18 Cold Hardy Vegetables That Can Survive 20F DEGREE Hard Freezes

good morning gardeners it's saturday december 26 and it is absolutely freezing i recorded 22.6 degrees fahrenheit last night which is colder than any temperature i recorded all of last year and it is still in the 20s right now it is bitter cold and nasty and i think this would be a great opportunity to take you through my garden and show you every single vegetable that i'm growing right now that can survive a 22 degree hard freeze these are things that can be grown all winter long in zone eight possibly even in many zone sevens and with a little bit of protection maybe even zone sixes and the very first thing on this list is kale kale is incredibly hardy and what you see right here that is frozen salad is red russian kale it is one of the heartiest varieties of kale that there is it turns a nice deep purple when it gets really cold like this and it gets pretty sweet it is a larger kale it grows a very nice head and i've actually found that this grows fairly well in the summer and tolerates heat pretty well as well so it's something that you can plant in the fall and grow all throughout the winter and into the summer and even into the following fall and then right next to it there is another type of kale called curly kale that is also very hardy as well this is a little more tender than the red russian kale but it holds up to the deep freezes really well and i've had this actually we had a crazy freeze in 2018 we had a 100 year freeze and that survived as low as 8 degrees fahrenheit which we hit in my yard so this is incredibly tough stuff for many of you in zone seven you can grow this unprotected all year and even in zone six with a little tarp or something you can probably grow this all winter long in your climate the next thing that you can grow all winter long are carrots now as you can see the carrots the tops got frozen so they look a little bit sad right now but as soon as they unfreeze they are going to pop right back up and look great and i'll make sure to prove all of this to you at the end of the video they are very very tough um again i've i've had these survive uh eight degrees fahrenheit in the crazy january 2018 freeze and absolutely no damage at all they turned a nice little bronze color and then as soon as it warmed back up they they bounced right back so this is something that you can be growing all the way down to easily zone seven unprotected possibly zone six with some protection really tough really hardy the next thing that you can be growing completely unprotected are beats here are my beats i have both detroit dark red and golden beets and as you can see they're both frozen solid pretty beat up and because the beet tops are a little bit small it is possible that temperatures in the very low 20s can damage the leaves a little bit but that's not a big deal because we grow the beets for the roots and the roots are actually protected in the ground so even if the tops get damaged a little bit in the freeze it's not a big deal because that beet root is going to be protected underground and they will send out new shoots to the top you can see here's a great example of a new shoot coming out of the center of the beat you can see that green chute right there that's popping out in the center that's a brand new shoot coming out so even if you see a little bit of damage on your leaves with temperatures this cold that's not that big of a deal because that beet root will survive and send new growth and this plant that's frozen solid right here is cabbage there is a green one and there is a red one they got frozen solid but that is no big deal because cabbage is extremely hardy they rival kale in their heartiness it is unbelievable how tough these plants are you should be growing cabbage all year round in uh zone eights possibly zone sevens even maybe with a little bit of protection from a tarp in zone six they're extremely hardy this 22 degree freeze is going to do virtually nothing to them right next to it is a leaf lettuce i've had some bad luck with romaine lettuces and freezes they're not all that tolerant of freezes but these leaf lettuces are something like a butter crunch tend to handle the freezes much better lettuce is a little bit hit or miss in the freeze i've also had fantastic results with a it's a red lettuce called four season lettuce i ran out of seed for this year but it is incredibly hearty stuff so i would urge you to experiment with lettuces stick to the leaf lettuces especially the red leaf lettuces they tend to be very hardy you can experiment with them i'd stay away from the romaines i'd also look for any lettuces with traces of red in them because they tend to be hardier this frozen leaf that you see right here is on my broccoli plant here i have a row of broccoli broccoli plants themselves are very hardy they are hardy well into the 20s the heads of broccoli themselves are not as hardy so if you were going to see temperatures that are hard freeze territory like a 28 degree fahrenheit or lower low you would want to cover your broccoli because the heads may get damaged in a freeze this deep but the plants themselves are extremely hardy they are frozen it is possible that a leaf here or there will take damage um because they are not the hardiest of all of the plants but overall they are very tough and i expect that all of these plants will be okay once they thaw out because of their hardiness and it wouldn't be a cold crop hardiness video without showing you spinach spinach is one of the hardiest of the greens you can grow here you can see it's it's frozen solid when it comes to growing spinach there are many times there are many different varieties there are heat tolerant varieties and there are cold tolerant varieties i suggest that you grow a winter spinach do not grow a summer spinach in the winter they are designed to be bolt resistant heat resistant they will not perform so well in the winter so just make sure that you are growing yourself a cold tolerant winter spinach and you should get incredible hardiness out of your crops they will easily survive well into the 20s fahrenheit the vegetable right in front of me is something that not a lot of people are familiar with unless you're maybe from the northeast this is a very popular vegetable called broccoli rob that a lot of italian americans love around the philadelphia new york area it is a very bitter green you saute it with olive oil and garlic and salt and it goes incredibly well on sandwiches it's very popular with roast pork sandwiches or just roast pork with hot peppers and it's good on cheese steaks anything that does well with the bitter green and it is extremely hardy probably much hardier than broccoli it's in the same family mine's looking pretty beat up because it's very mature and it needs to be picked so if you like bitter greens sauteing greens if you like things like collards you'll probably really like these these are sort of like a collard or mustard green so if you have a limited number of cold hardy things that you can grow in your garden rapini aka broccoli rob is something that you should really give a try it's a very unique flavored food the next plant on my list is chard chard is another green that's good for sauteing but it's excellent in soups i recently made some soup so that's why my car my chart has been all harvested down it's very cold hardy once it is a larger mature established plant the plants you see right here are larger and more mature the smaller plants are not as cold hardy a freeze this deep can damage the young ones so this is something that you would want to plant in rows in the fall well before your first frost date because you want to get the plants established and nice and stocky beforehand here you can see a row of chard that i planted much later in the fall and it did not grow and get as tough and this got damaged in a 25 degree fahrenheit freeze earlier in the year that's why you see some some ugly looking damaged limbs that are hanging off i couldn't quite take the deep freeze because it wasn't fully established yet so it is sending new green growth it's coming back but i have a feeling that this freeze is probably going to damage it a little bit because it just it just wasn't mature enough to handle it so make sure you plant your chard early so it gets nice and big and can survive throughout the winter now we need to get into the herbs next up is cilantro my cilantro right here looks pretty sad it is frozen salad then right by it we have dill most people don't know that dill is frost hardy it is actually pretty cold hardy this is a variety called fern leaf dill it did take some damage in a 25 and 27 degree freeze however it bounced back nicely and it sends out all new green growth from its centers this is a much deeper freeze at 22 degrees fahrenheit but i think it's going to recover it may take some damage but i'm pretty confident it will recover then we have one of the hardiest herbs of all parsley parsley can survive down to about 10 degrees fahrenheit it is incredibly cold hardy this is not a well-established plant but it is going to be just fine as soon as it unthaws and unfreezes it's going to bounce right back and then right next to it i have beautiful beautiful thyme thyme is very cold hardy uh it is a perennial things like thyme rosemary and oregano you can grow all the way through zone seven in many cases unprotected if you live in a cold zone 7a you may need a little bit of protection here and there a couple of nights a year but generally those three herbs are unphased by the deep freeze and then last but not least we have our alliums here we have hardneck garlic hardneck garlic can survive well below zero you can grow this down to zone three it is so cold hardy it can survive something like minus 20 or minus 30 fahrenheit over here we have shallots and then behind them onions they can both take down into the teens very briefly alliums are very cold hardy so when you live in zone eights possibly some milder zone sevens you should be growing onions throughout the winter and then in my beds over here i have all additional garlic and again garlic incredibly cold tolerant nowhere near a risk for my mild zone eight winters well it's 3 pm and we've warmed up to only 45 degrees fahrenheit which is almost 15 degrees below average for this time of year but it's been plenty of time for these plants to show if they've had any damage from the overnight hard hard freeze and this kale still looks absolutely beautiful that's the red russian over there and then we have the curly kale over here as expected just gorgeous no hints of damage at all surprisingly all of the young swiss chard has survived with absolutely no damage it appears so it looks like that it's probably gotten some age on it since the last very hard freeze that we've had or it's just hardened off because this all looks great there is no damage anywhere to be detected so very happy about that and as can be expected the more mature swiss chard is absolutely perfect no hint of damage on the swiss chard these are brand new leaves that just came out since i picked the the last head everything looks great as i expected the rapini aka broccoli rob is completely unaffected by the hard freeze you can't tell that anything happened last night that could be even mildly stressful to these plants they're extremely cold hardy people in cold climates should be able to in many cases grow these all winter with a little bit of protection and in more mild winters like mine they don't need any kind of protection at all now remember how earlier today all of my carrots they were kind of frozen over and they look kind of sad they have all stood up perfectly like nothing ever happened they all look great there's no hint of damage to them at all however one thing that does happen to carrots and it's pretty cool to see when we do get really hard freezes they start getting some streaks of purple in them in the foliage and maybe that's like some kind of reaction to the cold i'm not sure it's pretty well documented that that red colored leafy greens handle cold snaps better than pure green so maybe something happens with the carrots that brings out red under times of cold stress but whatever it is they are completely unaffected and to reinforce my point a little bit with the beet tops these are the detroit dark red beet tops right here they look completely undamaged like nothing happened to them as you can see they're that deep reddish slash purple color they look very good very glossy very healthy however the green ones look like they suffered some kind of cold damage these look a little bit injured they kind of they've kind of gone black around this the edges and they just kind of look like they've been squished a little bit almost like the freezing sort of made some of the cells inside burst they look like they've been hurt a little bit by the freeze now it's not going to hurt the bulb underground and these are the smaller beets right here they didn't grow very strongly these beets that were planted over here the green ones are a little bit taller and stronger they don't seem to have suffered as badly but there's definitely is something to be said that the that the darker redder slash purple foliage definitely handles the cold temperature better it's pretty clear to me that the golden beets are not as hardy as the red beets as predicted both the red and green cabbage look absolutely perfect like nothing ever happened they are standing straight up there is no hints of damage anywhere cabbage is pretty solid as a rock when it comes to freezing temperatures in the 20s fahrenheit and they stood the test of this freeze no problem same thing with this broccoli right here the broccoli looks great there is no sign of injury anywhere on the leaves the green leafy lettuce handle the freeze pretty well there's there's a little bit of brown spots in here but this leafy type of lettuce that's pretty curly definitely does handle the cold temperatures better in my climate in a zone eight they would benefit from a little bit of protection like a tarp or a frost cloth thrown over them i think would help tremendously and once again the lettuces with red in them tend to handle the cooler temperatures much better so i'll be growing more red lettuce next year this right here is your standard paris island romaine you can see how damaged they got in the freezes and it was already like this before the hard freeze that got damaged like that in a 25 and 27 degree fahrenheit freeze so romaine not the hardiest i would avoid it in cold climates they're better grown in the shoulder season where you plant them in very late winter and you try to harvest them in mid to late spring or you plant them in late summer to harvest in early to mid fall before anything more than frost comes as expected the winter spinach suffered no damage at all it's growing pretty slowly this time of year but it's very hardy so we will eventually get a harvest off of it and then of course our allium plot suffered no damage at all those are the hardneck garlics and then we have the shallots up front and onions in the back completely unaffected and then way back here we have more of the spanish roja hardneck garlic and possibly one of the biggest surprises of this video the dill completely unaffected this still has been through several hard freezes so i think it's pretty well hardened off and the the new it looks like the the stuff that was prone to death has already died and the new green stuff it is just super cold hardy so don't rip out your dill at the end of fall it is incredibly freeze hearty really amazing stuff right behind it is the thyme looks fantastic unaffected as i mentioned earlier the parsley also completely unaffected standing straight up like nothing ever happened the little baby cilantros all look great completely unaffected and last but not least our larger cilantro plant which looked like it was kind of injured this morning it's pretty much completely unaffected there's a little bit of purpling on some of the leaves which again i just think is is something that plants do in order to protect themselves during really cold temperatures but overall it just looks great really happy with it cilantro is another thing that you can probably grow all winter long in a lot of climates definitely in zones nine and eight and maybe with a little bit of protection in sevens and maybe even zone sixes so those are some examples of things that i can grow in my climate all winter long and that can pretty easily shrug off temperatures in the low 20s fahrenheit possibly even lower now it is worth mentioning that in my location in north carolina while it is a zone 8a these cold crops really benefit because although cold snaps in the mid to low 20s are pretty rare here we get a huge amount of nights that are 35 degrees fahrenheit to 40 degrees fahrenheit so usually when we drop into these low temperatures they've already been exposed to a lot of temperatures in the 30s so they're fairly hardened off if you live in a place like south florida or south texas or phoenix arizona where your winter temperatures are often in the 50s at night when the plants are used to being in the 50s fahrenheit at night and then you get those sudden plummeting freezes into the 20s they're not hardened off so the cold snaps do a lot more damage so factor that into your plan cold crops tend to be much harder in marginal climates where they get a lot of exposures to temperatures that are almost freezing but not quite and my zone 8a climate excels at that so everybody i really hope you found this video helpful if you did please hit that like button and if you haven't already subscribed to the channel please subscribe for future updates and more videos like these if you're curious about anything that i use in my garden all the products 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Channel: The Millennial Gardener

Views: 17,604

Keywords: cold hardy vegetables, cold crops, cold hardy plants, winter hardy vegetables, plant tour, garden tour, winter gardening, winter vegetables, winter garden, gardening in winter, frost tolerant vegetables, zone 8 garden, zone 8 gardening, kale, carrots, beets, cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, rapini, broccoli rabe, chard, herbs, cilantro, dill, parsely, thyme, rosemary, oregano, garlic, onions, shallots, survive, hard freezes, gardening, garden tips, vegetable gardening, the millennial gardener

Id: VlhgioS15Ec

Length: 19min 39sec (1179 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021