We're on our way to our annual family ski trip and I'm reading a copy of Mother Earth News Living Series: Guide to Organic Gardening. One of the articles discusses low tunnel growing for over wintering veggies. Its a very interesting article.
The veggies that over winter well for an early spring crop are:
Beets
Broccoli
Cabbage
Carrots
Lettuce
Onions
Peas
Spinach
This gives me a few ideas of what to grow over the winter for the 4 seasons challenge. Peas, onions and beets are pulling at me so I think I'll look into adding those to my winter plan.
It also gives an easy look at how to build a low hoop tunnel,with the help of a conduit bender available at Johnnys Selected Seeds (will include link later after arriving at the hotel). Since we always get snow here I'll be using metal conduit for my tunnels to give them the strength to hold up under snow. I'm hoping to have the money to do this sometime in March so I can get some other veggies out early.
When I get back home I'll be sowing the last 4 Broccoli plants.
Blessings!
Our full size hoop house frames are built from pvc rather than conduit BUT they did not fair well with the snow we got this winter. I don't know how they would work out as a low tunnel frame. It might be worth an experiment. You do not need a conduit bender and PVC is very cheap to use and easy to cut with a PVC cutter tool 10.00 bucks.
ReplyDeleteWhen our hoop houses collapsed I thought oh great. We got some really heavy wet snow and had left our shade covers on the frames. Our frames are like 7 foot tall in the center. So not low to the ground tunnel type..Anyway yes they collasped. BUT they sprang back up and we only had to replace a couple pieces of pvc!
Had they been low tunnel type would they have fallen. mmm I don't know.
Our new plan, Take the covers off in the late fall and put them back on the early spring. Heat is a much bigger factor for us than cold here.. Well I say that but and the last two winters have been unreal lol...
Wow thank you! I will definitely try the pvc first. Even if they just fall a little at least they can be fixed and hopefully they don't fall enough to crush anything. We just got another 3 inches of snow last night. I'm so done lol
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