Plangarden and Gimp are handy tools for moving things around in the garden without too much back ache. This is a preliminary map for the Spring 2010 Garden – not the veggies yet, but at least the structures. The hoop house will be moved from its present position (light blue) over beds 8, 9 (still …
Category Archives: garden structures
Back into the Fray
To do this week: plan Spring and Summer garden inventorize left-over and saved seeds read all the gorgeous seed catalogs that arrived while we were gone order new seeds figure out a better seedling “hotbox” – buy seed mats? enroll in bee school, chicken class, and pottery The plants under row cover in the hoop …
Hoop House Design 2.0
Last weekend we finally got the plastic on the hoop house, just in time too, before the first big snowstorm. A couple of days after the storm something did not look right. Several of the “ribs” were no longer bent. A quick inspection revealed that the snow that had accumulated against the bottom had pressed …
Living Compost
A few weeks ago I used up all my compost. I had two full Earth Machines and one pile overflowing its chicken wire container. Not all of this compost was done yet, but after mixing it all up and adding straw, it was just the right mix of finished and unfinished for my purposes: mulching …
Just in Time
Whew, we got the plastic on the hoop house frame right in time, a couple of hours in fact before the snowstorm blew in. We used 6 mil landscape plastic, which turned out more opaque than we thought it would: will it reflect and diffuse the sunlight too much? Well, it will have to do …
Another Composty Day – and Our Garden
I set up the kindling dryer – very simply the old soil screen under the shed roof. Amie and I hauled some more kindling, because I figured once it starts snowing it won’t be visible and for the picking anymore. I also finished the putting to bed of the beds. As I was looking around …
Snow
We had our first frost last night and this morning the forecast changed from rain to sleet to snow. There is no plastic on our hoop house yet. I harvested our last beans and carrots of the season, and tiny eggplants, then pulled all the plants. I rushed to transplant more seedlings and covered their …
Independence Days – Week 8
Amie’s drawings of a flower and Amie in the garden Plant. Did that! First planted the hoop house frame, sewed the row covers together for the quick hoops (3 5×10′ covers make 1 10′ x 15′ cover), and ordered more row cover from Johnny’s. Started sprouting fenugreek as an experiment – that count as planting, …
Hoop House Frame is Up, and Winter
Over the long weekend it took us – two adults versus one four-year-old – to set up the hoop house PVC frame. Initially we thought that the simple hoop house might not be high enough on the sides for the taller plants, like tomatoes, that we want to grow in it in summer. So we …
Pity, but no Mercy
I finally managed to sow the row covers together. I used these 5′ wide spun covers to shield the beds from the downpours over Summer, but they were a pain to position because they were too narrow for the 4′ wide beds. Some end of it was always coming undone, and because we couldn’t stretch …