The basic tiny farming greenhouse is a steel-ribbed, plastic covered hoophouse, the bigger, the better for season extension.
Cold-grown: Tiny lettuce leaves, crisp, fresh and delicious…and grown oh so slowly, without cover, in the unheated greenhouse, through many freezing nights, some down to -15C. Still a while till it’s big enough to harvest, and it was seeded way … Read the rest
Later and later we go: More late season/winter harvest experiments, with four-week-old spinach transplants into the unheated greenhouse. Also trying out a trench approach to transplanting—a furrow about 6″ deep, made with a hoe—instead of putting them in one by … Read the rest
It’s a monster tomato leaf. There’s not much in the pic to give it scale, but some of these leaves are around a foot long. Way bigger than I’ve seen before. This is the first year I’ve tried tomatoes in … Read the rest
Shrouded against the cold: Not much to look at, but nice for the tomatoes, peppers and other seedlings on the tables underneath. It’s a double layer of medium weight floating row cover, tried and true, a familiar spring sight in … Read the rest
Couple hundred not-so-early early lettuce, toughing it out in the semi-sauna-like greenhouse, along with seedlings that should be out in the field soon. This year, we went from chilly late winter conditions to summer-ish heat, with absolutely no mild spring … Read the rest
A little wood, a little steel, some 6mm UV-stabilized plastic, and simple construction methods come together in the basic walk-in hoophouse, a no-frills structure with its own signature look and quite startling effectiveness when it comes to season extension. What … Read the rest
Greens from the unheated greenhouse, grown in the subzero cold, tossed on one of the majestic mountain ranges of composting cow manure. It’s actually weeds from around the overwintered spinach, plus a little overlooked rotting winter squash in there as … Read the rest