5+ Essential Tips for a SUCCESSFUL Winter Garden

Are you ready to transform your outdoor space into a stunning winter wonderland? Look no further! These are the tips for those who garden in the Subtropics – Zone 8, Zone 9, Zone 10, and Zone 11. Let’s dive into the secrets of creating a thriving winter garden.
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Howdy neighbor how is your garden growing today we’re going to be talking about five tips to have a successful Winter Garden well it’s going to be at least five tips tip number one tip number one is going to be planting the right things planting the plants that will actually like the drop in

Temperature that like the fact that the sun intensity is dropping that like that there’s less humidity when you choose plants that actually like the weather of winter you’ll have a much more successful garden and that means everything from vegetable crops fruit and crops to Native and flowering

Ornamental plants but stop you may be wondering but what are these plants that are going to like the cooler temperatures if not cold temperatures and all the other things that I just mentioned so let’s go take a look at some of the plants that you should be considering planting throughout the

Winter so let’s first start with our vegetable crops when it comes to cold weather we want to of course think about cold weather crops things like these broccoli or kale beets look at them they’re they’re so cute two onions and yes these are onions they’re just very

Very very small right now and carrots tiny tiny carrots oh wait that’s better that looks more like the top of a carrot and lettuce and as you all know we live in Florida so we want to work with our season we want to work with the

Temperature we have and so well it’s not like cold cold cold weather crops is the main thing from everyone who’s in zone 8 up at the top of North Florida all the way down to my tippy tippy bottom people over in zone 11 I think now we actually

Even have Zone 12 down in the keys but everyone this is the time of year you can get your cold weather crops in I think for a lot of beginner gardeners right we missed out when we’re just starting with gardening on this winter season because we’re just so wired for

The fact that we’re not supposed to be planting in Winter plus like you add in the distractions of like the holidays and like there’s just so much going on in the winter like it’s very easy to just like Miss This this season which I guess is a tip don’t miss the season we

Won’t call that we call that like a 1B 1B there and that’s why I get really excited about winter time because it is a time of year I can grow and start a lot of thing that if I get them really well established they can make it not

Only through the winter season but then do really well even in our warmer season so like even when we’re hitting spring need to be established now in the winter time so that we can like really like get them strong and healthy to be able to like fight the challenges of the

Subtropics and Tropics of Florida and and all of my neighbors who live in areas that are very similar to Florida but because we have places in Florida that are Zone 10 like myself we don’t just actually focus on cold weather crops so a lot of people might miss out

On the fact that you should be starting warm weather crops especially if you live in like your Zone 10s even my zone 9es at the tail end of winter you should be definitely thinking about warm weather crops and you want to focus on things like tomato plants that put out

Bigger fruits especially if you start them in the early and Mid Winter my zone 99’s my zone 10 T because we won’t have as much pest pressure during the winter time so they can set much larger fruit and that doesn’t just go for things like tomatoes that also goes for things like

Peppers too and eggplants and there’s a whole list of other warm weather crops that I can’t think of off the top of my head but you all feel free to let me remind me in the comments down below but it’s a great time of year to actually get seedlings going for warm weather

Crops so that you have an early jump on the warm weather season before some of the things that stress them out in the subtropics and Tropics come a little bit later on it’s not just vegetables that we can focus on for a successful garden in the winter time we can also be doing

A lot when it comes to fruit too often times when we talk about fruit we usually talk well at least I do I talk about the most popular fruit for the entirety of the United States which is bananas which this would be this is a terrible time for bananas don’t plant

Any bananas don’t think about bananas we are not doing bananas in the winter time bananas hate Winters I don’t care if you live down in Miami just don’t just don’t do it but other plants well this is the time of year that they’re actually producing now I wouldn’t necessarily buy

Them and put them in the ground now but if you’re looking for future successful Winters getting Citrus in your yard come on my South Texas come on my central South Florida Citrus is a really good one now a lot of people are challenged with things like citrus Greening but a

Plant that actually does really well even in spite of citrus Greening is plants like the colan or col you can pick these up at big box stores or fruit stores they put out all these little tiny little oranges I know some of you guys right now are looking at this going

I have that in my yard and I haven’t known what it is this is the col it is great it’s kind of like a lemon lime thing it’s lemony it’s limey but don’t miss out on things like citrus and of course my North Floridians my people who

Are in my zone eights you may be able to get enough chill hours so that you can leverage things like your stone fruit your peaches and your pears well pears aren’t stone fruit but you get what I’m saying I can’t do it cuz I live in zone

10 but my North floridans you know you should be thinking about stuff like that so also consider plants that are going to be fruiting in the winter time another one that may be fruiting for you if you live in zone 9es and T but it

Kind of fruits at the tail end is right here right here right here okay no not there don’t look at the banana it’s right there you go there you go that’s a mulberry this is an everbearing mberry and there are a lot of options and varieties for you guys out there

Everything from like our native mulber to the Illinois ever bearing mberry to those who live in spes that can take up a bit more space than do like a Pakistani mberry there are options with mulberries and this is like a great if you’re into raspberries blackberries this is a great substitute that’s much

More resistant so if you’re thinking about future winter crops always at the tail end of winter in zone 10 mulberries and of course we can also be doing things like making sure that we add at the beginning of winter time before we have freezes or after the thread of

Freezes has passed we can add things that are going to help support wildlife and our pollinators with decorative flowers or berries or just like you know going to look nice throughout the winter so everything doesn’t look dead cuz we don’t really get that cold you can actually have a pretty like green

Looking yard throughout the entirety of the summer in places like Florida you have plants like climbing Aster Ground Covers like Dune sunflower o and a favorite of butterflies and bees is Lantana incada AKA button Sage one of our native lantanas I don’t necessarily have a tip about this but yes in Florida

We can even have things like really pretty orchids hanging outside in the early parts of winter before freezes come but the longest short of visit when it comes to putting the right plants in for winter we have a lot of different options when it comes to living in the

Subtropical Paradise but whether it’s all about creating just some Greenery or adding a bit of color with flowers into your garden or it’s about getting you some really good harvest what are some of your favorite plants that just really do the job in winter time number two if

You understand the season when it comes to Florida or if you live in a leg climate the thing is is we are in drought season we are in some of the worst drought season of the year it’s in the winter we still get rain but it’s a drought which means

Depending on the plants in your garden is you’re running your handy dandy sprinklers on some frequency but because it’s getting cooler out you need to actually reduce the frequency which is kind of weird because I just told you there’s less water but then I said you need to give it less

Water why do you say why why why would I need to run my sprinklers less well it all has to do with capillary like osmosis uptake we could get into a lot of science but basically when it gets cold out the things that move the nutrition and the water around in

General start to get smaller and when it’s TI out they get bigger so during the summertime you have plants like bananas which are big giant water suckers uh they they will suck up like so much water so much water but once we start getting cold out which they’re not

Not happy about anyways but because those capillaries those cells are starting to shrink down they can’t absorb as much water as they could when it was hotter out which means that if you’re watering them at the same rate as you were in maybe like September October and of course like Florida we’re still

Really warm in November they just can’t like they just can’t absorb it they just can’t absorb it which means they may end up with a whole bunch of water just sitting around at their Roots causing rot this is where you may find that plants that actually can survive and

Thrive throughout winter might start to struggle because you’re having just basically the roots rotting down in the ground and you can create extra stress on the plant because there’s so much mold funguses like this stuff it’s just not going right because if the plant is

A type of plant that can work well in our drought season you’re now kind of just drowning it so consider taking your sprinklers down a notch like what does that mean Jacqueline what is taking it down not a general rule is you should not be water Watering your garden more

Than twice a week at this time of year and for many places and many of these plants they can even handle once a week for like 20 30 minutes but again this goes back to like it depends what kind of plants you have cuz some will not

Need any of that water and others will need a little bit of help from a sprinkler system and another reason that you should consider taking your sprinklers down Notch has nothing to do with really watering the plants that are in your garden but about watering the future plants in your garden and that

Reason I’m talking about is all have to do with wild flowers wild flowers especially in US subtropical tropical climates right they put out flowers late winter spring summer fall and then they start setting seed those seeds then sit dormant through the winter time and one of the triggers for many of our native

Wild flower plants and wild flowers is the adding of water because if you look at the temperatures in places like Florida like honestly like the end of winter the beginning of Spring like they’re not that different it’s not the difference that’s making a difference our temperature changes in general are pretty

Like like it it’s like a it’s like are they alive some of the triggers for actual plants waking back up is the addition of water so you may inadvertently if you have plants that are native wild flowers native plants things that you went and you threw seeds down you might inadvertently trigger

Them to start going and growing before it’s actually warm enough for them to like sustain themselves tip number three is all to do with mulch similar to like the watering thing there’s like a couple different reasons why you should be considering adding mulch to your garden

In the winter time one or is this or is this like 3A one reason is is because we just don’t have as much rain so whatever water we do have mulch does help like it’s like a giant sponge it’s a giant sponge that as it dries out it can

Slowly release the water back in so it kind of evens it out so cuz if you’re running your sprinklers let’s say on Monday for 30 minutes or 20 minutes basically you kind of like drench everything and like the water could all pass through and you and me could be

Like these plants like we kind of need a little bit of water all the time to help kind of like get it out there slowly adding things like wood chip mulch and lots of other types of mulch can help you know like just even out the watering and can

Make you a little bit more water-wise I know a lot of places here in Florida are starting to put in drought restrictions which means that you may have been running your sprinklers twice a week but now you’re restricted down to one time a week so you can help mitigate some of

This problem by adding a nice layer of mulch also another thing is if you’re going to add mulch Winter’s a great time because it’s not hot don’t be like me and do it in August when it’s miserable out and you’re sweating and you’re just like dying because it’s just it’s too

Hot it’s too humid and the sun’s intense like it’s not a good time of year this is a great time a year item 3B is that this is also a great time to go and put your mulch in because remember those like wild flowers I was talking about

And how like their seeds are sitting dormant well it’s just not like the flowers you like that are sitting dormant a whole bunch of weeds are doing the same thing because here in Florida we have tons of invasive tropical weeds that go and take off during the summer

And if you’ve knocked them back as you went through fall at the beginning of summer or they’re kind of just looking really sad right now like this is the time to like squash them out smush them some of the types of weeds that we find in our garden are actually like they

Have little teeny Tey Tity bitty bitty bitty bitty seeds like they’re not going to go anywhere so when you put like an inch or two of like wood chip mulch on top of them like they can’t come up through this so you can actually put yourself ahead for spring once it warms

Up and the water’s starting to rain down all of a sudden those weeds are trying to take off and then they just get squished so consider adding mulch not only to even out your water but to suppress Out Future weeds and another another reason to add mulch is you know

Mulch is a great natural fertilizer and in Florida we have fertilizer problems because we have very sandy soil very sandy soil so consider adding mulch because you want to get ahead of future projects of adding things like a banana or other tropical plants that love like high nutrition soil when you add mulch

When you start heading into spring and summer and it starts breaking it all down the the good bugs like our millipedes are eating it down and pooping it back out and feeding all the plants you be in a really really good spot for other types of plants that you

May want to consider and at the end I will link a video that’s like five super easy ways to mend your sandy soil because maybe you’re not into wood chip mulch maybe you want to do one of the other ones there’s pros and cons to all

Of them and I’ll add that one it looks like this at the end oh yeah before I get to my next tip another thing I can give you guys at the end is if you’re not sure how to recognize weeds in your garden or you’re not sure if you want to

Keep a plant that pops up in your garden I do have a video that goes over tons of different weeds that you may find in your garden let’s talk about number four but number four we need to talk about being prepared being like a Girl Scout maybe

This should have been item three so I could do the Girl Scout thing and do three that would have been really clever but I didn’t think of that until right now so let’s just pretend I was clever before and we’ll just go with it this is item number four cold weather protection

It is a great season to grow in Florida or my zone 9es my zone 10s my zone 11s but sometimes we’ve pushed the Zone sometimes we’re growing things that like eh they don’t like things that get into like the freezing temperes so you must be prepared be like the Girl Scouts get

Ready for cold preparedness and sometimes it’s not that complicated you know because we don’t get really freezing for very very long we just kind of like get there like you know for just like a little minute or two you know okay not a minute or two but like a

Couple hours but you do need to have some protection especially if you did things like start cold weather crops or you already have things like these Tropicals that take a long time you need to be prepared and there are like so many ways to do this there’s everything

From throwing sheets on it to like w oh someone said they wrap Christmas lights around their Tropicals which I was just like that’s so smart they do the incandescence cuz it adds just a little bit of heat to get them through that like 4 to 8 hours of

Like but I mean I think that’s like a win-win because that’s what I’m thinking of do I’m going to add Christmas lights right here and then you know it’s going to look cute for Christmas but also if it’s freezing out my papy is not dying

And you can get more ideas and tips not only the one I just gave you because that didn’t come from me that actually came from you guys and I will add a link to this video which has tons and tons of cold weather tips just in case you’re

Going to hit those freezing temperatures so that you are prepared like a Girl Scout for the times in winter when it’s just like not as ideal for the gardening world and a little like cold now when it comes to tip number five it’s all about wildlife and most people probably going

To think I’m going to say you need to watch out for bugs because they’re still around in the winter down here in Florida and all my other zones who are very similar to me and that that’s true if you’re doing things like vegetable crops don’t be totally surprised that

You’re still going to get bugs eating things because they’re still around most bugs don’t go dormant until we get below 60 de you have to be like sustained under 60° to see a pretty dramatic drop in your bug populations and some key bugs that usually get on plants like

This and that they’re moths or butterflies and they don’t like cold weather but because our Winters are pretty temperate right well not temperate those are those people get snow they’re they’re subtropical tropical so we have lots of days above 60° we have days that maybe start in the

50s but they end in the 70s so they don’t usually have like they don’t die back they’re still potentially laying eggs and so you will still get bugs now I am not an anti-bug person I actually am for the bugs I am one of those people who’s like if something’s not eating the

Plants in your garden then your Garden’s not doing what it’s supposed to but I get it I get it I want my broccoli I don’t want to lose it to a what is it called Cabbage Moth they’re not cabbage moths but whatever but I don’t want to

Lose it to that so I still want to get my broccol so you may need to provide some protection you can do things like covers and nettings I know like the beds like these now like they have like standard made covers so it’s not like

The old days old days like two years ago where everyone had to like build their own little like cover frames you can buy them pre-made if you’re not feeling very DIY but if you want to make your own you can do that too they’re all right answers I’m a big proponent instead of

Using chemicals I don’t care whether the chemical is natural organic or whatever if it’s going to kill something it’s not that great for you but one of the best ways is just barriers keep the bugs out or you can do like what I do which is you can support the wildlife through the

Winter and then the wildlife helps you in my garden I put lots of native plants in that have be Beres and seeds and nuts so that I can maintain a bird population but that is one of the differences between us and the people who live up

North is we have in the winter time a pretty large bird population because the birds migrated to us and because they are here they are hungry and most people’s yards most people’s Gardens do not feed them so if you create an environment which puts food all around you can leverage plants like Beauty

Berry fire bush lant Bas especially our native types don’t do the invasive ones you know some of your wild flowers if you held on to them are putting out seeds like your golden rods your latresses there’s a lot like there’s a lot of plants there’s a lot of plants

And honestly I’m not going to name them all but if you wanted the list there’s a great list in my planner that I put out each year that specifically shows plants for berries plants for seeds for your bird populations and when they’re hanging around and you have structures

And some things for them to hang out on this is some of the tips I go over in my book is like then they just come in every morning all throughout the day not right now because I’m hanging out here the birds are hopping around in here so

Even though I might lose a little bit to a leaf you can see that overall the plant looks really good even if somebody got a little bit right here but the birds know there is food here and they keep coming back I get a really good

Harvest and they get food too so there’s a win-win for all of us is when you support Wildlife Wildlife might support you too I’m not guaranteeing it I’m just saying they might and this even goes beyond things like birds you should be considering how are you supporting bees

Throughout the winter because if you have things like citrus you do want pollinators over here helping get to these flowers not these these flowers so that you can increase your Harvest of your citrus that’s why I do things like have my colum and citrus right here and just turn the corner and

Bam here I have tons of asers for them to to go ahead and use so that they can survive the winter time I don’t know if you can see them flying around but there’s lots of happy bees happy happy bees and until it gets really cold out

They’re going to be hanging out here plants like this are key for our pollinators to make it through the winter they may go dormant they may hibernate they may even die off and and their eggs that have been sitting dormant through the winter will come

Back but you having food for them in the winter is going to increase your Harvest yields and they’re just like they’re fun to watch yeah I’m a big fan bees now and butterflies oh my gosh don’t wait until spring for butterfly garden maybe you should start that’s going be the next

Tip tip number six so many butterflies you can have here there’s more tips I have I swear there is I’m going to keep myself under control so if you want to learn more about how to stay cold weather prepared check out this video here if you want to learn how to amend

Sandy soil in a really simple way go ahead and check out this video if you want to learn about which weeds might pop up in your garden check out this video here and if you want to get a basic understanding of how Florida gardening works all throughout the year

Go ahead and check out this video right here okay I’ll see you soon bye