Hoop(house) Dreams

Well, our hoophouse was was finally finished Sunday night and is now ready to house our thousands (!!) of spring starts.  

The photos above are from several weeks ago, when C. began work on building the east and west walls, wearing his stylish insulated onesie.  As the snow was coming down, it was great to imagine the warm little cocoon that the hoophouse would provide for greens through the winter months and seedlings in the spring. We'll also grow tomatoes in there this summer, rolling the sides up as it gets hotter, with the plastic above protecting the plants from rain to prevent blight.  

The hoophouse is 40 feet long by 16 feet wide.  We built its side walls with sustainably-harvested lumber -- 2 x 4's from the Warren Wilson College sawmill just across the river from us -- and salvaged plywood from several years of construction-site dumpster diving and various other salvage endeavors.  The hoops and plastic we got super-cheap from friends who had to quit farming several year ago.  Back in 2007, we had a hoophouse raising on my birthday, and friends and family helped us put up the main body of the structure.  With a free salvaged door and a soon-to-be-purchased exhaust fan, the hoophouse will be grow-ready for about $500 total.

As the hoophouse walls went up, we participated in a time-honored February tradition among gardeners: dreaming of luscious summer vegetables while slogging through cold, wet weather waiting, waiting, waiting for Spring.    Now that our first greenhouse is finally ready, we'll fill it up with flats full of seeds next week and commence to growing. After seed-starting season is over, we'll build raised beds inside that will be used for tomatoes in the summer and greens and brassicas over the winter.  

Here's to the hoops!

What's Still Growing In the Garden

Chinese Cabbage

It's been unseasonably warm this week, so we pulled back the floating row covers to reveal the toughest of the fall-planted veggies, still soldiering on even after nights in the single digits.

Here's what's still growing:

Chinese Cabbage 
Mustards
Beets
Chard
Alliums-Leeks, Onions, Garlic, and Multiplier Onions
Broccoli and Cauliflower
Carrots
Kale - Dino and Red Russian
Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
Brussels Sprouts (but still no sprouts!)
Lettuce - Winter Density, Italienischer, & Territorial Wild Garden Mix

Collards

Rhubarb Chard

I was saying to Christopher this morning that although it is satisfying to be able to go out to the garden in December and harvest produce for dinner, there's something about it that feels like fighting with the natural order.  Shutting the garden down as fall comes to an end is a ritual that has always seemed to me to be part of the cycle of the seasons.  

Lettuce: Territorial Wild Garden Mix (above) and Winter Density (below)

But it has been a valuable experiment growing a fall and winter garden, and next year we will probably do it again --on a larger scale--in the hoophouse.   

For now, I'm just grateful for some homegrown greens on my plate. It will be interesting to see how much longer everything lasts when normal winter weather returns.   

Mustards 

As the solstice approaches, this warm weather feels not quite right, but at the same time it is a welcome respite from the bitter cold. Kind of like garden-fresh veggies on your plate in December - a little unnatural, but delicious. 

All photos taken today in our garden...

Hoop House Raising

Earlier this year, for my birthday, we had a hoophouse - raising party and friends and family helped put up our new-used hoop house, bought at bargain basement prices from friends who were moving.

(Above: the Hoophouse Raising)

It was a beautiful day, it was easy work, and of course there were many opportunities for "hooping it up" puns for those so inclined, and we got the whole skeleton raised so we could stretch the plastic cover over it the next day.

Now the hoophouse is all ready for its new life on our land (below), and we have many plans for it, of course.

We had already been thinking about putting raised beds in the hoophouse for season extension and winter crops that need a little protection, using it for seed starting in the early spring, and so on, when I read this inspiring article: Growing Trust in Mother Earth News.

The article is an excerpt from Barbara Kingsolver's book, Animal, Vegetable Miracle, but with photos .... including this one (below) of a hoophouse at Amy Klippenstein and Paul Lacinski's farm. In this hoophouse, the hoops are trellises to grow pole beans during the summer. In winter, the bean vines come down and the plastic goes up and salad greens in grow in the hoophouse through the cold months. So now we've added trellised beans to our list of hoophouse plans.

Temperatures have been in the teens this week, and we're fast approaching the shortest day of the year. Not much is growing in our small garden this month, but visions of early tomatoes, greens through the winter, and a tunnel of beans dance in my head.

Bright Solstice Blessings.....

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More information: The Hoop House Handbook is online at Growing For Market (click on "books" from their main page)