Winter in the Greenhouse

As we prep for our first snow storm of 2019, I snapped a couple pictures of plants that are still alive in our greenhouse.  Often we are mocked for under-utilizing our small greenhouse (I'm talking about you, SP!) and often we mock ourselves.  But, the truth is, we have started tomatoes and a few other vegetable plants from seeds here in the early spring (only to then be transplanted outside where they get eaten by the non-human fauna).

A few years back I was given the tip that you can do late fall hearty greens (like the spinach pictured below) and harvest them in the winter.  We've done this successful a couple winters in a row, but this year I didn't plant enough and now I guess I'll only get a single serving out of it!  The dead stalk to the left is a basil-from-seed plant that produced a fair amount this fall but then died as soon as the weather got cold.

Since the greenhouse is not heated,  we can't use it year-round but last year I threw in some cacti (from Costco, where else?) (one of them in the upper right in the pic below on the shelf) and I'm curious to see if they can make it through the winter!

In the foreground, on right, is a rosemary plant that originally went in the backyard this summer and I'm trying to see if it can make it through the winter by transplanting it into the greenhouse (so far so good!).

On the left, that big fella is an avocado tree that I rescued from our compost after a big guacamole spree this fall.  I feel bad because he'll either die or get too big - but I feel obligated to support his underdog fight until the bitter end.