Cold Hardy Plants for Northern Gardens
You'd be Amazed What You Can Grow, No Matter Where You Live
Living in an area with a short 100-day frost-free growing, you’d assume that there wouldn’t be much you can grow. Down south, y’all can harvest strawberries in February, but up here, we’re literally foraging lichen and eagerly turning into tree vampires, cooking our brew into sweet syrup to take a bit of the edge off the cold.
Well…maybe that’s a bit dramatic…
Even if we aren’t harvesting anything much of the year, you’d be amazed at what we can and do grow anyway. A while back, I made a list of more than 60 Unique Fruits and Nuts for Cold Climates (Zones 3 to 5), most of which we actually do grow and enjoy.
No, we can’t grow pineapples or mangoes, but there are cold hardy varieties of almost everything else. We’ve even growing cold hardy prickly pear cactus!
Cold Hardy Plants for Northern Gardens
How to Grow Saffron (Even in Cold Climates)
How to Grow Lemongrass (Indoors or Outside)
How to Grow Ginger (Indoors or Outside)
How to Grow Turmeric (Indoors or Outside)
Things You Might Need This Week
100+ Heirloom Apples to Try before You Die ~ Most of these you can only taste if you grow them yourself, and now’s the time to plant!
How to Grow Apple Trees from Seed ~ Every named variety was once just a chance seedling.
Seasonal Preserving
Recipes to keep your larder full all year round…in season now:
What are you harvesting, preserving, building, or exploring on your homestead this week? I’d love to hear about it!
Leave me a note in the comments…
(Comments only, please. Emails tend to get lost in my inbox, and as much as I’d love to get back to each and every one, my screen time is very limited…and things fall through the cracks, and emails get buried in my inbox. If you comment here, they’re all in one place, and it’s much easier to get back to every single one.)
Until Next Time,
Ashley at Practical Self Reliance
I’m moving from zone 7b to zone 5a in two weeks, so this information is incredibly timely for me! Thank you for gathering this together.
RE: "100+ Heirloom Apples to Try before You Die ~ Most of these you can only taste if you grow them yourself, and now’s the time to plant!
How to Grow Apple Trees from Seed ~ Every named variety was once just a chance seedling."
I aim to increase that list of heirloom apples by a few more before I leave this Earth ;)
Check out this batch of 2024 second generation malus sieversii seedlings I have going in the basement:
https://archive.org/details/malussieversii2024/theseedlingsfromtheonepotafterseperating.JPG
I have high hopes for the purple leafed ones to provide some purple skinned or perhaps even purple fleshed fruit! :)