Winter Blues--What do You Do?

18 years ago

I am wondering what you TN gardeners do in the winter to pass the time or fulfill your need to be outside digging in the dirt. I love to read gardening magazines and books. I have read nearly every gardening book in the local library. I also love to grow plants from seeds. I have a plant stand with grow lights set up in the guest bedroom closet. Hope I don't have many visitors this winter who want to spend the night!

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Comments (11)

brandon7 TN_zone7
18 years ago
I get quite a few plant catalogs. I look through them until I can picture what's on each next page before turning the page. Kinda pitiful huh?
cannahavana
18 years ago
Farmerbell, I am with you on reading every plant related book in the local library system! Sometimes twice.

I have a ton of plants that I drag inside the house, so I still get to 'garden' during the winter. I like to start seeds around Feb. if I still have the space. I make a list of what I would like to try next summer. Catch up on reading, knit, crochet, sew, and attempting to do a little quilting this winter...the list goes on. About a year ago, I discovered that I enjoy painting with acrylics on various rocks that are left over from outdoor projects. I am always stumbling on some new crafty thing that I hadn't tried. I will go through all the pictures that I have taken this season and cull some. I have a web design business I started this summer that I will be working hard to get going. Learning new software.

Plus, I keep up with two kids and their activities and school.

Can you tell I don't watch a lot of TV? LOL!

Rebecca
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This is a great thread! There are so many considerations for us summer out/winter indoors people. In the summer I have cattleyas, dendrobiums, oncidiums, and bulbophyllums out on a porch, with direct sun in the morning and late afternoon, and shade overhead at midday. This year I put out paphs too, on the bottom shelf where they had more shade. Everything does very well and adds a lot of growth. In the winter, they all move to a sunroom facing west but with a south exposure too. Life for my orchids improved immensely when I added Wonderlites (in the west and south windows) and big humidity trays to this set up, and it cost very little. Most winter days it is about 60% humidity, high of 80 F and low 55F. I have a tiny space heater to boost heat on really cold nights. My electric bill is just $25-30 a month. It helps that this room can be closed off to retain the humidity. I have the catts in clay pots and water about once a week. I think the humidity helps them cope with drying out completely. Another factor I think is that I choose catts that aren't seasonal bloomers but bloom at various times of the year. Originally I chose them just because I wanted to get more blooms, but I also figure they have a built-in urge to keep growing and not go dormant when the light and heat wane. They make lots of leads and lots of blooms during winter. My only basket plants are brassavolas that I water every other day. Calvin, I think your plan to cut back on water and fert until you see signs of growth is exactly the way to go. Generally I think it's important to observe the plants really closely and follow their lead. By the way I suffered from tinted windows for a month or two before I realized what was going on, but mine came with a little label that warned against using ammonia or detergent to clean them. The anti-UV tint was just a surface film that was gone with a few vigorous washings. By the way, I also remove the screens in winter as they cut down on the light. Good luck and keep experimenting! Margo
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Ms Minna, do you have extended or just brief freezes there? If we are going to have wet snow, I leave things be and only protect (which I've surely lost this year but its always worth a try) my big pot of annual geranium. If it's a dry hard freeze in the forecast indicating temps into the teens for several days, I move pots with young perennials into the carport, sometimes put them on my front porch that is protected on two sides and covered, cover plants racks with plastic (Home Depot clear industrial drum liners work great), or drape things pushed close together with old tablecloths, beach towels and hope the wind doesn't take those....anything to give them a few degrees protection. I had a flat of noble fir seedlings under my car one year :) I had 4x5" pots in racks, many, frozen solid in my carport this year for more than 72 hours (weird winter) and I don't think I've lost any....newly rooting rose and shrub cuttings, many first year perennials. The perennials are frozen back to the crowns in their pots, but I don't have any reason to think dead - are you sure yours are goners? What are they and how cold did it get?
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maternut
18 years ago
Like Brandon I wear my plant cataogs out, then I spend a
lot of time in the greenhouse, starting plants for the
next spring swap. Wife has a sun room and I have the green
house. Then there is all the bird feeders to keep filled.
Norm
big_orange_vol_
18 years ago
Winter Sowing!
hosta_mom
18 years ago
I think I am going to try some winter sowing this year too.

I also wear out the catalogs, look at magazines & spend too much time on the net looking at websites. :-)

Another thing I do is hit the bookstores at the end of season for clearanced gardening books. I spend alot of time reading in the winter months & I love to get $30 - $40 books clearanced for usually around $5.
hosta_mom
18 years ago
Oh Yea,

forgot to mention, I just got some software that I'm sure I can kill some time with. It is landesigner for landscaping, bundled with a plant/tree encyclopedia of over 10,000 plants. The encyclopedia has pictures of many different stages of growth on each plant/tree.

With the design part I can play with sketches & pictures of my place to see what plants/trees can look like as they mature.

I can forsee these things eating alot of my free time too.... lol
wild_rose
18 years ago
I have too many hobbies to mention, but gardening overshadows most of them in spring, summer, and fall. Once it gets too cold to do much gardening, my knitting needles and the sewing machine come out, the TV stays on longer, gardening catalogs get tattered, I make garden art with mosaics and paint, and I'm on the computer more. Like Joe, one of my main interests is photography and I also play with the photos in PhotoShop. In fact, just today, I took six framed prints that had been converted into watercolor-looking images and printed on watercolor paper to a gallery where they'll hang for a week and hopefully one or more will sell! Oh, and last winter I discovered Polymer Clay, jewelry making, and painted three rooms in the house.
wild_rose
18 years ago
I left out WinterSowing!!!
SmokyMist
18 years ago
Reading...reading...reading....and winter sowing ! Trading seeds back and forth to get ready for that. I learn a bit every year I winter sow on what does well for me and what doesn't.

Cheryl
peri__n_eal
18 years ago
As much as I love gardening, I am ready for a change of activities in sync with the change of seasons. Now I have time to search the web for new gardening places to visit, to browse on line catalogs to see what's new. I can spend more time on other forums at Garden web---like the one on tips. Over the year when I run across an interesting site that I didn't have time to look at, I bookmark it. I spend a good month going through bookmarked sites developing my next year's wish list of 10 or 20 things I will be searching for next spring.....

Then I go through books and websites for inspiration for the two or three new projects I will do next year. By spring, I will know precisely what I want to do and where I will find the things with which to do them.

I research public/private gardens and nurseries in places that I might visit next year and pick up a few more ideas.

By the end of January, I'm out watching for my first iris reticulata to break ground----a sure sign that spring is on the way. Having plants that bloom extremely late and extremely early, seems to have a great psychological boost for me.

.....and I think you have to have something completely different that holds your interest in the winter. Mine happens to be genealogy. I love doing it----but only for brief periods.
rizzir
18 years ago
This winter will conclude my first full year as a true "gardener". It would never have come to be without all of you! I am truly grateful for all of the time you all spend here, and for all the wisdom you have so freely imparted. I only hope I will get so good at this that I will become like peri_n_eal and be able to plant out my gardening adventures and enjoy working on other projects to pass the dark months. It sounds freeing. I don't know about the rest of you, but I am driven to distraction by about February with the desire to get things growing NOW. Last winter I drove my co-workers crazy with my flats of seedlings on boxes shoved up under their desk lights. This year I will winter sow to scratch that itch - and I wouldn't have known about it without all of you.

Winter Blues--What do You Do?

Comments (11)

brandon7 TN_zone7

cannahavana

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