of light-weight insulation works well.)

 

Wax Begonias

What plant thrives indoors, shrugs off low humidity, and blooms all winter in bold shades of white to pink to red? Surprise! It’s wax begonias!

Also called fibrous begonias, these familiar bedding plants have large, round succulent leaves in either lime green or a beautiful burgundy- or bronze-red. Flowers have fleshy petals surrounding a bright yellow cluster of stamens. Plants grow to a height of about six to twelve inches. They tend to flop, creating a solid mass of color, and even trailing over walls and container edges.

Wax begonias are usually considered summer annuals. It’s true that they do well in our gardens, given light shade or (preferably filtered) sun. Space them a foot apart in soil high in organic matter and keep the roots evenly moist. Happily, pests are usually not a problem—even the deer tend to leave them alone!

 

Amaryllis, Another Blooming Houseplant

With giant, trumpet-shaped flowers facing outward around a central stalk, a blooming amaryllis makes an eye-catching houseplant. Colors range from white through pink to red (and even almost black), as well as salmon-orange. Stripes or contracting edges are common. “African” amaryllis have more compact forms suited to indoor cultivation. Dwarf amaryllis are smaller in size but can produce more blooms.

Not surprisingly, these striking, easy-to-grow bulbs are popular holiday gifts; perhaps you received one this year. There’s even a bright red variety named “Merry Christmas”!

 

Winter Watering

Q: It’s winter. I can sit back, relax, and ignore my garden—right?

A: Not quite. The sky is bright blue, the sun is shining, the predicted high is well above freezing, and it’s been like that for months. Sounds like perfect weather—but not if you’re a plant. In fact, if you listen, you can hear their cry for water. Everything is so dry! Desiccating winds have drained the last vestiges of moisture from exposed leaves and branches, and even the so-called evergreens are shriveled.

 

Winter Color

Do weeks of staring at snowy white landscapes have your eyes screaming for color? Winter gardens don’t have to be drab, lifeless affairs. Flowers may not be in bloom, but many plants have leaves, stems, or berries in shades of bright red, golden orange, or silver-blue and plum. Put them together and your winter garden springs to life.

Mahonia repens is an attractive groundcover year-round, but it really shines in winter. While other plants shed their leaves, Mahonia’s foliage turns a stunning bright red.

Yellow flowers in spring and showy blue berries in early fall add to this native’s year-round interest. Mahonia repens is drought tolerant, and handles full sun to part shade.

Juniper horizontalis ‘Blue Chip’ is another groundcover that remains attractive all year. While many junipers grow much too large for our small yards, Blue Chip stays under a foot high. Its feathery foliage is a beautiful steel-blue all year, with the addition of silver-plum tips in winter. Plant it in full sun, where it will quickly spread up to ten feet in diameter. Junipers are very xeric once established.