Hoop House Hopes

  • Kyle Valentini
  • January 4, 2011
  • 281
                        
It was fifty four degrees on the first day of 2011. This wouldn’t seem odd if I weren’t in Northeastern Ohio but rather somewhere with a milder climate. I took advantage of the warm day and did a few things around the yard and garden that resulted in very muddy boots. I installed new solar landscaping lights as the ground was thawed enough to do so. One of the male dogs showed enough interest in my unseasonably warm weather endeavor to claim one of the lights as his very own in a manner that only male dogs can claim anything to be their very own, you guessed it. Thank you, JJ. We will consider that solar landscaping light to be yours from here on out. A walk through the raised bed garden showed marjoram and oregano can withstand colder temperatures than I thought possible. Late in the fall I had covered the herb beds with a thick layer of mulched leaves and straw to insulate the plants. That coupled with a modest amount of snow had helped prevent the plants from freezing. With the snow melted it was delightful to see green peeking out of the bed and even more delightful to know I could add a little fresh oregano to the evening meal. I knew the warm weather would not last and tried to breathe in as much fresh air as possible before temperatures dipped back down to normal January numbers like fifteen or thirty when we are lucky. Early last spring I built a crude hoop house so I could get a head start on lettuces, cress and other cool temperature loving plants like carrots and radishes. It isn’t much, just PVC pipe bent over the raised bed and supported by rebar rods I stuck in the soil. I can cover the hoops with heavy plastic like Visqueen to create a greenhouse environment. You can build a more complicated hoop house or buy a costly kit but this works for my small garden. It is challenging to get the plastic to stay in place during periods of high wind but I have been experimenting with different methods that still allow me to raise the protective plastic up to look at the plants and to water when necessary. It might be a little too early to plant anything beneath the hoop house just yet. In another month I will put some seeds out with the hopes the hoop house will stay warm enough to generate new life and fresh food. Oh, how I have missed fresh food. I found myself forlorn in the produce section of a local grocery store recently. The Brussell sprouts looked awful. The green beans looked diseased. The lettuce was slimy. The peppers were FIVE dollars a pound! The tomatoes weren’t even tomatoes. Despite produce being readily available year round in our modern world most of it isn’t worth eating in the winter. A little spinach, some cress, a bit of mesclun, perhaps carrots and radishes should cure my winter produce blues if the hoop house keeps out the cold. Plants are amazing. They want to live. They want to grow. And I want to eat them in great abundance. In the meantime, the carrots at the store don’t look so bad. The organic apples are ok. But I’m not going to pay FIVE dollars for peppers. For those, I’ll have to wait until summer.


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