Archive for January, 2010

Greenhouse Collapse!

January 31st, 2010

If you’re thinking about building a greenhouse here’s an opportunity to learn from my misfortune.

This is bad.

hoophouse greenhouse collapse from snow load.

Only 3 inches of ice and snow did this to my hoop-house.

When I first built it, my 50 dollar green house had a design flaw to say the least.

After removing the snow from my collapse greenhouse it is almost as good as new.

Fortunately After removing the snow from my collapse greenhouse it's almost as good as new. But, I think I can prevent this from happening again.

This isn’t a great thing to find on a winters morning, but on the other hand a minor fail like this is just the thing to help improve a design. Fortunately I got the snow off of it before any real damage was done – this time.  If I didn’t live in the (usually) sunny south it wouldn’t have taken me over a year to discover this design flaw.  So – to anyone who’s been inspired by this blog to build a greenhouse…  Sorry about that.

Here’s the thing – as long as rain or snow runs off and doesn’t accumulate which it usually doesn’t – all is well.  It’s even OK for a little bit of snow to accumulate on top, because it just falls right off of the steep sides, and no harm is done.  But once the peak starts to sag then it doesn’t run off like it needs to, and it can build up more weight making it sag even more, which allows more to collect, more weight, more sag… Until you get an ugly surprise.

So here’s what I did.  A reader recommended that I add a pvc pipe as a ridge pole on top of the ribs like this:

The greenhouse now has a ridge made of 2" pvc pipe - problem solved.

2" ridge pipe on TOP pf ribs - fixed the problem.

Since adding the ridge the greenhouse has withstood several substantial snows with no problem whatsoever.  When I know that snow is coming I add a couple of 2×4 props under the ridge for insurance.  Problem solved.

BTW, there are many hoop houses in my area and in areas that get lots more snow that work fine and don’t collapse when it snows or when the wind blows – including a HUGE commercial operation about 10 miles away that grows hydroponic lettuce year round.  My design just needed a little refinement.

For example:

Ontario Canada

If you never fail it’s probably because you never do anything.

Ain’t gardening fun!?

60 comments »

Posted in Under Glass

Salad Every Day

January 12th, 2010

Lettuce growing in my cold frame.

When I built my 50 dollar greenhouse over a year ago one of my goals was to be able to have something fresh to eat out of the garden or greenhouse every day of the year.  Well, it’s been about a year now, and  it hasn’t even been very hard to do.

Here is what I’ve learned so far -

Despite what you might have read, lettuce spinach and other salad greens are not really  particularly quick crops.  Sure you can have a pretty little stand of plants in about 6 weeks or so under good conditions, but  in cool weather  they don’t really get productive until they are  almost 3 months old.  Yes you can harvest a few salads out of the thinnings, but the young plants  aren’t going to yield an every day supply unless you can plant a pretty large area.

When it gets cold, growth slows way down.  However, on sunny days the temperature under glass (or plastic) is balmy, and I’ve continued to see steady growth all winter long.  What should be done in the fall is to have a lot of greens grown out as much as possible before it turns so cold that growth slows down.

It’s quite difficult to get those cool season crops to grow productively in Tennessee until late into our rather warm autumns, but once it gets to be jacket weather they do great.  Same thing in the spring – once the nights get warm they fail or go to seed.  So the easy thing to do is to seed dirrectly into a cold frame or green house in September, then seed again every few weeks all winter long and you can have fresh lettuce and spinach from  before Thanksgiving until June.  Last year I had tons of productive growth by late winter/early spring.

You can not only grow, but garden in relative comfort all winter long in a simple greenhouse like my $50 hoop house.

These crops are almost completely freeze proof – especially spinach.  I’ve had temperatures down to 5 degrees with only minor damage to lettuce and none to spinach inside of a frost encrusted cold frame, and even less damage inside of the hoop house for some reason.  It’s easier to keep them growing in cold weather than to keep them from bolting (the elongation associated with going to seed which triggers instant bitterness) in early summer.

One of the beautiful things about cool weather gardening is the absence of insect and weed problems.  There are usually a few of both, but not to the point of being a problem.  Also having productive plants growing in January is really therapeutic to a gardener with cabin fever.

This picture was taken on Nov. 5 - with a little bit of effort (and a cold frame) your garden can be productive almost year around.

I’ve only mentioned cool weather plants in this post, but it’s worth mentioning that in my area most gardens go to the weeds by early August when they don’t have to.  If you want to have a 4 season harvest you have to plan and plant in all 4 seasons as well.  I’ve found that the late summer – early fall is probably the most challenging time because it is hot and dry, and insect pests are at their peak, and it just isn’t very much fun.  Nonetheless with just a little timely effort you can keep your garden productive by planting the right thing at the right time and also yanking out old plants once they stop being productive.

3 comments »

Posted in Growing Food, How to Grow Guides

Tags:

Forced Rhubarb

January 7th, 2010
Doesnt that look delicious? Forcing rhubarb results in an earlier, tastier, more tender crop.

Doesn't that look delicious? Forcing rhubarb results in an earlier, tastier, more tender crop. The container used to force this rhubarb probably should have been taller - note that the tops are curled over. Sure is a pretty color though.

Rhubarb is a perenial plant which grows back from the root crowns every spring.  The large leaves contain high levels of oxalic acid and are poisonous, but the celery like stems are wonderfully tart and tangy.  Children like to eat them fresh right out of the garden, but nearly everyone likes it used as a fruit in sweet deserts – pies, crumbles, or just stewed with sugar.  My Mom (a marvelous cook of course – thanks Mom!) used to make it into a pie with strawberries.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.  Don’t worry too much about those poisonous leaves – they apparently taste so nasty that there is not much danger of anyone eating them anyway.

Here in TN I can barely grow rhubarb – although last year was so cool and rainy that it did pretty well.  It really does much better farther north where the weather is normally cooler and wetter.  When I was a kid we lived in Indiana for a few years, and the back yard of the old house we lived in had a marvelous big bed of rhubarb that just took care of itself.

In good conditions rhubarb will pretty much take care of itself.

In good conditions rhubarb will pretty much take care of itself. They do like rich soil with lots of organic material and high fertility, and even moisture though.

Forcing rhubarb as in the first picture above is something that I had never heard of until recently, and I’ve never tried it yet – but I will.  Apparently forcing rhubarb is a widespread practice in England – I ran across it on a UK gardening blog that I subscribe to.  I’m afraid that the English are much more sophisticated gardeners on average than most Americans are – they seem to use many techniques that we don’t.  We should try to do better I suppose.

Anyway, from what I can glean forcing rhubarb is very simple to accomplish – as soon as growth is seen  (maybe even before)  cover the crown of a well established plant with a large, rather tall container such as a bucket or trash can.  Optionally insulate around the “forcer” with straw or some other mulch to warm the micro-climate and encourage growth.  In about 8 weeks you should have an early crop of tender juicy tangy rhubarb.

  • Don’t try to do this until you have a well established healthy plant to work with – certainly not the first year!
  • Don’t force the same plant two years in a row as the process stresses the plant by putting most of the energy into growing the forced stems instead of keeping the rest of the plant strong.

2 comments »

Posted in Growing Food, How To, Spring

SEO Powered by Platinum SEO from Techblissonline