Mini Green Houses

Looky! Looky! We got our raised beds under plastic today! Here's to the beginning of our mini-greenhouse adventure.

When we first decided to go into this business, Grampa decided to go to a trade show he saw in the Small Farm Today Magazine  http://www.smallfarmtoday.com/   He met a man there who was promoting the raised concrete block gardens we use. We went to a workshop at his farm http://gardeningrevolution.com/ to learn about how to make them and have been absolutely thrilled with them. One of the benefits of this type of garden is that they can easily be turned into mini-greenhouses, however we have never gotten around to buying the plastic water pipe Len uses to frame them. This summer, I was looking at the concrete re-enforcing wire tomato cages (another thing we learned from Len) and suggested we double duty them by using them as hoops to put plastic over. We are fastening the plastic to the hoops with clothes pins and holding down the ends with rocks. We discussed making some smaller hoops to put under the tomato cages to make a double plastic layer, but decided to stick with one layer for this year. One layer of plastic will allow us to start our garden a month early. Two layers would extend the gardens up to two months. 

We also bought some re-enforcing wire to put over the gardens that we built outside of the fence this summer to protect them from chickens. We just put chicken wire over the ends, but I'd really like to cover them completely. By the end of the summer the chickens figured out they could get through the holes in the re-enforcing wire.  :(

I used the ends that were left over from that project to create some mini hoops to put over my herb garden. They kept the chickens out and kept the dogs from laying on my herbs. I put plastic over them yesterday. I'm hoping it will be enough to keep my lemon grass and rosemary from dying over the winter. In any case, I'm sure it will give my perennial herbs a head start next spring. 

We planted a thermometer in the soil in one of the gardens we covered. I'll try to keep you informed about the temp through the winter!

God Bless You All!

~Grama Sue