VEG: Hoop Houses

written by Yvonne

This project came about in stages and it's taken me a bit to load up the photos and write to them.  As you can see by the dates on the photos, it was actually complete several weeks ago.

Last year we were able to grow spinach all winter long with very little effort. When it got cold, we threw row covers over the beds to protect the plants from frost and that was it. Impressed with our results, Tom wanted to ratchet things up a notch this year and build hoop house over the beds.  A little research on the internet, and he was back from Lowe's with supplies and building them before I knew it.

He screwed conduit clamps on the inside of the boxes; one on each side, across from one another. (And naturally he had a helper.) He had no idea what conduit clamps were until he went to the hardware store.

Then he used 1/2" PVC pipe, that were 10' long each.  He inserted one end into the clamp on one side...

bent the PVC over the bed....

and inserted it into the clamp on the other side.

Then he cut a piece of PVC 8' long for the top....

and secured it with plastic zip ties. This gives the hoop house more stability.

Next he bought 1"x2" pieces of wood in 8' lengths and tied them with jute twine onto each side of the PVC hoops.

This gives additional structure to the hoops and because it's tied on, it slides up and down the PVC easily to move out of the way when we need to harvest. Olive was quite proud of Pack Leader 1.

He built them in two sections for beds #4 and #3 (looking from left to right). Bed #2 only gets half a house because we have garlic in the other half and it doesn't need to be covered through winter.  Bed #1 doesn't get any covering this year because that's where the rye grass is.  At the end of next summer, bed #1 and the second half of #2 will get their hoop houses so we can rotate crops.

The row covers we already had covered the hoops with room to spare, however it was too short.  The covers needed to be long enough to clamp the ends together so the beds will be completely covered. Therefore, my contribution was to figure out how to make this happen.  I determined that I could take one row cover, cut it into thirds, and sew one third onto the end of a full cover. So, I cut one cover into thirds...

and pinned one of the thirds onto the end of a full row cover. (Our helper wanted to make sure she helped with ALL aspects of this project. "Mmm... comfy bed. Thanks Pack Leader 2!")

Then with my team of helpers, I sewed the pieces together.

Tom finished the project by stapling each row cover to a 2"x2", 8' long piece of pressure-treated wood. This is to make it easy to roll up the cover. It also acts as a weight to hold the cover in place.

Here is what they look like, finished and uncovered.

(Olive has never shown any interest in stepping onto the vegetable beds in the least... until we put these hoop houses up. Now I think she sees them as her outdoor kennel or den or something.  She wants in SO bad.)

 He used a few spring clamps on each end, and a few along the top and sides to close up the houses...

and the winter hoop houses are complete! Now our fall/winter crops should prosper as much, if not more, than our spring/summer crops! ("Look at MY hoop houses. I did ALL the work except for the parts that required opposeable thumbs, to which I give two-paws up to my Pack Leaders for their participation!")

VEG: Moving into Fall

written by Yvonne

We planted a different variety of collards this year.  They are HUGE!  What we previously has was smaller and thinner.  Until now, I never understood why people cooked the heck out of collards.  We just saute them and that's it.  But now I get it.... a variety like this is very hearty and can stand to be cooked longer.  Nonetheless, we dropped them in stock for about 20 minutes and they were delicious!  We added a little smoke flavoring and SandP.  Only thing missing was more.

Box #1 had the last hangers on of summer veg.  Our plan was to plant boxes 2-4 with fall/winter crops and to throw down some rye seed in box 1 to rejuvenate the soil for next spring. We'll rotate that the next year and so on.  We cleared out the remaining tomato plants and pulled up the newspaper and pine needles.

Then we spread the rye seed. It should grow and fill up the bed, then we'll till it into the dirt in the spring.

Tom got hives Borris and Natasha all nestled up for winter. The bales of pine straw act as insulators and wind barriers.  We'll use the straw as mulch in the garden when the warmer seasons come 'round again.

VEG: A bit behind in our reporting

written by Yvonne

We are a bit behind in our garden/bee reporting, but we should be able to keep up from here forward. Had a few busy weekends which kept us out of the garden but Tom has also been working on a big garden project over several weekends which is now complete (full coverage of that in the next post).

As you can see by the date stamp on the photos, these were taken a while ago. This was the very last batch of bell peppers.

We put them on baking sheets and roasted them in the oven. Someone asked what we do with them all. This batch we canned so we'd have them through the winter.

Cabbage that we started in newspaper pots seem to have taken hold.

And the Swiss Chard has taken hold too.

The collards are really taking off now. I see sauteed collards on the menu for this coming weekend.

Lettuce is ready to start munching on. I made three huge salads last weekend and harvested a bunch to give to a friend. After all that, it didn't look like I even made a dent in what's growing.

Arugula still small but growing.

We now get our seeds from Sow True Seeds out of Asheville. All the seeds are heirloom so maybe in a year or so we will attempt to saving seeds from what grows to replant from year to year. Here Tom has parsley, onions, turnips and squash seeds in water to help the sprouting process.

After 24 hours of soaking, Tom planted them in newspaper pots and parked them in the greenhouse.  At the moment the turnips and onions have sprouted, but nothing on the squash and parsley.

VEG: TY Gets Ready for a Fall Garden

written by Yvonne

I know, I know.  It's been a month since we've posted any happenings at TYs VeggiePatch. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. One weekend we went to Asheville for a Yoga workshop and a little time away.
2. One weekend we did dog stuff (hike, etc).
3. We are each the head of a study group (Cartooning Club and Sutra Study Group) and we've had to spend time write lesson plans and studying for those meetings.
4. Tom had bee stuff to attend to.
5. I participated in an outdoor craft show.
6. And lastly, there really hasn't been much to report.

It's the end of September and our tomatoes are just NOW getting ripe. Let me tell ya, we've been enjoying the heck out of them regardless of what month it is. We created a meal called Garden Pasta.  We take basil, tomatoes, peppers and garlic (all grown from the garden), cut them up, toss them with some fresh pasta and olive oil and that's dinner.

This will likely be the last batch of peppers for the season. There are still some on the vine but they're pretty small. We'll hang on to the plants as long as they produce fruit and until the cold gets 'em.

Now that the weather is cooling down, Tom has been working on his grill master skills. A few weekends ago he grilled a 15-lb turkey on the Weber charcoal grill (show below)! It was impressive. Tonight he's grilling two whole chickens and all the peppers.

He's gonna get them all blackend up (the peppers, not the chickens). We'll cover them with foil and wait for them to cool, then peel the blackend skin off and we'll have roasted peppers.This is the black skin we're looking for in a roasted pepper.

Last weekend we started a new batch of seeds. Here we have spinach and one variety of arugula...

and here we have another variety of arugula, cabbage and swiss chard. Some of each type of seed sprouted within four days of being planted!

We ordered three varieties of garlic to plant from The Garlic Store. We'll brake the bulbs apart, stick them in the ground, and forget about them until next July.  The garlic we harvest this summer has been fantastic.  It's now a staple for the garden and we'll never have to buy garlic from the store again!  (Mind you, there's nothing wrong with garlic bought from the store, it's just super cool that we can grow our own.)

Here are two varieties of lettuce we started in newspaper pots and they are doing great. It will only be a week or two before I can come to the backyard to clip off some leaves for a salad.  Can't wait!

We weren't sure if the collards would take hold, but they did.

Many weeks ago I'd trimmed back the basil and discovered that our turnips actually had started growing. After they were exposed to the sun, they grew like crazy.  In fact they grew so fast, we didn't get a chance to thin them out.

As you can see, two have grown very close together but that's OK. They came up so quick I think we may have time to get more in the ground before the super cold weather hits - they don't do well when it's too cold.

Also growing under the shade of the basil was cilantro (left). It likely won't last through the cold months, but since we're going to use cover clothes and keep as much going as possible through winter, we'll see if it hangs on. One of my students gave me a cutting of oregano from her back yard.  I planted it in the bed several weeks ago (right) and it's taken hold as well.  Thanks Pam!

The broccoli is certainly taking over... but still no signs of flowers or anything that can be eaten.

We've completely ignored the sweet potatoes and they have really overtaken.  Hopefully that means something good is going on underground.

The berry bushes are growing like crazy up against the side fence. We haven't had any berries except for one or two in the spring just after they'd been planted. Hmmm... this makes me wonder if someone's been enjoying the berries before we could get to them.

It's obvious we can grow cabbage. We've never grown cabbage so this was supper exciting for us.

I'd been instructed by Tom to go to the butcher and buy bratwursts as well as some good, hearty buns because we were harvesting this cabbage to make a vinegar-based cole slaw to top the brats.  I did as I was instructed; bought brats and buns and made the only kind of cole slaw Tom has ever liked, using our first, very own, home grown cabbage. Tom was one happy camper. (I had my coleslaw on the side with a veggie burger.)

Guess this is why they call it a "head" of cabbage - it's as big as your head!

VEG: Summer garden comes to a close

written by Yvonne

Current vegetable happenings: We have three successful cabbages. There is definitely something chowing down on the large outer leaves but we're not going to do anything about it at the moment. If it/they starting eating too much, we'll have to spray a little Jerry Baker tobacco/soap/garlic repellent.

We "found" a volunteer lima plant hidden under some weeds in one of the boxes.  Since none of our lima seeds germinated, we'll leave this in and see what it produces.

These are turnips we planted several weeks ago. They were covered up by the basil. Now that the basil has been trimmed way back, these guys should get plenty of sun.

A teeny-tiny cilantro plant. Come on little guy, you can do it!

Since we've been clipping the top of this tomato plant, tons of tomatoes have come out. We're calling them our early fall tomatoes.

Broccoli plants are coming along.

It's obvious why these peppers are called "rainbow" peppers. Simply gorgeous!

It being Labor Day weekend and all, we needed to spend time laboring in the garden. Although we've been somewhat disappointed with our summer vegetable production this year, we learned a lot which will hopefully translate into a more productive fall garden.  I started by pulling out the old kale and marigolds, and significantly pruned back the basil.

Tom got another truck-full of dirt Friday so we could top off the beds this weekend. The dirt in all four beds has settled so they needed more. In addition to settling, there's a dirt wad around the root of every plant so when you pull something out, you loose a little dirt that way too.

We could see it coming a mile away. As soon as Olive saw the tailgate down, she wanted to get into the back of the truck. Once we got a good deal of the dirt out, we let her get in.  Needless to say, she got a bath at the end of the day.

The newspaper posts we used to plant seeds in some weeks ago held up GREAT! This is the a butternut squash in a newspaper pot.

With new dirt in place, we designated areas for the squash, lettuces, and collards.

Our day in the garden was done. Time to move the truck back to the carport as Olive gets her first ride in the back of the truck.

Saturday was canning day. We spent the better part of the day chopping, cooking, and canning - all of which was made SO MUCH EASIER now that the microwave above the cook top is gone. We were able to use all four burners and could put the canner on the back burner. Yesterday Tom labeled all of our wonderful work.

 We made blackberry jam, peach jam (which turned out MUCH better than last year's batch - apologies to anyone who got that as a gift last year), and pepper onion relish with our homegrown rainbow peppers.