Today, Lindsey from Lynette’s Urban Farm is going talk about four crops that are winter hardy, and by winter hardy, we mean they are frost resistant. They can handle those cooler temperatures and they can handle frost without dying.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Four Winter Hardy Plants
0:47 Brassica Family
2:58 Issues with Pests
4:57 Grow Your Own Food
TRANSCRIPT FROM VIDEO:
Hi, I’m Lindsey. I’m here on Lynette’s Urban Farm. It’s fall on the farm, and that is a super exciting time. We get to start a new season. It gets a little bit cooler, not as cool as it does in other places, but the cooler temperatures mean new crops, and that’s always super exciting. Here on the farm. Today I’m gonna talk about four crops that are winter hardy, and by winter hardy, I mean they are frost resistant. They can handle those cooler temperatures and they can handle frost without dying. A lot of plants, once we have the first frost, they’re done. After that, the plant decays and it’s just gonna have to wait until the spring to come back.
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These four crops are in the brassica family. The brassica family is the cabbage or mustard family. They’re really resilient, hardy plants that can tolerate extreme temperature, changes the colder weather, and they’re just really pest resistant and amazing plants to have in your garden, especially in the fall and winter. We’ve just started our planting here for the fall in October. It’s now early November, so we can see that our plants are still on the smaller side. This is brussels sprouts. We have cabbage and also some kale, and this is Napa cabbage. These are the four crops that I love to have in the garden for the winter, no matter where you live. They are really resilient for the winter. These are all in the brassica family, which means they have a different type of leaf. So if you’ve ever felt cabbage leaves that thicker, more waxy leaf is very indicative of the plants in this family. Think about kale, brussels sprouts, cabbage, they all have that thicker waxy leaf that can protect them from the colder weather and frost. These plants, even if you live in somewhere with frost and snow, you might not have to cover them in the winter until it gets really snowy. We of course, don’t want snow covering our plants, but if we had a frost, these plants would be able to survive. They are also really low maintenance. That’s one of the things I love about crops in this family.
You might have a little bit of issues with pests in the beginning, warmer months. We sometimes get cabbage loopers, especially here on the farm. They’re really easy to maintain. You just have to pick them off the back of the plants. We also get white flies in different parts of the country where it’s a little bit cooler. Usually white flies are gone by the time you have these plants in the ground.
So because we have a little bit warmer fall season, we sometimes have to deal with those. So white flies are a nuisance. You just have to use and organic spray, that you can make yourself out of dish water or dish soap and water. Super easy. It just takes a little bit of effort. But otherwise you can see we’ve had a little bit of damage on these leaves. I would say this is probably from a little mouse chewing it up and maybe also some loopers. Don’t see any on the actual plant, but I’m just gonna take off these leaves, especially the lower ones that are touching the soil. We don’t want them to stay wet. They’ll just get disease, so we can just lift these plants up and we do the same when we’re harvesting kale, we pick from the bottom and let it grow upwards.
This family is often called cole crops, and that comes from the Latin word that means stock. So if you think about these, they all have a stock. Brussels sprouts grow on a stock. Kale is a stock, and then cabbage is a little bit different, but it has those same properties.
These four crops are really easy to take care of, maintain they produce throughout the season and they’re awesome frost resistant plants. I highly suggest you grow these as well as other favorites. In the garden we have cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, those are all amazing crops that might just need a little bit more protection. But if you’re looking for something really easy and carefree to grow in your garden in the winter, try brassicas.
