Winter Growing & Season Extension

Learn 10 different ways to extend your season using protected cultivation, with quick tips and recommendations from Johnny's Selected Seeds.

An introduction to controlled environment agriculture (CEA), with an overview of greenhouse design and environmental control, growing systems, irrigation and mineral nutrition, hydroponics, biological controls, and considerations regarding location, marketing, suitable crops and varieties, workshops and continuing education opportunities, by Dr. Merle Jensen, Professor Emeritus and Founder, University of Arizona Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (UA-CEAC).

Here are Lisa Ziegler's 5 recommended "Cool Flowers" — cold-tolerant hardy annuals for overwintering and shoulder-season growing for the earliest possible blooms in spring.

Many types of flowers can be started in late summer/fall for overwintering. Here is an intro to scheduling, method, and recommendations for over 25 from our overwinter flower trials, so you can achieve blooms about a month earlier than with spring-planted field crops.

Learn how a farming family in New York grows perennial herbs in an unheated hoophouse under row cover to offer fresh-cut herbs from April through December.

A review of basic high and low tunnel components, the rudiments for season extension and protected culture growing, with Lynn Byczinski and Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Learn about the roles day length and temperature play as critical environmental factors affecting plant growth, particularly the length of dark periods.

Using unheated hoophouses, Quick Hoops, and row cover with storage, cold-tolerant, and cold-hardy crops can help you be first and last to market from Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Read more about what is takes to plan for opening day at the market or wholesale accounts, using Johnny's Target Harvest Date calculator to determine when to plant.

An illustrated set of step-by-step instructions from Eliot Coleman on how to set up and manage your Quick Hoops low tunnels from Johnny's Selected Seeds.

Learn the basics of greenhouse growing from Johnny's: pros and cons, tips, tools and supplies, plus what to grow in your greenhouse for your best ROI.

Learn what makes a variety good for growing in greenhouses, hoophouses, and poly tunnels from the research team at Johnny's. Details include which specific plant habit, vine, fruit, and disease resistance characteristics to look for when determining which cultivars to grow in the protected-culture setting, including our crop experts' recommendations for specific tomato, pepper, cucumber, eggplant, and lettuce types and varieties.