Season extension

In agriculture, season extension refers to anything that allows a crop to be cultivated beyond its normal outdoor growing season.

For colder climates, the fully heated and artificially lit greenhouse is the ultimate season extension device, allowing some crops to be grown year-round, through sub-zero winters. An energy-expensive approach. There are many other ways to beat the cold, for earlier spring planting and growing into the fall and winter:

• Mulches: Any material placed on the soil around plants will help retain heat. Organic mulches include straw, compost, etc. Synthetic mulches, typically, plastic sheeting with slits through which plants grow, is used extensively in large-scale vegetable growing.
• organic farming, and home gardening.

Using unheated, unlit methods, depending on the crop, up to several weeks of productivity can be added, where shortened period of sunlight and cold weather end the growing season.

Season extension can apply to other climates, where conditions other than cold and shortened period of sunlight end the growing year (e.g. a rainy season).