Cold-Climate Gardening

Cold-Climate Gardening: How to Extend Your Growing Season by at Least 30 Days (Paperback)

This book is an essential resource for gardeners who dream of feeding themselves off their own land in the frozen North. The book is organized into 3 sections and an appendix. Section one describes the challenges of cold climate gardening in general, and provides some very useful suggestions about how to get the most out of the garden, including dealing with microclimates, building soils, and starting seeds indoors. It closes with a chapter on ideas for lengthening the growing season, which is of vital concern when you only have 70-80 days of frost-free weather.The second section covers various food crops in detail. It includes ideas for speeding the melting of the snow from the garden in the spring, heating the soil during the growing season, and extending the season with mulches and cold frames. It also takes up each vegetable or fruit in turn and describes whether or not it is likely to thrive in the North, with suggestions for pushing the limits, when necessary, to get a harvest.

The last section covers special landscaping concerns of the North, with information such as which hedges should be protected from deep snow, and how to build protective frames for decorative hedges. The appendix includes such things as a list of recommended readings, seed companies and nurseries that specialize in Northern varieties, and sources for greenhouse materials.

Before attempting to garden in Vermont, I’ve had gardens in Pennsylvania, Upstate New York, Massachusetts, and Southern New Hampshire. In those places, I never needed a book to tell me how to garden- -I just stuck seeds in the ground and they grew. But gardening is different up here, where the soil never really warms up until the end of June, if then, and frosts threaten by the end of August. Succession planting is still possible, but it takes a lot more forethought to enable two harvests on the same ground in such a short period. This book has helped me focus my efforts on vegetables that really will grow in this climate, like root crops and cabbage family plants, and restrict my planting of heat-loving plants to the “experimental section” of the garden. I’ve even been able to get a couple of melons and cucumbers to grow by following some of the suggestions in this book. I also learned through reading this book how not to waste my money on fruit trees that aren’t fit for this climate, and why it is so important to buy fruit trees and seeds locally up here. If you’re stymied by gardening in snow, this book can help!