I hate the short, dark days especially January & February! Plants cheer me up. What do you all do during the winter to feed the bug? I have some coleus & petunias seeds ready to start but they'll need to wait until Feb really. I have some lovely hellebores that are beginning to flower and I've just bought a beautiful Senecio Angel Wings with it's gorgeous silver leaves to cheer up the garden. Just wondering if you all hibernate during these months or what gardening related stuff do you do?

Indoor plants that thrive in low light keep me busy year round.

How many houseplants do you have @WillC? I only have 15 but I think I'd be disowned if I got any more...my 3 kids already call the plants my 'babies'

I also keep busy with houseplants. I have over 100 between my house and office. I keep myself busy by propagating some of mine in the winter. I know its not the best time of year for it so it's just a slower process. Then I've already been starting to plan my garden for the year, we plan to redo some of our flower beds this spring so lots of planning to do

Once it gets a little deeper in the winter I also like to grow trays of annuals and plants for my veggie garden from seed.

I keep busy planning additions and improvements for outside within my property.
I look through Dahlia catalogues in order to get new varieties for next year.
And I am busy tending for my 90 or so orchids, attend monthly judgings and attend and judge at local orchid shows. I also think of changes I can make in their outside growing area.
I am also planning for the second season of my rock/succulent garden.

Sharon only has , too lazy to get up and count, between a dozen and twenty plants indoors .
She used to have maybe six to eight more but then they were near all in the basement, most years, cramped in a corner and a pain in the hinder to water as you had to carry water over steps, up and down like a hump.
Now she has approx. one half upstairs in the bay window and this year the least ever down stairs.
I used to grump about it but the reasons she is doing less makes me wish I still had some thing to grump about.

A warm winter, ---- fall was cold, ---- but winter is now not near cold enough, means less reason to go outside .
I actually miss moving snow; I do not really miss fixing car and snow blower problems but that always kept you busy.
I will haul my replacement wheel and snow tire over to the tire shop for mounting and balancing today but unless we get some real snow, no reason to put snow tires on and wear them down on dry pavement.

I have not skied since the nineties, and going to winter events has stopped, except for casinos.
Looking outside at the mostly brown crappy scenery rather than a nice foot deep, at least, snow cover has made this winter miserable.
There is something about not having a White Christmas that really ruins winter for me.
I finally went out a cut my own Christmas true for my house -- BUT -- I got there this year before they technically closed, so when I asked them which patch to drive out to, they said ---- "you can go out there but the road is pretty nasty for a four wheeler and will hard on your car."
Fortunately a worker came just then with some pre-cut trees and as I have gone there enough they know me, he gave me ride out -- (The road was slimy muddy and about like driving in a frozen over just plowed field) -- to the species I wanted.
He walked with me helping me find a nice good sized tree and when I bent down to start sawing, he said he had a chain saw in the vehicle.
So I got the reduced price for cut-it-yourself tree, saved my car from taking a real beating without doing anything but driving out there
They have a little store where you pay with free hot cider and since they know me we alway chat a bit.
When I got home, as I said to the gent who cut it for me,---- they always look smaller in the field than in the house.
I have an 8 foot ceiling and the tree turned out to be about 7 feet 8 inches before I cut another six or so inches off.
I like big trees but this one was a heavy sucker and once it was in the stand, moving it from where I put lights on over into the bay window was more a task than I expected.
To a degree, putting it up and taking it down, is kind of like Sharon's plants, you kind of dread the annoying parts, which are not a bad when you do them as one's imagination makes them out to be, but if you did not do it, or ever stopped doing it, you would be truly miserable.

I'm with the other's, I spend my time with all my houseplants, watering them now with the heat on and low humidity can be tricky 💚 I have roughly 35 and I love them all ⚘

Order plants for Spring! Catalogs are starting to arrive, mail order sources will be updating their catalogs soon.
In California, there is no quiet time... I've started pruning the Roses, and will move on to the fruit trees after Christmas... Then there's the continual weed control, cutting back perennials, shearing hedges.. It never ends, and there is no quiet or down time, unless it's raining. At least we FINALLY got rain, so I won't have to water until Spring now...
In a way, I envy folks in colder climates where there is down time. There's always something I'm behind on here...

I live in Maine, USA, and my garden is under 2 feet of snow and ice, and probably will be until the end of April. Yet gardening can bring joy even in winter. I have a few house plants. This year I'm growing Japanese morning glories indoors. They are really doing well! And I have a few Heartsease (Viola tricolor) seedlings, sweet marjoram plants that have been growing in pots since last spring, some paperwhites, and 3 African violets. All these bring cheer on dark winter days! Then there's so much to plan for the season ahead as the seed catalogs arrive. I spend a lot of time reading and studying garden and plant-related books. And by late February it'll be time to begin again with seedlings started in my greenhouse!

I'm about to make a terrarium for some cloud forest bromeliads (and later, maybe orchids). Otherwise, it was 68 here today so I was in the greenhouse revamping totems and such

I have some times envied those in warmer climates, such a Farmer Dill, (no I m not ignoring those directly above but Herr Dill, has the acres I envy also) who when I am bringing in my crop, or hoping it is warm enough for it to mature, is getting ready for his next planting.
THEN , I think about the insects, lack of rain in one place, too much rain in another, hard freeze in an area where it really zaps even established plants and any envy goes PFFFFT!

I am annoyed when we have what amounts to a three month growing season, and jump for joy when we have a rare odd-ball that runs from March to October but the uncertainty makes it an intriguing gamble and the catalogs for next year now bring the joy toy catalogs from Sears, J.C.Penny's and Montgomery Wards used to bring. ( There is a rumor I may actually go down town one day this week just to wander through the toy sections at Shopko, Target and Fleet Farm. Such nasty rumors. )

I enjoy a temperate region, and can often go poke around outside so long as it is not pouring down rain. We get some freezing weather and occasional snow, but as long as I bundle up, I can at least walk around and see what's poking up (daylilies, hellebores, and heathers are all showing signs of life). Pruning can be done, or not. I am a bit ambivalent about heavy pruning, I try to let plants take charge of their own growth pattern and prune mainly for shaping. Some shrubs do need a heavier hand or they will split and flop, trying to learn which ones to size up and which ones to just leave alone.

RpR I totally understand. I have never lived in a climate unlike the one I live in now, except when I was a small child we lived in Abilene Texas, but I don;t recall a lot of it.
Living here in this part of Florida is brutal in the summer. Its a lot different than living farther South in FL, especially if you were to live closer to either coast. They get a nice sea breeze that moderates their heat some. We don't because we are smack in the middle of the state, 45 minutes from one coast and 55 from the other. When we get sea breeze, its called 'conversion' and produces big thunderstorms LOL.
Wood rots here at an amazing rate. Anything that needs to be painted, needs to be painted every 4-5 years as opposed to maybe every 7-8+ years elsewhere.
The humidity is a killer in summer. when I used to be training for a fall marathon, like the Marine Corp which is run at the end of October, that would mean running a 16 week training cycle through the absolute hottest most humid past of summer here. 20 mile runs in 85-90 degree temps...I've had heat prostration 3 times in the last 12 years.
But the trade off is that we have an extremely long growing season here, basically March-November, even into December if we are lucky. If you learn what and what not to plant out in your yard, you have have stuff 'die back', but it always 'comes back', it doesn't die outright.
Myhusband likes cool. He would like to live in the mountains in NC. But I think I would freeze LOL. I consider 55 cold.

Aphria said:I hate the short, dark days especially January & February! Plants cheer me up. What do you all do during the winter to feed the bug?...Just wondering if you all hibernate during these months or what gardening related stuff do you do?

Hello Aphria,
I am a zinnia hobbyist and an amateur zinnia breeder, so I grow zinnias indoors under T8 fluorescent shoplights on Chrome Wire steel shelves.

There are advantages to growing zinnias indoors. For one thing, it is much easier to cross-pollinate them. I simply "be the bee" and use tweezers to pick pollen florets and rub them on petal stigmas of other zinnias. I have had some success in getting new flower-forms for zinnias.

There is a psychological benefit to working with zinnia plants indoors under bright lights while it is cold and Wintery outdoors.

ZM

We went for a 4 mile walk in the woods today

I do some dead heading/trimming, watering/ photographing orchids, picking ripe tomatoes, and picking up fallen limes and plumeria leaves. Then read.

Putter in the yard whenever possible, tend a variety of indoor plants, catch up on housecleaning and organization, cook and bake a little more, maybe read and sew a little more... "to everything there is a season", I kind of like that weather makes me change it up, anticipate, then enjoy spring all the more.

Planning, planning and more planning!
Electric service upgraded, one job done.
Visit kitchen places and Lowe's along with Home Depot to get ideas.
Sketching flower beds for more Dahlia and Coneflower beds.
Look through web sites for varieties for new season.

I also need a new computer and camera. Planning, again more planning, to get back into bird photography.
These are all great things to do during those long winter evenings.

Planning for summer.
We can grow some plans here in winter, all the bulbs are growing mainly in the winter, like tulips, narcissus, cyclamens, freesia. They grow in in winter, and in summer they are dormant.
Other plants stays green in winter, loosing some leaves and do not grow.

In summer it is like in south Florida, extremely hot (95-105 F) and humility is high (about 70-80%) and no rain from April to October (sometimes even later). Not all plants can survive this conditions, but thous that does, thriving here. Guava growing like crazy, mine started to give first fruits less that 2 years after planting from seeds, Amaryllis can grow in 1 year bulb from 1 inch in diameter to 2 inches in diameter, All this as long as you watering it enough and give them enough nutrients.

Screw planning, ima grow something now!
Down here, I can plant food in the garden every month of the year... And I do.
Winter is a pretty good time to expand the garden... I need the firewood anyway.
I'm Considering building an improved chicken containment system...