5/12/09
This time of year, the warm, sunny days ideal for planting are often followed by crispy nights that will kill whatever you planted. After a decade of riding this rollercoaster, I’ve compiled an arsenal of coverings designed to warm the soil and/or protect tender seedlings from weather. Most of them are cobbled together from found materials, but slowly I’m accumulating easy-up, easy-down tents, row covers, and cages that allow me to plant well before the normal Memorial Day start.
So far, these covers have all proven to work and I will continue simplifying and experimenting until I can get my whole garden in by Mother’s Day without losing a thing. It would be easier if I had one big garden, so I could assemble one big cover and be done with it! But I’m still moving beds around, and have many containers in different places. So I continue the morning and evening ritual of covering and uncovering until Memorial Day, when it’s 99% certain that all frost has passed.
Then, three months of freedom until the cycle begins again any time after Labor Day. Between this covering exercise and trying short-season vegetable varieties, I hope to reap my entire harvest before the return of frost. All northern gardeners are familiar with this challenge, and as more folks nationwide start growing their own food, I’m sure the numbers will surge.
Books are coming out now that address season extension and four-season gardening, as well as greenhouse gardening. Two on my shelf are: “Four-Season Harvest: Organic vegetables from your home garden all year long,” by Eliot Coleman and “Solar Gardening: Growing vegetables year-round the American Intensive Way,” by Leandre and Gretchen Poisson.
A search of the Internet or browsing the appendix of my book will lead to other information sources.
Happy Spring to all!
Carolyn Haley
Author: Open Your Heart with Gardens
Posted by: Opening the heart, gardens, gardening, yard, plants, cultivation, spring — Carolyn Haley
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