Zone 7 Winter Garden Tour (2024)

It’s time for another garden tour! I did a quick little fall garden tour a few months ago, and before I knew it, it was Christmas! I did this tour around Christmas in Maryland zone 7A—so squarely in winter! We’re seeing temperatures down into the 20s and even teens some nights with typical yo-yo daytime temperatures.

And I’m still going strong experimenting with winter growing! My tour walks you through what I’m working on in the greenhouse, how I’m trying to extend growing in my raised beds, thoughts on wintering over plants, and more.

In the greenhouse…

First up, we’ll take a look in the greenhouse! This is our first winter with the greenhouse, so we’ve been playing around with heating it. We’ve insulated cracks and covered the vents, for one. And we’re also running a heater to keep the greenhouse from dropping below 42-44ish degrees.

This means that it kicks on only at night. Even on cloudy days when it’s in the 20s outside, the greenhouse gets up into the 50s without the heater. And on sunnier days? It has cleared 70 degrees when it’s freezing outside! I love tracking the temperature.

I also have a few seed mats going to help germinate some cool weather crops. I’m trying to grow lettuce, spinach, and kale in container in the greenhouse as an expirement. Most of them have sprouted, but I’m waiting to see if they have enough light to really grow.

We’re also wintering over a few things in here like a pot of prickly pear cactus pads and a eucalyptus plant. I usually treat eucalyptus as an annual, just buying a new one each spring. But I love growing it, so I figured I’d try to see if I could keep it alive over the winter. It doesn’t look great, but I’m hoping it will rebound!

New Greenstalk!

I’m part of the Greenstalk affiliate program and love their product. I bought my first Greenstalk a few year ago, and when I saw this color, I reached out to see if they would send me one. As you can see, this is my favorite color. And it’s gorgeous!

I went ahead and filled it up in December. I have never grown in the Greenstalk (that’s my referral link) over the winter, but I’m trying out lettuce, spinach, kale, and radish seeds. Most have sprouted. But like the other containers in the greenhouse, I’m waiting to see if they’ll have enough light without adding supplemental lights.

I’ll roll this outside of the greenhouse probably in March. And in April, I’ll likely fill it with trailing flowers. I like growing greens and herbs in my Greenstalk, but I also love how trailing flowers look cascading down the planter!

New in-ground gardens

This is also our first winter with the new in-ground beds we put in last spring. We converted a roughly 15×15 patch of turf grass to long beds. Two of the beds are for asparagus, and we grew sweet potatoes in the third row.

I was shocked by how great they did in our crappy soil with very little improvements! We planted garlic down that bed this fall, and we’ll likely plant sweet potato slips again in the spring once the garlic is getting close to wrapping up. I love using spaces all year and succession planting. Oh—and fava beans, too!

By these in-ground garden beds, we have our three daisy-chained rain barrels. We have all of our hoses and rain barrels winterized for now. However, we leave these rain barrels open so that water will just flow out of the gutter, into the barrels, and out the drain before it has much of a chance to freeze.

This way, when we have days above freezing, it will fill the watering can I keep under the spigot. Once that filled up, I dump it into a 5-gallon bucket and put the watering can back. This has worked well for us to give us a water source while everything else is turned off.

We also have a large mound of dirt we made with the stuff we dug out when we put the pond in. I’m working on improving the soil here for planting more next year—I piled compost and leaves on top of it to degrade over the winter.

Raised garden beds

We have seven raised garden beds, and they are a mish-mash of stuff I’m experimenting with and stuff I lazily left planted from the fall. I also created hoop houses for two of the beds to see if that will provide just enough heat to germinate and grow cooler weather crops like spinach.

And, of course, I’ve got lots of random fava beans, some dead, some dying, and some that still look great! It will be interesting to see what rebounds when temperatures rise and if I’ll get beans. And the spinach—that’s from a late fall planting. It’s still going strong, and I added another hoop house over the bed below after this pic to see if that will help it along.

Letting perennials rest

You’ll notice a lot of perennials and even some annuals around my yard in various states of crispiness. I like to let my perennials and annuals stay over the winter to give bugs and place to shelter over the winter.

In the spring, once I see the first ladybug, I will cut perennials down to get them ready for new growth. And I’ll pull the annuals and plant fresh plants. I also like leaves even dead and dying plants for their visual interest—like with the ornamental grasses below. Love their fluffy fronds for winter arrangements.

First winter with the pond

And this was the first winter with the pond as well! Man, we were busy last summer. So far, only a thin layer of ice has formed on the top of the pond, and all of the fishies are fine. The solar pump waterfall will kick on some days, too. It just depends on the weather.

And the rosemary, lavender, sage, and even some of the catmint around the pond are still looking pretty good! I love rosemary and lavender especially not just because it’s perennial, but because it looks good all year.

Berry patch & new fruit trees

We also planted a ton of fruit trees and berry plants. This will be the first winter with them, so I’m anxious about everything making it through the winter! We’ve started sheet mulching the area around the berry patch portion so that we can add stepping stones as the plants grow.

In the meantime, I’ll probably put some sort of veggie or some cut flowers back here to fill the space out so it doesn’t look so empty. Another bit of grass gone, yay!

Leaf & yard waste bins

And, finally, we have our trio of leaf and yard waste bins. One of the bins is totally full of leaves, one is about half yard waste and half leaves, and the third is mostly yard waste with a layer of leaves on the top.

We occasionally add some organic matter and water (if it hasn’t rained in a while) to the bins, but things are slow going with lower temps over the winter. We’re still seeing some changes, though, and I’m looking forward to having our own leaf compost next year.

That’s all for now. Until my early spring tour…happy planting!