The Yellow Farmhouse Garden

It looks like it was a good decision to put up my hoop house last fall. As it looks right now, it could be a late start to the outdoor gardening season, although that could turn around very quickly.

The soil is still frozen in some parts of the garden, but in the hoop house, the soil temperatures range from about 64 degrees F in the center of the planting area to around 48 degrees F  right along the edges.

That means it’s time to plant some of those cool season vegetables  into the hoop house. My plan is to get radishes, spinach, and lettuce all in this week. The seeds are going directly into the soil.

Since these are all cool weather plants, they will do fine even if we happen to get one last Arctic vortex blast.

I messed up the red fluid in my soil thermometer when I dropped it out on the way to the hoop house. Instead, I went to the kitchen and got out one of our kitchen thermometers and used that to take the soil temperature –it’s the same one I used to check the corned beef on Saint Patrick’s Day.

I’m using a kitchen thermometer to measure the soil temperature in the hoop.house

It is good wholesome garden out there after all and the thermometer probe cleaned up nicely with a little dish washing detergent. But, don’t tell Judy, I’m not 100% sure she’ll buy that argument.

Bob

People have been asking me how the lettuce in my hoop house looks after last week’s Arctic Vortex.

Out here in the countryside we had one night of -20 degrees F then, three nights in a row of -13 degrees F. I was sure all of my lettuce would be dead after exposure to that kind of temperature. So, I waited a few days to dig out the snow away from the door so I could get in to take a look at my crop.

As it turns out, most of the lettuce survived. The plants that I planted early in the season and had a chance to become established, came through nicely.

The second crop — the ones I planted later in the season — did not make it. Those plants never had enough time to grow into strong plants before the extreme cold arrived.

I should mention that a single layer of  plastic greenhouse covering wasn’t the only thing sheltering the lettuce. I also added an extra layer of plastic sheeting over the plants in a kind of hoop tunnel within a hoop house arrangement.

Here I am picking some lettuce. The blue material is plastic bubble wrap.

Then just before the Vortex really got cranking, I covered the inner tunnel with a layer of over-sized sheet of bubble wrap.  I believe that is what made the difference between life and death for those plants.

Now I’m back to harvesting fresh lettuce again and will probably run out of lettuce before winter is over.

Bob

In my last blog posting I wrote about building a hoop house out of reclaimed shade canopy parts.  After covering the structure I amended the soil with composted chicken manure.

Once the soil was improved, I planted a few short rows of lettuce seedlings. And they’re doing great.

The lettuce is not making much growth but it still looks great.

This crop of lettuce not only survived the single digit overnight temperatures we had out here they’re actually thriving under the plastic. So, we’re still eating home grown organic salads from the garden in December.

The success I’ve had so far in this little home-made greenhouse encouraged me enough to plant a second crop of lettuce a couple of weeks ago.

Because the days are so much shorter now, the lettuce is not growing like a spring crop would outside in the garden. That’s because there is not as much sunlight energy for photosynthesis right now — and the days are still getting shorter.

My goal is to harvest lettuce for Christmas dinner, has been met! Now, anything more I’ll consider a bonus.

I’ll keep you updated on how things go in the hoop house.

Bob