Don't mind X there, she's just sad 'cos she thinks autumn means gardening is over, but she's WRONG.
No snow is keeping us out of the garden! 'Started some garden clean-up, but only really got as far as harvesting the rest of the winter squash and removing 90% of the pole beans before some cold snaps (like, down to 17 degrees) meant I needed to get the hoop tunnels up. I generally follow
these "How to Build a Low Tunnel to Protect Plants from Frost" instructions from GrowOrganic. I really like their suggestion of placing a PVC pipe into a sleeve of the
heavy-weight garden fabric. Only improvement I would make is to place PVC ribs closer than every 5 feet, and maybe add an extra foot or two onto the excess garden farbic, to make closing up even easier. I combine those instructions with
these from SavvyGardening and end up with an added 'spine' PVC pipe across the top, secured with U-bolts.
Here's the PVC pipes in the sleeve I sewed into the fabric. It made venting so much easier, I added sleeves to all my row covers! The
instructions say to use 6" for the sleeve, but my 1/2" PVC pipes could make 4.5" (folded in half) work.
We've gone through a couple snows already, sometimes coming out better than others. I think I've finally figured out how to use my
snap-on pipe clamps to properly secure the ends of the fabric so they don't blow open in the wind tunnel that is our backyard. I have to secure them a little higher up on the rib-pipes than I like, but by folding over the excess fabric to one side and securing with the clamp, it seems to work alright.
Last year I had two smaller low hoop tunnels and they worked out quite fine. They're a lot shorter, and thus, a lot less fuss than these tall 8' long PVC ribs. Still refining the design, think I need at least oen more rib in between the two ends to secure against the snow.
Everything's still alive! Even the little baby bok chois I planted in October! Kale, kohlrabi, arugula, mache, Swiss chard, and self-sown lettuce are looking happy, too. The
heavy duty garden fabric only warms up by a handful of degrees, so it's unclear how we got through 17 degree nights with no damage - except for the fact that the plants were chosen for the cold weather I added a 3mil painters' plastic drop cloth on top to the whole set-up for extra insulation.
1 comments:
Oh my goodness look at that snow already! We're in the high 70s here, although we've already brought all of our plants inside
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