my winter bed in May

I'll be emptying this bed out soon. Tomatoes will go here for the summer. For now, I've left kale and collards to flower for the bees. They love them.

winter tunnel after -12 F cold snap

I'm surprised how well a double tunnel insulates plants. I thought everything would be dead by now. Especially after our record breaking -12.8 F (-25 C) night. Spinach, kale, mustard, bunching onions and cilantro are perfectly happy. (My kale outside of the tunnel is dead.) Lettuce, arugula and chard in the tunnel are cold-singed but will recover fast I think. Probably turnips and daikon radish (the large dead-ish looking plants in the center) are not good choices for a winter tunnel.

We're getting some warm days, 40s and 50s, and the sun is getting stronger and daylight is longer, so I think things will start growing soon. I haven't harvested anything in just over a month (since January 12).

winter tunnel update

I've been looking for my bottle of castor oil for a week now. There are vole holes in my winter tunnel and wanted to give the soil another dose. I finally found it. Of all places - in my new garden shed! I forgot about that spot. There it was with the empty pots and garden sprays. I'll have to get used to having a shed.

Today I opened up the tunnel. I'm really pleased with how everything is doing. Fortunately, no more vole damage, except a small bite in a Daikon radish. And the plants are still fine after a week with low temps below 20F. In the afternoon, even at 28F, there's lot's of condensation on the plastic. Unlike the rest of my garden soil, the soil inside is not frozen.

So I mixed up some castor oil and applied it. I'm a bit concerned I may have used too high a concentration. I used 1/4 cup castor oil, 1/4 cup liquid soap in 2 gallons water. That's 1.5%. About 4 times what I find is recommended now that I look. We'll see.

I'm thinking my tunnel might soon be covered with snow and I might not open it again for a while. Just as good as the plants inside now are small for harvest. I think my layers of plastic and double frost fabric probably reduce the faint sun we have. So the plants won't do much growing until March probably. Wow, I wonder if they'll survive til March?

winter harvest

 

It seemed like a good day to open my winter tunnel. I was really curious how things looked after our cold snap down into the single digits last week. Surprisingly, it was not too bad. There were some areas on the edges, especially the north side, with mushy plants. And some plants are doing better than others. But lots of the plants look really good. The kale (Vates) and spinach (Kookaburra) look perfectly happy, romaine lettuce (Trucas) too. The leaf lettuce (Italienischer), escarole frissee, and the daikon radish looked frost bit.

I picked a whole bucket full of greens. I picked a lot of the greens at the edges that were having trouble, and most of the leaf lettuce. I picked the bok choy only because it looked so good and I though why risk it. I didn't pick any spinach. It's still small. I wish I'd planted more and earlier. That said, I wish I'd planted more of everything. We've been eating store bought greens the past month. But this tunnel is a good experiment. More next year!

I'll probably add a photo of cleaned up greens here later. I'm hoping they make a few nice salads. I pulled some salad turnips. These were something I was testing for timing for my app, but "are not to my taste"(yukk). I think my husband like them sauteed just a little. They do look pretty.

inside my winter tunnel

My winter tunnel is full of greens. Spinach, several types of lettuce, arugula, radicchio, kale, chard, collards, salad turnips, daikon and salad radish, cilantro, some frilly red mustard, escarole, bok choi. Can't beat this balmy December weather for cool weather crops! I have parsley, escarole, broccoli, beets and kale outside with no protection.



Plants in my tunnel are from my winter seed sowing calendar, which is part of Skippy's full-season planting calendar app. I planted everything to test the planting dates in the app.

The app is $1.99 (iOS or Android). I think the price will go up for the next season (probably to $2.99), so it makes sense to get it now. All pf the app updates will apply whether your buy before or after the price increase. The calendar has spring and fall planting schedules too.

I'm counting down the days til my spring planting begins - end of February!



My only complaint with my tunnel is that I wish I had planted more of them! Next year...